Human Evolution Continues?

It has sort of been thought that evolution of modern humans had stopped when humans with modern characteristics first appeared. Now a geneticist, Gregory Cochran, and an anthropologist, John Hawks, state that evolution has been proceeding faster in the last ten thousand years than in the presumed "origin" of modern humans 160-200 thousand years ago. In an article in World Science, they state that modern human brain cases have continued to change dramatically. According to the article:

An­thro­po­l­o­gist Jef­frey Mc­Kee of Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty said the new find­ings of ac­ce­l­er­ated evolution bear out pre­dic­tions he made in a 2000 book The Rid­dled Chain. Based on com­put­er mod­els, he ar­gued that ev­o­lu­tion should speed up as a pop­u­la­tion grows. This is be­cause pop­u­la­tion growth cre­ates more op­por­tu­ni­ties for new mu­ta­tions; al­so, the ex­pand­ed pop­u­la­tion oc­cu­pies new en­vi­ron­men­tal niches, which would drive ev­o­lu­tion in new di­rec­tions.

This is exciting, and may open doors for many different areas of research. It also puts a bit of a crimp in the "rapid replacement" model of modern humans origins. Put simply, if evolution has not slowed down with the advent of modern humans, then it is more of a continuum than was previously thought.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

This Kind of Thing Doesn't Help

According to a story in Southern AP news, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League has asked for an apology from a Georgia politician who allegedly wrote a memo stating that the theory of evolution was originally put forth in the Kabbala. Evolution doesn't seem to have been the problem, though:

"Your memo conjures up repugnant images of Judaism used for thousands of years to smear the Jewish people as cult-like and manipulative," wrote Bill Nigut, the league's Southeast regional director.

The real fun is that, while the politician, Ben Bridges, denies having written the memo, one of his "closest political allies" Marshall Hall, states that he did.

Hall runs a web site called the "Non-Moving Earth and Anti-Evolution Site of the Fair Education Foundation, Inc." which has to be seen to be believed. One quote on the site that stood out to me was this:

This "Doctrine Purification Series" has been written over a period of some twenty years in preparation for that time when all teachings are brought in line with the unquestioned Bible inerrancy and infallibility that will be manifested globally by the exposure of the most fertile deception in Satan’s vast repertoire, namely, the universally believed lie that the Earth is orbiting on an axis and going around the sun.

This all came from an Instapundit post that linked a post by Neal Boortz with the heading "Why People Think Conservatives are Idiots." This is one good reason why.

Report on the Creationist Museum

Truthdig has a report on the construction of the Creationism museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. This museum, the brainchild of Ken Ham, the Australian creationist, is described thus:

It has the appearance of a real science museum, complete with a planetarium, a gift shop and plaques on the wall with quotes from creationist “scientists” who have the title doctor conspicuously before their names. It has charts, timelines and graphs with facts and figures. It is meant to be interactive, to create, like Universal Studios, a contrived reality with an array of costly animatronic men and women as well as moving dinosaurs.

The writer reports the following:

Only 13 percent of Americans in a 2004 Gallup poll, when asked for their views on human origins, said life arose from the strictly natural process of evolution. More than 38 percent said they believed God guided evolution, and 45 percent said the Genesis account of creation was a true story.² Courses on intelligent design have been taught at Minnesota, Georgia, New Mexico and Iowa State universities, along with Wake Forest and Carnegie Mellon, not to mention Christian universities that teach all science through the prism of the Bible.

Aside from the inaccurate conflation of recent earth creationism and Intelligent Design, it is not clear that if either of the first two 83% were correct, that we could tell the difference. It seems more interesting to me that 45% of those polled thought that the Genesis account was a true story. One wonders what those polled thought that "true story" meant. I think it is a true story also, just not a literal one. Truth comes in all shapes and sizes and is both literal and figurative. The Primeval History teaches spiritual and religious truth. To paraphrase Conrad Hyers, we don't need to ask any more of it. This doesn't mean that Ken Ham isn't misguided.

Having said that, the tone of the article is condescending, calling YECs "Christo-fascists" Hence the following paragraph:

They pump out articles in self-published journals to provide “evidence” that homosexuals can be cured, that global warming is a myth, that abortion can cause breast cancer, that something they call “post-abortion syndrome” leads to deep depression and suicide and that abstinence-only education is an effective form of birth control.

This has nothing to do with the evolution/creation debate and is insulting to a wide range of people who, like me, are social conservatives, but take evolution seriously. I would encourage reading the comments, as well. They range from supportive to very caustic.

FIFTY-FIVE SMACKERS??????

Sadly, I am not going to be at the Discovery Institute program here in Knoxville. I cannot justify the cover charge of fifty-five dollars, not with four hungry kids to feed. My graduate advisor, Andy Kramer, is going and will take notes. He suggested that I crash the gate at some point. I don't know. I sure know I don't want to give the Institute that kind of money, since I disagree with how they try to effect their program. I don't like deception, and have read enough to think they practice it on several levels. Oh well.

It sort of defeats the purpose of this blog not to go, but there will be plenty of press reports and interviews. Life goes on.

The Discovery Institute is Coming to Knoxville!!

Here is the press release.

By: Staff
Discovery Institute
January 15, 2007

Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture will present a
special series of conferences, Darwin vs. Design, in 2007 and 2008
exploring the growing scientific evidence that life and the universe
were intelligently designed.

These events in selected cities across America will feature leading
scientists and philosophers who are advancing the theory of
intelligent design. Check this page frequently for updated
information about upcoming conferences in your area.

Upcoming Conferences
Knoxville Darwin vs. Design Conference
March 24, 2007
Knoxville, Tennessee
Dallas Darwin vs. Design Conference
April 13-14, 2007
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, Texas

Interestingly, this item showed up on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Technical Calendar. After quite a bit of outcry, it was removed. Nonetheless, it is possible to get discounts if you are en employee of the lab, which I am. I expect to hear alot of "Teach the Controversy."

One Kenyan speaks out against the gagging of evolution.

Well, this is kind of gross, but informative in an evolutionary sort of way.

Horned Dinosaurs

A new dinosaur has been found that has horns. Not in itself noteworthy, the horns are apparently in a family of dinosaurs that are only known for nub-like horns. The new find is called Albertosaurus nesmoi. The story relates:

The oldest known horned dinosaur in North America is called Zuniceratops. It lived 12 million years before [Michael] Ryan's find, and also had large horns.

That makes the newly found creature an intermediate between older forms with large horns and later small-horned relatives, said State of Utah paleontologist Jim Kirkland, who with Douglas Wolfe identified Zuniceratops in New Mexico in 1998. He predicted then that something like Ryan's find would turn up.

"Lo and behold, evolutionary theory actually works," he said.

Indeed.

Its Creation Time in Tennessee!

The Nashville Post reports that State Senator Raymond Finney from Maryville is asking the state legislature to sponsor a resolution addressing some fundamental questions about science and open the door to teaching creationism as an alternate view of life. The story notes:

The resolution needs only to be passed by the Republican-controlled Senate in order to force Tennessee's Department of Education to answer on the record. A joint resolution would have to pass the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, where it would likely find itself relegated to a black hole committee and not see the light of day.

Yay rah! It never really goes away completely, does it?

Hard to believe this is the first time we've seen this...

According to a story in the WaPo, chimpanzees have been found to be making sharp weapons, which they are using to hunt small animals. According to the story,

The multistep spearmaking practice, documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees' trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of years ago.
The landmark observation also supports the long-debated proposition that females -- the main makers and users of spears among the Senegalese chimps -- tend to be the innovators and creative problem solvers in primate culture.
Using their hands and teeth, the chimpanzees were repeatedly seen tearing the side branches off long, straight sticks, peeling back the bark and sharpening one end. Then, grasping the weapons in a "power grip," they jabbed them into tree-branch hollows where bush babies -- small, monkeylike mammals -- sleep during the day.

This has probably been going on for a long time and we just finally observed it. Neat.

Sorry about the light posting

I have been fighting an infection in the back of my neck for the last week and it seems to have reared its ugly head once again. This stems from the golf ball they pulled out two weeks ago. I will try to do better.

Kansas...again

ABC news reports that Kansas has rewritten their education guidelines to reflect the changing demographics of the school board, which is largely evolution-friendly right now. The key paragraph is:

Some scientists and science groups believed the board's latest action was significant because it turned back a subtle attack on evolution that encouraged schools to teach about an evolution "controversy," rather than mandating that creationism or intelligent design be taught. Intelligent design says an intelligent cause is the best way to explain some complex and orderly features of the universe.

The catch is that there is no controversy. From a scientific perspective, there are mountains of evidence supporting both microevolution and macroevolution and no evidence supporting any other model. The ball is in ID's court. If there is a mechanism that can be postulated that would explain current and past biotic diversity, why have they not presented it? You cannot teach a controversy in a vacuum. Teaching the "controversy" is a smokescreen and most scientists can see through it.

The marvels of Modern Medicine

Well, after quite a bit of pain over the weekend and a very fat neck, i went back to the surgeon yesterday, who confirmed my fears that an infection had set in at the incision site. Without going into a lot of detail, when the surgeon removed the top stitch, the wound "popped." Think: adolescence and you will get the idea. I was sent home with some very high-powered antibiotics and pain killers. It feels better now but is still draining...

Good ol' Genetics

I just had a benign tumor removed from the back of my neck the size of a golf ball! How did this happen? I am not a tree and it is not a burl. Nor am I an oyster and it a pearl. It is just simply a tumor that my body thought to grow at that location. Nice. I'd forgotten what surgical pain was like.

Didn't See This Coming

Foxnews reports that Kenyan Christians are complaining and organizing against the Kenya National Museum's public display of the Turkana Boy (known to the palaeoanthropological community as KNM WT15000) and its evolutionary conclusions.

"I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it," says Bishop Boniface Adoyo, head of Kenya's 35 evangelical denominations, which he claims have 10 million followers. "These sorts of silly views are killing our faith."

Richard Leakey is just as adamant:

"Whether the bishop likes it or not, Turkana Boy is a distant relation of his," Leakey, who founded the museum's prehistory department, told The Associated Press. "The bishop is descended from the apes and these fossils tell how he evolved."

A more conciliatory approach is taken by head of palaeontology at the museum, Emma Mbua:

Mbua, a Protestant, is a little taken aback at the controversy but has no problems reconciling her own faith to the scientific evidence. "Evolution is a fact," adds Mbua, who has run the department for the last five years. "Turkana Boy is our jewel," she said. "For the first time, we will be taking him out of the strong room and showing our heritage to the world."

I am still waiting for a creationist to come along and explain just what, exactly, KNM WT15000 is, since it obviously ain't modern human and just as obviously ain't an ape.

First its microcephalic, now its not! Or is it?

A new article on the H. floresiensis remains by Dean Falk and colleagues indicates that the remains that the press have dubbed "Hobbits" from the island of Flores in Indonesia are actually not microcephalic, after all. It is just plain strange:

While the new technique suggests LB1 was not a microcephalic, it does not rule out that it was not a Homo sapiens.

As evidence of that, Falk points to what she says are several advanced features of LB1's brain that are unlike those of modern humans or any other known hominid species.

"What we have is a little tiny brain that has four features that you can see with your eyes that are advanced and distributed from front to middle to back," Falk said. "In other words, this thing appears to be globally rewired. Those are really advanced features. They're not like humans, they're not like anything.

Some are not convinced:

Robert Martin, curator of biological anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago, is not convinced by the new evidence.

One of his major criticisms has to do with the sample of microcephalic skulls the team used. "They're being a bit naughty about this," Martin said in a telephone interview. "Four of the nine microcephalics were not adults."

Falk's team maintains its inclusion of young skulls is justified because microcephalics are generally believed to achieve maximum cranial capacity by around four years of age. Martin, who criticized a similar comparison done by Falk's team in 2005 as flawed, again disagrees. "What we're saying is LB1 was definitely an adult. If LB1 was a microcephalic, he was one with a mild condition who managed to survive into adulthood," he said. "So the proper comparison is with microcephalics with a mild condition who were adults."

"I don't have any problems with having new hominid species," Martin added. "I just don't think this is one of them."

I am looking forward to how this plays out. We have not seen the last of this controversy, given the significance of the H. floresiensis remains.

Forward into the Palaeocene!

New primate fossils have been found pushing the existence of these critters back to the Palaeocene. In an article in Foxnews, two new skeletons of plesiadapiforms have been found. These forms were originally thought to be primates but then reclassified as primate-like mammals. Now it seems, that designation may have been wrong.

[Jonathan] Bloch recently caught a lucky break when he made the rare discovery of nearly complete skeletons of two plesiadapiform species, now named Ignacius clarkforkensis and Dryomomys szalayi, embedded in limestone outside Yellowstone National Park.

By analyzing the skeletons and comparing them to more than 85 modern and extinct primate species, the researchers showed that plesiadapiforms look a lot more like primates than paleoanthropologists had imagined — and look nothing like flying lemurs, Bloch said.

This is exciting because it addresses the origin of our first precursors at a time when the dinosaurs had finally given way to the mammals. The article goes on to say:

Primates must have acquired their traits gradually, because plesiadapiforms have some, but not all, of the characteristics of later primates, Bloch and Sargis said.

"In the past, people had hypothesized that all of these kinds of primate features evolved as a single complex of features at one time, whereas what we're finding is throughout those first 10 million years of primate evolution, these features were evolving piecemeal, kind of one-by-one, accruing through time," Sargis said.

Bloch and Sargis's skeletal analysis shows that flying lemurs and another modern, non-primate mammal, the tree shrew, are primates' closest living relatives.

DNA studies of all three types of mammals — primates, flying lemurs, and tree shrews — confirm Bloch and Sargis's finding.

"So all three of those groups," Sargis said, "you can trace back to a single common ancestor.

Islamic Creationism

Apparently, there is a new movement afoot in France, Islamic creationism. According to a story in Direland, a gentleman by the name of Harun Yahya has written a book on the evils of Darwinism:

The book's pseudonymous author, a Turk named Harun Yahya ( photo left -- real name: Adnan Oktar), makes a number of astonishing claims -- including that Charles Darwin is "the real source of terrorism." For example, a photo of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers carries a caption reading, "Those who perpetuate terror in the world are in reality the Darwinists. Darwinism is the only philosophy which validates and encourages conflict." Yahya also pretends to portray "the secret links between Darwinism and the bloody ideologies of fascism and communism."

It is creationism with a twist, however:

Contrary to the fundamentalist Christian Creationists in the U.S. who have been attacking the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution in local school boards and many state legislatures, and demanding with an alarming degree of success that Creationism be taught in the public schools, Yahya's Qur'an-based attack on Darwinism does not claim that the world and those who inhabit it were created only 6,000 years ago. Instead, Yahya admits that Earth is really 4.6 billion years old, but his "Atlas" uses hundreds of photos of fossils found over several centuries to "prove" that "the species have never changed" [sic]. This pseudo-scientific clap-trap, says noted French biologist Hervé Le Guyeder, makes this "new form of creationism even more insidious than the Christian-inspired one wreaking havoc in North America."

One wonders how the mainstream media, which typically handles anything Islamic with kid gloves, will handle this.

Islamic Devolution

Glenn Reynolds reports on British Muslims not inoculating their children against childhood illnesses because they contain substances that Muslims should not ingest.

Dr Abdul Majid Katme, head of the Islamic Medical Association, says almost all vaccines contain un-Islamic "haram" derivatives of animal or human tissue, and that Muslim parents are better off letting childrens' immune systems develop on their own.

Dr. Reynolds calls it "Evolution in action."

It is worth noting that this will likely not have much effect one way or another. I didn't get any of the childhood disease inoculations and neither did my wife. In fact, the population of the earth reached 4 billion people just fine without them. Having said that, the purity issue is a bit rigid and cult-ish. The story relates that some other Muslim groups think it is ridiculous as well.

The Neandertal/Modern Human confluence, Part ?

In an article entitled "Skull shows possible human/Neanderthal breeding," Al-Reuters reports that a skull found in a Romanian cave shows exactly that. It reads in part:

DNA samples taken from Neanderthal bones suggest there was no mixing, or at least that any Neanderthal genetic contribution did not make it to the modern DNA pool.

But Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis has in the past found bones that he believes show both modern human and Neanderthal traits, and now he and colleagues have found a skull.

What the article does not recound is the eruption that occurred the last time there was a "hybrid" discovery, which occurred at a cave at Lagar Velho, Portugal. Trinkaus demonstrated what he thought were hybrid characteristics, while Ian Tattersall viewed it as nothing more than a chunky Gravettian kid. Trinkaus' response was nothing short of apalling, calling into question Tattersall's scientific abilities, his upbringing and his ancestry. Tattersall's original article on the Lagar Velho child is here and his response to Trinkaus' screed is here. I have been unable to find Trinkaus' vitriolic response to the article anywhere on the net. That is, perhaps, just as well.

Glenn Morton, writing for the ASA, commented on the Lagar Velho remains at the time. Lets hope this new find does not generate the kind of responses that the Lagar Velho child did.