BEE-L Archives

Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

BEE-L@COMMUNITY.LSOFT.COM

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Peter L Borst <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 24 Nov 2013 08:25:55 -0500
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (19 lines)
> I´m afraid humans stop evolving when agriculture was developed. No more environmental pressure.

Quoted Material

It has been argued that human evolution has stopped because humans now adapt to their environment via cultural evolution and not biological evolution. However, all organisms adapt to their environment, and humans are no exception. Culture defines much of the human environment, so cultural evolution has actually led to adaptive evolution in humans. 

Moreover, evolution proceeds by mechanisms other than natural selection. The recent growth in human population size has greatly increased the reservoir of mutational variants in the human gene pool, thereby enhancing the potential for human evolution. 

Finally, even when cultural evolution eliminates selection on a trait, the trait can still evolve due to natural selection on other traits. Our traits are not isolated, independent units, but rather are integrated into a functional whole, so selection on one trait can cause evolution to occur on another trait.

As long as humans persist as a reproducing population, humans will evolve. This has been the lesson of the past 10,000 years, and is certainly what we can expect to continue for as long as our species persists on the Earth.

Templeton, A. (2010). Has human evolution stopped? Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

ATOM RSS1 RSS2