Scientific orthodoxy says that human evolution stopped a long time ago. Did it?
The debate over the validity of evolutionary theory may be real
enough when it comes to religious belief and cultural outlook. But it
has nothing to do with science. No evidence seriously contradicts the
idea that the plant and animal species found on Earth today are
descended from common ancestors that existed long ago. Indeed, the
evidence for natural selection is infinitely stronger than it was
when Charles Darwin proposed it 150 years ago, mainly because later
discoveries in the field of genetics supplied the biological
mechanisms to explain the patterns that Darwin and his contemporaries
were observing.
But scientists do disagree over the pace and time-span of human
evolution. Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending begin "The 10,000
Year Explosion" with a remark from the paleontologist Stephen J.
Gould, who said that "there's been no biological change in humans for
40,000 or 50,000 years." They also cite the evolutionist Ernst Mayr,
who agrees that "man's evolution towards manness suddenly came to a
halt" in the same epoch. Such claims capture the consensus in
anthropology, too, which dates the emergence of "behaviorally modern
humans" -- beings who acted much more like us than like their
predecessors -- to about 45,000 years ago.
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123440723977275883.html>Link
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Posted By johannes to
<http://www.monochrom.at/english/2009/02/human-evolution-last-minute-changes.htm>monochrom
at 2/17/2009 10:55:00 AM
