Something I will write in this post. It is not about putting Darwinism down, it is about looking at things differently and putting pieces of the jigsaw together. That is not all. It is also about stepping back and looking at the jigsaw as a whole. The pieces may fit, but not everytime do they form a meaningful picture. In this case, hopefully, they will.
Observing these channels, I have noted that something remarkable happened 75,000 years ago and that we, humans, are still evolving. Also, all human males alive today share a common mutation in their Y-chromosome. These are related events, let me explain. What happened 75,000 years ago was that a supervolcano erupted. This is the biggest eruption in recorded history. I believe you may have heard of the explosion of Krakatoa – ash in the air all over the world, moon turning green and blue. I had earlier assumed that most humans died due to the sun being obscured. I might have been wrong, and probably was. An explosion of said magnitude has grave environmental effects – temperatures shoot up around the explosion and plummet everywhere else. These changes, or others like them, may have been responsible.
It appears that the explosion left out some regions, and most organisms other than humans (reason: unknown). In one of these regions, a tribe of humans apparently survived. It did not have one male, it had many. In the course of time, they also had offspring. One man’s offspring had the mutation we all share today. The other ones had other mutations, or none at all, but it appears that these were futile mutations – because these strains, as in, the descendants of the descendants of all other men were wiped out over time by natural selection – as opposed to this one man’s descendants. This is why we share the mutation. Because this man is the supposed “Adam”, except that he is not the first man to live, but the ancestor of us all.
If you are having difficulty understanding this, think of human life as a tree. Also think of height as time – the higher we go, the farther in time we are. You can see that there are many roots or frayed ends (root hairs as biology calls them), and these may mark the beginning of human life in its different races or strains. As we go up, let us ignore the trunk at look at the branches. These branches may be taken as different mutations in the Y-chromosome, meaning each branch has the descendants of the same man. Keep going up. The branches will end individually at different heights, signifying the times each strain went kaput. Towards the top, let us take one branch that is the highest and reaches towards the sky. The tip of the tree is now. There is just one branch, and the height this branch begins at is 75,000 years ago. Therefore, we are the descendants of one person.
Now, we can see that this one mutation was an essential evolution for the better. But it does not end there. At that time, we were threatened with extinction, but we made it. Now, 75,000 years later, we are still evolving. This does not stem from the need for survival. The stimulus for this evolution is internal rather than external. We are evolving. Into what? It is impossible to say. When will this stop? Probably never. So, we will continue to evolve until we become extinct.
You see, it is not about survival anymore. Now, I am having to change this part because of unwanted associations the reader makes. What natural selection says is that organisms with favorable mutations have a higher chance of survival than those without. Note that these mutations are generally almost entirely by chance and depend very little on conscious adaptation, they are soon spread throughout the species due to selective survival and, therefore, breeding. What I meant to say by saying “fight or flight” is that we may either “fight”, i.e., attempt to pit chance mutation and psychological adaptation (which is not so much by chance) against adverse living conditions, OR, our bodies may choose “flight”, which implies that mutations become much more frequent – giving a higher number of favorable mutations than those that would happen by chance – and thus blindly groping towards survival without depending on our surroundings (for mutations/adaptation) at all.
What I mean to say is, it is as if an entire species was represented by one man, and that one man was threatened so strongly with extinction that his DNA now has an inherent urge to mutate, probably because of mutation itself – to improve chances of evolving and subsequently increase chances of survival – long after the threat is removed. The term “inherent urge” is misleading. It might make it appear that I am saying we evolve with every generation, every time. What I really mean is, read the paragraph before this one (that the frequency of mutation icreases, and that is all).
It is somewhat like if you scare an animal well enough, it will flee and continue to run even after you are out of sight.
Also, for some of the lesser minds out there, I said that the frequencies of mutation increase – not the magnitude. Humans don’t become gigantic over a generation, for example. These mutations still aim towards gradual change. This is because we would otherwise evolve into, say, 50 different beings over a generation and yet, not one of them may survive or breed. Mutations are, for the most part, accidental, and our bodies would be very faulty to change in such a way, so soon. The reason for our constant evolution is not known, and our future anatomy is deduced only by clever guesswork.
Because there is no external stimulus that immediately threatens our survival as a species, this evolution may be due to internal stimuli. There are two possibilities:- either we are evolving because of evolving into an organism that evolves continually, or we are fine tuning ourselves, slowly becoming the perfect being.
P.S.:-
The XX male disorder is extremely rare and it does not cause a flaw in this post or in research. We are tracking the Y chromosome’s mutations, so where the Y chromosome trail ends and it is because of a XX male, we may consider it to be a female (not biologically, but to make the research easier). Either way, if this male is his father’s only son, the Y-legacy of this strain (going back by one generation only) is lost.
For more info: Wikipedia
Oh and, before anything is said about this, the reason that many different races and ethnicities exist today is that there was only one man, but many women who may have been of different races. Also, 75,000 years is a lot of time, ample for evolution, especially when external stimuli are not required. They do help, of course.
Brilliant post….
You should seriously consider giving your brain some downtime, before going to RIT :)…..
Loved the tree and animal analogy.
There are obviously some flaws with this, I’m going to point out just two:-
1. not all men have the y-chromosome
2. natural selection did not say fight or fligtht. this statement is NOT part of natural selection. it is merely a response system.
i will write more later when i have the time.
I have incorporated an instance each of nota bene and post scriptum for the benefit of Dhruv and readers in general.
I have also modified the post in minor ways. Of course, I do not admit that the flaws pointed out are a reality :P.
old wine in new bottle… i like it.
its much better than the explanation in ncert/ bio supplementary ( dinesh, truemann)
i’ll probably direct my bio frends to this post.
As i said, I will post when i have more time (probably after the boards), but believe me there are serious flaws in this which can be explained by anyone who has more than an elementary knowledge of genetics.
seemingly none of the readers seem to grasp genetics.
and you know what?
im not saying you cant use fight or flight proverbially. you’re saying that natural selection said fight or flight
im saying Natural Selection had NOTHING to do with fight or flight at all. go read up natural selection.
Dhruv, you’re not getting the point. fine I’ll change “fight or flight” to something you will not instinctively and dogmatically associate with something else which makes you miss the point completely.
And manpreet is a bona fide bio student.
I suggest you read the entire post again.
well…..thank you for acknowledging my association wid bio….
“A poem should not mean…but be”
These lines are from our english textbook. But they apply as much to bio as to any creative couplets.
The jigsaw analogy has struck the bullseye in understanding the essence of this living world.
The facts are all there, glaring at u! But they won’t always make sense or seem logical.
Everyone is free to interpret them the way they want….n dats the reason for the conflict between science and the church ( or closer home….btween dhruv n RG)
So lemme tell u wat i think:-
1) the reason we survived the krakatoa eruption ws that there was a hell lot of diversity & variations among the humans….out of which, as rg pointed out…one cud survive
2) Our purpose on earth is to survive the environmental manipulation(sumthin we call natural selection or the “survival of the fittest”)
3)We are still evolving….but the excessive cross breeding ( thanx to inter racial and inter cultural marriages) have made sure there is much more uniformity today than was there at the time of Adam
4)As far as our future physiology is concerned….we dont need to worry much…coz today..instead of the environment changing us…we are the ones who are maipulating the environment..so the tables have been preety much turned
5) But if there is a catastrophe like the biblical armageddon…this time no Adam will survive
As far as Fight or flight is concerned….it was actually used to explain the function of adrenaline …. a hormone in our body….
But since RG has gone to great lengths to explain his interpretation…i wud say dat it is pretty valid as he puts it……the reason for evolution is truly our will to survive the adverse conditions
Now for the last thing….dear dhruv…..all men DO contain the y – chromosome. Even the so called xx male is a result of a mutation ( displacement as we call it) dat results in a part of the y- chromosome cuming an attaching to the x chr…..
Expression of male character i.e. testis requires only a single gene ( dat too the smallest one in the entire genome)….so the mutation does result in sum male characters..though female characters are not completely suppressed…
And…dear RG…dont worry about a male population with only xx in the future…this mutation mostly renders the person sterile (failure of crossing over)
So thats it for now…i hope it wasn’t too boring
Au contraire, We are still evolving. if you will notice
1.our toes are getting smaller and non-functional.
2.our thumbs are getting stronger & larger.
3.our cranial cavities, the size of our skull is getting modified.
A few striking examples would be Japan’s thumb generation.
Also we are evolving in ways convinient/desirable to us/our govt. eg:korea’s policy of aborting/killing physicaly/mentaly disabled babies.
I agree with Dhruv that there are flaws in this theory and in particular take great umbrage at ur one male, many females theory. but being similarly afflicted with a lack of time, i shall post in detail later.
Henceforth I will not attempt to explain further and will not take part in any discussion that occurs in the comments section.
Woah…
Well, you shouldn’t have taken down your post, that’s for sure.
i agree with Anwita…..to stand in the face of adversity is an apreciable quality.
Your theory did not have any flaws, on the contrary, it was more accurate than most i have heard. (atleast i think so)
But as it happens in bio….the same peices of jigsaw can form a different picture for different people.
So, my friend, welcome to the world of life sciences!!!!
I’m not good at explaining things
The flaw was in your assumption of genes being mutated to suit requirements of the present situation. Genes which are inherently mutable, unstable so to say, mutate or change in myriad ways. Its like the game of life, nature’s dice.The person with the already favourable gene or mutation, is able to ‘propogate’ himself more widely, leading to a greater chance of that mutation being passed on.
Survival of the offspring passes on that particular mutable trait. but not generation to ganeration. A gene not very useful at one point and recessive at the moment, may be essential later on. The gene may come to force, may dominate later, by that time having been passed onto some generations. so different sub-species, to grossly exaggerate it, may die out and come to power.
Your analogy of tracing a tree to it’s root becomes flawed as genetic mutations due to the phenomenon of recession do not necessarily evolve linearly.
To modify your words the evolution of life is more akin to a growing weed rather than a tree.
Your theory of an adam Y fails because there is no single Y chromose at the end of it. it is more like a side-running weed, you cannot trace the original and separate it from the offshoot.
I am sorry if the contents of my admittedly high-handed and hasty post has offended you. If anything i was glad about your topic as i hold a keen interest in the fields of bio-ethics and eugenistic studies. Henceforth you shall not find me on your page. Please do not stop discussing things in the comments.
ps: The ‘we are evolving’ was to whoever said that the tables have been turned on nature and we need not worry about physiological changes because, actually i think we do.
It seems you did not read my post closely.
“The flaw was in your assumption of genes being mutated to suit requirements of the present situation.” – I did not say that. I am reviving the post so you can see what I did say.
“Your analogy of tracing a tree to it’s root becomes flawed as genetic mutations due to the phenomenon of recession do not necessarily evolve linearly.” – I said we are ignoring the trunk.
Apology accepted. And now, my friends, I am the eye of the storm on this blog, and my ultimate aim is to trap you in the vortex – regardless of how strongly you hold ground.
And about the Y-chromosome – you are saying, in essence, that the male populace is a weed?
We are not separating anything, we are only tracing the mutations. How? By looking at samples from all over the world and comparing structural differences. If there is a mutation, say, shared by all asians, then this strain is traced to the root of one branch (from the given analogy), and similarly finding all “branches”, we see that it is all connected to the same trunk (or, if there is no trunk, the same place where the roots meet).