Partly - I'm trying to be open about ongoing debate in the field. It's most likely to be a combination of the two - the potential for greater complexity would be a genetic or biological factor, while the realisation of that complexity comes from nurture. I should rephrase - humans can no longer digest raw food well enough to live off it. Eating nothing but raw, uncooked food will eventually lead to severe malnutrition. I'm with you on your point though, didn't mean to present it as a challenge. I don't see why it would happen either, however if the studies on recent (i.e. the last 10 000 years) genetic mutations are correct then it is speeding up, and since the responses are to cultural factors rather than natural that would suggest that they are largely responsible. Yep - but our biological adaptations to cultural pressures seem to be happening faster than those in nature to natural selection pressures. Of course one possibility is that the sheer size of the human population has reached a point where 'beneficial' (maybe benign would be a better word) mutations can spread incredibly rapidly, as networking theory demonstrates, while harmful ones are eliminated at the same pace as before. Just thoughts, and a biologist would probably be able to scrap them quite rapidly, but a potential explanation.
I don't think the problem is raw food itself, but rather the fact that all sorts of organisms are present which affect us. Raw chicken by itself should not be a problem. However, I read that 25% of all raw chicken in supermarkets has salmonella. In other words, if you eat that raw, you're in for a nasty case of food poisoning.
You are aware of the raw food movement. They are an albeit strange bunch of people who don't not eat cooked food. They don't starve although I can't imagine they are having much fun either. There are just ALOT more interactions due to population increase. cultural in a broad sense I take it you mean. i.e. all human activity. I think this tallies up with my de-specialisation of the species. If population is exponentially increasing then the interactions allowed to have a chance increase too. We would probably only see what the truly beneficial adaptations were is if the species comes under a crisis. The Bear.
Yes but then you went on to suggest that developing some 'technology' like cattle raising might explain the development of lactose intolerance which is what I, and others, have been suggesting from the start. It depends how you measure it but I think typically gene frequency is measured in % rather than raw numbers. So while a population increasing means inevitably more copies of ALL genes it doesn't mean that the relative frequency of ALL genes will increase uniformly. In fact that clearly doesn't happen. So the frequency of a specific gene is not necessarily increasing in an expanding population. I don't know enough about the relevant history to comment on this but I think it's a bit of a misnomer to define territory empty of other human species as 'empty'. What time period exactly are you talking about and what expansion are you talking about? No-one in the thread has argued that humans aren't the dominant species on earth or that any other species is likely to rise up and challenge them for dominance (although the ants and bacteria could make a claim to having already won). You're just trying to provoke the viruses and bacteria aren't you . lol... I might agree with frustration over popular culture but I think it's a bit inaccurate to say culture is no longer evolving. For a start the vast majority of the world's population do not live in developed Western nations so our cultural patterns are not necessarily reflective of the changes occurring across the world. Moreover, culture clearly is continuing to change and develop in both positive and negative ways. It's almost a cliche to claim that the era you live in represents the end of culture...
No. But it's not in the interest of a virus to kill us, Baboons regularly make us technologically superior humans look stupid and everybody knows the squid will rule the Earth one day.
