Evolution by natural selection is a deeply fascinating subject. According to the philosopher Daniel Dennett, it is also 'the most important idea anybody ever had.'
This very simple process fashioned almost every aspect of the living world; from human consciousness to the mould that grows on your bread.
Yet few adults, and fewer politicians, recognize how important evolution is. The number of wonderful books on evolution at your local bookstore may be growing, but it is easily outstripped by dubious or even harmful self-help manuals, dating advice, astrology, diet books and management babble.
Throughout the history of medicine, most progress came from improved understanding of how we get infections, diseases and other mental and physical afflictions. But medicine can become even better when we understand why we get sick, and why our bodies, including our minds, respond to infections and stress in the ways that they do. The new field of Darwinian Medicine illuminates the origins of diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's disease and the causes of obesity, depression and schizophrenia.
Important evolutionary insights go well beyond medicine. Evolution is useful anywhere living organisms are involved, such as agriculture, fisheries, biotechnology, conservation, and carbon accounting. Most of all, evolution can teach us much about what it means to be alive, and why people do what they do. Another new field, evolutionary psychology, could be the most important development in understanding human behavior since Herr Professor Freud cracked open his note book and asked for the first time 'So, tell me about your childhood.'
In my new book Sex, Genes & Rock 'n' Roll: How Evolution has Shaped the Modern World (University of New Hampshire Press), I aim to provide an entertaining glimpse of the world through the eyes of an evolutionary biologist. I research animal and human evolution in order to understand both human history and the lives people lead today.
The following slides provide a few highlights from the book, tidbits showing how an evolutionary perspective can give useful and interesting insights into familiar issues and problems.
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Paleoanthropological evidence indicates the increase in brain size that marks the difference between humans and apes occurred about 2 million years ago with the emergence of Homo erectus. Prior to that time there was a climate shift such that the rain forests became grasslands and the number of grazing mammals increased. Before then, apes and pre-humans ate a primarily plant-based diet, and following the climate shift, obtaining sufficient nutrition from plants became energetically too costly for many pre-humans and constituted a selective force. Fossil evidence suggests that beginning about 2 million years ago, pre-humans were beginning to butcher animals. Many anthropologists believe that a high-energy and high-protein diet fueled brain evolution over a relatively short evolutionary time of 10,000 to 100,000 years. During the time that modern humans emerged, there were no doubt periods of both feast and famine. The ability to evolve rapidly that enabled modern humans to emerge from evolution also doomed the species to diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes resulting from the evolutionary conservation of genes that would be selected during the times of famine.
Ted Simon
http://tedsimon.authorsxpress.com/
Concerning food: Your note about 1 calorie of skipped protein, and the body requiring 53 calories of carbohydrates to make up for it. That resonates with me, and I understand the issue better. I already had some understanding of the problem of "over-carbing" as well as the dangers presented by too many simple carbs.; and simple vs. complex carbs.; and mixing certain carbs. (beans and rice) to form protein.
The food issue becomes more complicated now with the matter of GMOs and their related dangers (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/12/monsantos-gmo-corn-linked_n_420365.html?page=3&show_comment_id=37988389). The IJBS (your fellow biologists) finding organ damage in testing 3 varieties of GM Corn. So, it's not just the matter of balancing protein with simple and complex carbohydrates; in our post World War II agriculture, it's the actual amount of nutrients (or lack thereof) which will affect our evolutionary skills.
Likewise, from the very start of his so called insights into human behavior is so suspect I couldn't bother to view any more of the slides. Who says protein is more expensive than carbohydrates? I am pretty sure Big Macs and KFC and Taco Bell burritos contain plenty of protein, and I guess of box of Fruit Loops costs about the same as a box of Chex. And there isn't a lot of protein in an apple, but a can of Campbells bean with bacon soup has plenty. And you don't think poor people drink a lot of milk?
Scientists view electron microscopes in laboratories, evolutionary biologists sit on leather sofas and think of fairy tales.
What is wrong with this statement? Two things. According to the theory, we have been the 'human animal' for two hundred thousand years...not millions. The second thing that is wrong is calling reproduction "difficult business". Difficult? The huge amount of increase of single mothers since the 1960's will attest that reproduction is not difficult. Maybe giving a living to people not working for a living has interferred with 'evolution' by replacing the father with the government. Destroying faith that we came from something and replaced it with the cosmic accident belief has destroyed the successful civilization that a free, moral society brings. We have suicide, depression, murder, teen pregnacy, crime that has gone thru the roof since the cosmic accident teaching started being taught to our kids in the 1960's. It appears that evolution, that teaching of it, is evolving into chaos.
The sooner we accept this, the sooner we can make actual progress in understanding and altering behaviors we currently dislike (i.e., child abuse) toward more socially acceptable one...that will stick.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn0yH6i-9ys
Why do we live under this continuous threat in monstrous social systems led by madmen and sociopaths? Why?
There is a beautiful world out there. I hope you will take the time to do something enjoyable for yourself today.
Unless, of course, you're poor or a woman living in drought-stricken East Africa, especially gang-run Somalia...or Afghanistan...or...well, you get the idea. Just because YOU live in a beautiful world (and that's fine), don't forget that much of the human species does not, even to this day...and that such suffering is actually unnecessary, if we but had the will to make things different.
try this http://huntgatherlove.com/ instead of GCBC which I read front to back the week it was released. But since GT is incorrect on his carb-insulin idea, and has been disproven (see carbsane's blog or google 'protein insulin') I progressed further than that book...if you want to learn more, try an actual scientist or some of the leaders of the 'paleo' movement who eat carbs.
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/44/18815
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0023768