Guest Post by Morbo
Here’s some news that’s really going to drive the Religious Right ape: Not only is evolution true, it may be happening faster than ever.
The Guardian over in Great Britain reported recently on a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin. As the newspaper reported, the study found that “in the past 5,000 years, humans have evolved up to 100 times more quickly than any time since the split with the ancestors of modern chimpanzees 6 m[illion] years ago….”
All that evolution in just 5,000 years! And to think the Earth, according to various fundamentalist Christians, is only 6,000 years old. So what’s going on with the human race? Interesting stuff:
The researchers analysed data from the international haplotype map of the human genome, and analysed genetic markers in 270 people from four groups: Han Chinese, Japanese, Africa’s Yoruba and northern Europeans.
They found that at least 7% of human genes have undergone recent evolution. The changes include lighter skin and blue eyes in northern Europe and partial resistance to diseases such as malaria among some African populations, according to the study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. John Hawks, assistant professor of Anthropology at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison, who led the study, noted that some of the changes were tracked back to just 5,000 years ago, and “today they are in 30 or 40 percent of people because they [are] such an advantage.”
You can read more about this on Dr. Hawks’ blog. I’m not saying his work is easy going for the layperson, but it’s fascinating stuff. Once again we see the difference between real science, where you can pretty much question, analyze, study and theorize all you want and then publish peer-reviewed papers that back up your ideas, and creationism, which starts with an “answer” (an outlandish one at that) and excludes everything that does not fit no matter how much evidence there is for it.
And what’s really cool is that if some other researcher thinks Hawks is full of it, he or she can muster some research, publish and try to make that case. Eventually, enough evidence will be gathered to support one view over the other. That’s how it works in that wacky world of real science!
Hawks’ study, coupled with another new report from Japan on the ability of chimpanzees to beat humans in a memory test, should give the fundamentalist pause. (It won’t, of course.) Perhaps I’m pessimistic, but I tend to believe cats would be giving us a run for things if only they had opposable thumbs, so maybe we’d better not get so uppity and assume that we are the pinnacle of God’ creation. Evolution is still operating — on us and on other species.
Aside from the fact that it’s anti-science and fosters ignorance, I oppose creationism because it leads people to assume that humans, as the crowning achievement of God’s handiwork, can do what they want to other species and indeed the entire planet. Dr. Hawks’ study is a reminder that humans are subjected to the same biological forces as the “lower animals.” A little humility and understanding of our place in the order of things is always welcome.