Human evolution

[mith]

Very true, I find it funny that even some websites echo your words , and they used it to encourage ppl to diet--fat ppl might be "rich" but now the rich is "slim."
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[deadfish]

it is logical for us to evolve to not grow them.

Be careful there Kyle... we can't logically evolve. We have useless parts of the body that stick around because they don't affect how well we reproduce or how we gather food and so on...

please name the useless parts of the body......

[mith]

they're called vestigial organs....we have another thread on it but male nipples and appendixes are two.

[DJ]

There's lots of them. Plus there's parts of our bodies that we actually use but aren't fully adapted to optimal efficiency or wear, like your knees and back. Many people have knee and lower back problems as they get older because they were originally intended for quadrupeds.

And the post about the average human height increasing due to evolution made my day

[MrMistery]

Why? don't you believe it? Just visit any medieval castle and you will see that the doors are built as if they were used by dwarfs.

[DJ]

Yeah, but that has nothing to do with evolution, haha. That's from a higher standard of nutrition and better medical practices and sanitation improvements. It's the same reason why we don't hear about "scurvy" or "rickets" these days.

And the thing about the wisdom teeth, I have never heard about that before. Will definitely have to check that out. I just don't see how the trait of being born without wisdom teeth would be spread or lead to better fitness when a person with wisdom teeth problems can now just go to the dentist and problem solved.

And the whole thing about being a waste of energy to keep producing parts we don't need, that reeks of Lamarckism, which we left behind almost 200 years ago. The body doesn't make conscious decisions like that to not grow certain parts, even if it is a waste of energy. That's what DNA is for. There isn't any type of logic to it.

[MrMistery]

Yeah, but that has nothing to do with evolution, haha. That's from a higher standard of nutrition and better medical practices and sanitation improvements. It's the same reason why we don't hear about "scurvy" or "rickets" these days.

Really? You think the king wasn't well fed? And how exactly is being sick more often cause you to be shorter? better medical practices means that not so many people dye of desease, not that we can treat people of shortness...

[canalon]

Really? You think the king wasn't well fed? And how exactly is being sick more often cause you to be shorter? better medical practices means that not so many people dye of desease, not that we can treat people of shortness...

No, probably not. If you ever get interested in middle age cooking you will see how bad the diet was (too rich in fat and meats for the nobility, and very poor in meat for the peasantry).
And diseases when you are a kid do indeed inhibit growth. If you had problem with vitamins shortage, parasitism that take in the energy that you could otherwise have put into growing etc...

In fact I remember a graph with the average size of people through time, it showed that at the beginning of the roman empire people were taller, then became smaller during the middle age, and slowly started to grow, and it is only recently (20th century) that people are slowly starting to be as tall as they were one or two millenia ago...

[DJ]

No, probably not. If you ever get interested in middle age cooking you will see how bad the diet was (too rich in fat and meats for the nobility, and very poor in meat for the peasantry)

That sounds like your average American's diet today

[mith]

And yet americans are still taller than the average middle age person.

[MrMistery]

@Patrick
What you are saying seems very logical endeed. I will complain to the ministery of education because i found that info in a genetics book..

[paupackard]

When contemplating whether or not evolution occurs in a species, you have to define a time interval. When somebody says evolution has stopped for humans is accurate in the sense that in any one generation there is no evolution. Even in 200 generations there will probably not be any clear morfological diference if there isn't some kind of radical natural selection. Any cause that can be an obstacle in reaching reproductive age causes evolution. Including modern day sicknesses and a possible genetic predisposition to have large families when able to choose to do so or not.