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This question was based on the paper by Foley et al. (2016) and the major steps in hominid evolution.  Each of the responses was well researched and thought provoking. Skull development, and the brain was a big part  of the discussion responses.

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This question was based on the paper by Foley et al. (2016) and the major steps in hominid evolution.  Each of the responses was well researched and thought provoking. Skull development, and the brain was a big part  of the discussion responses.

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Everyone in the class had interesting input on their favorite early humans.  The time line and the artistic representations of their physical features certainly makes one want to delve deeper into the studies of human evolution.

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CRISPR-Cas9 is a technology that allows a specific gene to be cut out of a strand of DNA and replaced with a new sequence. This type of genetic engineering is likely to impact the future of human evolution, but it also raises ethical questions.

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Science Bulletins: Brain Evolution—The Sweet Smell of Success

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A good sense of smell may have contributed to the development of certain kinds of social functions in Homo sapiens, according to a new study. Scientists used 3D modeling to reconstruct modern human and Neanderthal brains and discovered that the olfactory areas, which govern smell, are larger in humans.

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The benefit that was most commonly cited throughout the discussion was the ability to cure or treat diseases such as Huntington's disease, cancer, and HIV. This could be accomplished through editing the genes of an embryo to replace a harmful allele, or by using gene therapy in patients to target and repair cells.

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Kevin and Katherine both pointed out that this technology is likely to spread rapidly, and that it may be difficult to control how it will be used. Kevin compared the situation to Pandora's box, citing an article about do-it-yourself (DIY) gene-editing and how these tools are already becoming available to many biologists. Katherine talked about some of the steps that have been taken by the international community to limit research into gene editing due to ethical concerns.

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Katherine and Lisa discussed the complexity of the human genome and how editing a single gene may not be as easy as it sounds. Lisa gave the example of commercially grown tomatoes. Through years of genetic modification and selective breeding for larger and more disease-resistant plants, many of the genes for taste have been lost, leaving some tomatoes dry and flavorless. Similarly, editing our own genome could have unintended consequences.

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Susan, Angelina and Aniko talked about the potential of "designer babies" and the possibility that gene editing could be used for aesthetic reasons, like to make people taller and more attractive, or to improve on existing human abilities, like intelligence or athletics. This could change the course of our evolution, for better or for worse.

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The group discussed many examples where the interaction between cultural preferences and inherited traits influenced human adaptive responses.

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The provided example was how humans responded to the prevalence of lactose intolerance through mutations, development of low-lactose foods, and colon microbiome adaptations.
The video below describes how lactose intolerance and lactase persistence came to be.

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HHMI's BioInteractive - Interactive Video - Got Lactase? The Co-Evolution of Genes and Culture Quiz

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Eliza looked at the adaptive response in Polynesian population's ancestors to long voyages with limited food availability. This was "positive selection pressures for thrifty metabolisms." This has lead to a prevalence of Type II Diabetes and obesity in current Polynesians because of the exposure to modern day western diets. She asks, "Do you think, if it were possible, a shift in diet would be the only change necessary to initiate the change in prevalence? What other social changes might have to take place to further the shift?"

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Kristen, Katherine, and Ashley exchanged thoughts on adaptive responses to maintaining our ancestral vegetarian diet.  Kristen speculates that this may result in a change in "jaw structure, teeth size, shape, and structure, gut bacteria, and genetic mutations which help absorb fatty acids or handle inflammation."
Katherine poses the question, “Do you think that a shift toward

vegetarianism would result in a collective decrease in human's energetic output?"  Kristen speaks from personal experience that she does not believe so, but describes multiple benefits of vegetarian diet besides energy output.
Ashley wondered if over time there will be genetic variation differences between a "vegetarian family line vs. a non vegetarian family line." Citing the role memes play in our evolution.

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Lisa, Taliah, and Belinda discussed the role agriculture has played in our evolution.  Lisa identified the development of salivary amylase from pancreatic amylase as an adaptive response to agriculture making starchy foods more prevalent.  Although she warns that "correlation does not mean causation."
Taliah brought up the cultural influence of crop availability in different regions and the impact that has on disease susceptibility or prevention. Lisa and Belinda question the role this adaptive response has had on modern population's allergies and gut bacterial (colon microbiome adaptation) evolution and whether or not it is a question of keeping up with changes in our diet.

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Taliah looked at skin tone as an adaptive response to the exposure to the sun. The dispersal of humans across the globe has lead to varying levels of melanin in human skin, mostly determined by the region in which one's ancestors settled. Angelina makes a similar comparison to the varying levels of pigment in the iris based on location. Christi, Taliah, and Angelina discuss not only genetic responses, but also plastic responses to changes in seasons and locations.

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The video below explains how the varying levels of skin color has evolved.

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The science of skin color - Angela Koine Flynn

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Many noted the negative consequences of gene-culture coevolutionary adaptive responses on modern populations, such as increased prevalence of diabetes, cancer, vitamin D deficiency, obesity, inflammation, lactose intolerance, and allergies.
At the same time many examples of technological advances (sunscreen, use of UV protecting sunglasses, vitamin supplements) have been utilized in response to these consequences.
Which brought some to question if   these advancements and adaptive responses have stopped our evolution?
Ashley states, "with the increased mobility of humans across the globe, advanced medicines, and many other external advantages modern humans have acquired, it seems so unlikely that humans could really evolve much more (Owen, 2009).”  In fact there has been evidence of indigenous populations changing as a result of not taking advantage of these modern advances.

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"People would get rid of half of their problems if they could agree on the meaning of words."
-- Rene Descartes

There's a lot of misunderstanding as to what memes are. In the lexicon of the internet a meme refers to a picture with a funny caption however the word "meme" was coined \by biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976. The word is a play on the word gene but is meant to convey some sort of cultural information, which may or may not have survival value, through society.  In this sense almost anything can be a meme; a piece of art, a mathematical formula, your grandmothers secret recipe for chicken soup.

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Margurita is a bit skeptical as to the idea of internet memes, questioning their true value above and beyond telling a joke or expressing an idiom. While not being able to pass along deep knowledge an internet meme maybe be akin to a "premade stamp" -- a small image with some sort of abstract value. I tend to liken internet memes to what Walter Sobchak is saying -- image macros (well, you get the image part but a macro is a thing which depend on several other items to function / be understood).

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Whether or not internet memes are true memes can be debated but there is no doubt cultural information is transmitted at lightning speed around the world due to social media.

Kevin sees a usefulness of memetic info being transmitted via internet arguing that in olden days cultural information was highly skill based whereas today and in the future internet memes may be a valued communication skill as cultures become more global and one's community extends across space.

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Large-scale concepts such as religion can be considered a meme which is comprised of memes itself.

Margaurita expresseed that memes might be akin to DNA -- a kind of language or thought pattern by which larger structures are built.

Katherine's post on religion extended this idea by seeing religion as a product of many memes -- moralizing supernatural agents, credible displays of faith, social solidarity, high fertility rates -- and that the current schism between religiosity and atheism is really a clash between memetic structures.

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Susan brought up the idea of myths and legends in reference to one of the most feared of all creatures - the dragon. Indeed, dragons represent many of humanities deepest fears -- mammalian remembrance of dinosaurs, volcanoes, comets and snakes -- all rolled into one archetypal meme. Humans tend to place "agency" on outside supernatural forces for things we don't understand leading to legends and myths which have some sort of survival component to them creating instant memes.

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Philosophically, one has to ask do memes, as social constructs, have their own propagating intelligence (i.e. do they contain their own, inherent, survival impulse)? Susan's article by Sugorakova brings up an interesting point -- do memes live in a world their own? I equate this to my pet theory that information is  the 5th dimension -- that information transcend space & time. Susan contends that perhaps intelligence has an equal role to play. It seems that intelligence or Mind may be the 6th Dimension.

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We've spent a semester learning about the biological methods of natural selection but do memes themselves have some power over the human evolutionary process? The mechanisms at play would be that trends in a culture would transfer into how humans live their lives.

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From Ashley -- "Paranthropus robustus belongs to the Paranthropus group of the human family tree, from about 1.8 to 2.2 million years ago. The "robust" in P. robust does not refer to the body build as they were quite small but instead to their teeth and skull as related to the jaw.

They used tools (perhaps bones!) to dig in termite mounds, much like chimpanzees, hooded monkeys and other modern non-human primates. They likely ate a lot of tough foods, such as grasses as skull specimens have attachment points for enlarged chewing muscles and broad teeth."

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From Aniko -- "Homo rudolfensis is the earliest known species in the Genus Homo. This species was found 2.5 to 1.8 million years ago in Africa. Their fossils have been discovered in parts of East Africa.  This species had a large head, large molars and a longer and broader face especially near the nose and eye sockets.

The dental structure of the species being discussed were indicative of the species being herbivorous and consumed fruits and plants. The fossil remains also suggest that this species of early Homo may have contributed to the making of stone tools."

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Early: Lucy : Australopithecus afatensis

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Early: Lucy : Australopithecus afatensis

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Angelina says -- "Lucy has one of the most complete fossil records from our human ancestor tree dating back 3.2 million years ago.  This species actually did really well for itself surviving for over 900,000 years, and utilized a huge variety of habitats (woodland, grassland, etc.).

This species was very small, and the young reached adulthood very quickly. [They] were able to walk upright based on fossil evidence from the hip, leg, and spine. Their brain is about 1/3 of the size of ours today. Dental analysis shows Au. afarensis eating mostly plant-based, soft and sugary foods."

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From Elizabeth -- "Homo habilis was a species of Hominini from roughly 1.1 to 2.4 million years ago. This species is from eastern and southern Africa, with definite trends in Tanzania. This species did use stone tools however, which was a major adaptation at the time of their life. This species was known to also have arboreal behaviors, which made them significantly different from their relative, H. erectus.

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From Belinda -- "It lived about 700,000 to 200,000 years ago in Europe, possibly Asia (China specifically), And Eastern and Southern Africa. These were some of the first humans to travel into the colder latitudes of Europe, and there is evidence that they built shelters and hunted animals with wooden spears. Their larger head and larger brain cavity, as well as their more advanced tool usage is what makes them their own separate species. They are considered direct ancestors of Neanderthals in Europe, and the populations in Africa most like are Homo sapiens’ ancestors. Comparing it to modern humans, it’s brain was actually about the same size as modern day Homo sapiens."

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Modern: Cave Man -- Homo neanderthalensis

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Modern: Cave Man -- Homo neanderthalensis

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From Dani -- "Neanderthals coexisted with Homo sapiens or modern humans before becoming extinct over 28,000 years ago. Neanderthals roamed Europe, and central and southwestern Asia with modern humans for about 70,000 years. Neanderthals were found They adapted to live in cold environments  with short and stocky bodies, and wide noses to help humidify and warm the cold dry air of their frigid environment. Like modern humans, Neanderthals used tools, made clothes, hunted animals, lived in shelters, built fires and buried their dead.  Neanderthals actually differ more from Homo sapiens than from Homo erectus.

Biologists are still not sure if European Homo are a hybrid between sapiens and neanderthal
or if there is a definite break in the lineage between Homo heidelbergensis,  neanderthal and sapiens."

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Modern : The Hobbit -- Homo floresiensis

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Modern : The Hobbit -- Homo floresiensis

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From Nicole and Sarah --"The most recent Homo to go extinct, living from about 95,000 to about 12,000 years ago. It was a dwarf species at was approximately 3.5 feet tall and fully bipedal and was first discovered at the Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003. Based on their brain size H. floresiensis likely exhibited cognitive function at least equivalent to that of H. habilis.  Because of the distinct difference in body size, there is speculation that this “hobbit” human species may not have evolved directly from Homo erectus but instead may have evolved from the Dmanisi hominids, who were much smaller in size. However, just how the “hobbit” fits into the family tree of hominins is unclear."

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In the spirit of a true meme we can look to how cultural identity expresses itself; it can be anything from fashion to body modification. Sarah and Lisa raised a point about how the meme of sexy body types fluctuates not based on survival values but by materialistic motives. Is appearing like a model on a magazine cover or  hi-hop model more evolutionarily advantageous?

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Along with identity memes come sustenance memes. Diets come in and out of vogue just like bell-bottom pants and trucker ballcaps. The problem is that these diets aren't usually based on any clear science but are rather a grouping of random ideas (e.g. other health related memes) or an amalgamation of previous diet memes. Folks try on different diets like they try on new coats. Afton is concerned that such random and often fluctuating eating habits may change a persons body chemistry in a deleterious way.

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Memes have always had a place in our lives under different guises. The fact that we have several definitions for memes themselves is memetic!  However, the veracity of today's cultural information is suspect as a good portion of what is part of the zeitgeist is internet based. In fact, you can't believe everything you read on the internet.

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Eliza wrote her discussion point on humans using thumbs as tools for picking up things as using it as a tool.  The article below has a different perspective on the reason humans have a thumb that folds over the other fingers.  He agrees using it to pick things was important, but he points out that making a fist to punch other creatures may have been an important part of human evolution.
Read and see what you think.

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There's a never-ending stream of theories about Homo sapiens' most important digit

Smithsonian Magazine |

Of all the motions the hand can perform, perhaps none is so distinctively human as a punch in the nose. Other animals bite, claw, butt or stomp one another, but only the species that includes Muhammad Ali folds its hands into a fist to perform the quintessential act of intra-species male-on-male aggression.

David Carrier, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Utah, believes our key advantage is the dexterity and configuration of our thumb, which folds over the second and third fingers as a buttress, concentrating the striking power and protecting the delicate hand bones. (Crucially, male index fingers are short relative to the ring fingers, so they fit snugly behind the bulge of muscle at the thumb's base; in women, the second and fourth fingers are typically the same length.) In a recent paper in the journal Biological Reviews, Carrier speculated that the bones of the masculine face may have co-evolved with the thumb to be able to withstand a punch. "It's not settled," he said in an interview, "but the evidence suggests that the male hand evolved to be a better club, while the female hand maximizes dexterity."

Carrier's controversial hypothesis is part of a reassessment of the human thumb by anthropologists, who for a long time focused on its role in activities like picking up a grape. The two-finger precision grip was important in evolution, says physical anthropologist Mary Marzke of Arizona State University. "But if you think about it, you don't really use it that much. Even surgeons don't." Marzke has researched other grips, especially the "cupping," or "wraparound," grip, work followed by Alastair Key of the University of Kent, who used sensors to measure the forces on the digits of knappers as they chipped at rocks to replicate primitive tools. His recent paper in the Journal of Human Evolution suggests that an overlooked factor in thumb evolution is the nondominant hand-the one that holds the rock while the dominant hand shapes it into a stone tool.

A rock for throwing is a kind of tool, of course, and the cupping grip a way of using it. "I may throw like a girl," says Suzanne Kemmer of Rice University, "but I throw better than any chimpanzee." Kemmer, a linguist, thinks that by enabling fine motor skills the thumb promoted the development of the brain. Take away the thumb, she says, and Facebook would need a different icon for "Like," you couldn't thumb your nose at anyone, and umpires would have to find a less satisfactory gesture for throwing players off the field. So never take your thumbs for granted-especiallynotwhenyou'retyping.

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Smithsonian Magazine | Of all the motions the hand can perform, perhaps none is so distinctively human as a punch in the nose. Other animals bite, claw, butt or stomp one another, but only the species that includes Muhammad Ali folds its hands into a fist to perform the quintessential act of intra-species male-on-male aggression.

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Marguarita and Susan wrote about skin pigmentation and that lighter pigmentation came later in evolution. There is some research in genetics that say lighter pigments may have been there for much longer than we originally believed. Researchers continue to uncover information that changes some of our original theories of evolution.

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Genes for both light and dark pigmentation have been in the human gene pool for at least 900,000 years

smithsonian.com

While many have turned to science to falsely support the notion of a biological construct of race, modern research has demonstrated genetics has little to do with it. Now, as Ed Yong at The Atlantic reports, a large-scale study of skin pigmentation demonstrates that humans with both light and dark skin pigmentation have co-existed for hundreds of thousands of years.

A long-standing assumption about the evolution skin color was that Homo sapiens started out in Africa with darkly pigmented skin, full of melanin to protect from the intense ultraviolet radiation from the sun. As humans migrated out of Africa, it was believed that mutations led to lighter skin that can supposedly regulate vitamin D production in lower sunlight levels. But the new study, published in the journal , shows that the evolution of skin color is much more complex.

A team of researchers led by Sarah Tishkoff at the University of Pennsylvania and her postdoctoral fellow Nicholas Crawford measured the skin pigmentation of over 2,000 genetically and ethnically diverse people across Tanzania, Ethiopia and Botswana. They analyzed the genome of nearly 1,600 of those people, which allowed them to identify eight key areas in the DNA associated with skin pigmentation.

As Colin Barras at New Scientist reports, each of these sites had genetic variants associated with paler skin and ones associated with darker skin. Seven genetic variants associated with lighter skin developed at least 270,000 years ago and four more than 900,000 years ago. Considering our species, Homo sapiens, did not evolve until around 200,00 to 300,000 years ago, the discovery suggests that the genes responsible for lighter skin tones were present into the genetic material of our hominin ancestors-hundreds of thousands of years before the first humans walked the Earth.

The study suggests that genes of light and dark skin are more fluid than we once thought. Three of the genes associated with the darkest skin are likely to have evolved from genes for lighter skin tones, Barras reports, meaning that people with the darkest skin tones, like herdsmen who live in the Sahara, may have developed that deep pigmentation in the evolutionarily recent past.

"People have thought it was just light skin that has been evolving," Tishkoff tells Barras. "I think dark skin continues to evolve as well."

The new research "adds unexpected complexity" to the story behind skin color, writes Carl Zimmer at The New York Times. "The dark-skinned people of southern India, Australia and New Guinea, for example, did not independently evolve their color simply because evolution favored it. They inherited the ancestral dark variants Dr. Tishkoff's team found in Africans," he writes.

The study also shows a variant of a gene associated with light skin common to Europeans and people form the Middle East called SLC24A5 developed relatively recently, just 29,000 years ago. It has only become widespread in the last several thousand years, even flowing back into Africa during waves of Middle Eastern migration.

The study confirms that societal constructions of race are not useful when it comes to genetics. "One of the traits that most people would associate with race-skin color-is a terrible classifier," Tishkoff tells Yong, pointing out that there is variation even within dark skin. "The study really discredits the idea of a biological construct of race. There are no discrete boundaries between groups that are consistent with biological markers."

White supremacists often subvert genetic studies to support their own ideas about race. Yong spoke with Jedidiah Carlson, a researcher at the University of Michigan, not associated with this study, who tracks this misappropriation of genetics research. "Because visually distinguishable traits common in present-day Europeans, such as light skin color, are also assumed to have arisen within European populations, white supremacists treat these traits as a proxy for superior intelligence," he tells Yong.

But as this study shows, the genes for light skin have been there since the beginning. "If you were to shave a chimp, it has light pigmentation," Tishkoff says in a press release. "So it makes sense that skin color in the ancestors of modern humans could have been relatively light. It is likely that when we lost the hair covering our bodies and moved from forests to the open savannah, we needed darker skin. Mutations influencing both light and dark skin have continued to evolve in humans, even within the past few thousand years."

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Genetic Study Shows Skin Color Is Only Skin Deep

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smithsonian.com While many have turned to science to falsely support the notion of a biological construct of race, modern research has demonstrated genetics has little to do with it. Now, as Ed Yong at The Atlantic reports, a large-scale study of skin pigmentation demonstrates that humans with both light and dark skin pigmentation have co-existed for hundreds of thousands of years.

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Just For Fun-How Will Humans Evolve in the Future?

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Just For Fun-How Will Humans Evolve in the Future?

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There was a lot of discussion on different theories of evolution-bacteria, agriculture, facial structure and more. What changes could be in our future?

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There have been a number of speculations lately concerning the eventual form humankind will take, particularly with regards to the role technology plays in our lives and how this could reshape our physical and mental selves.

Susan Greenfield recently released her first novel 2121, set in some dystopian future where all her predictions about the perils of technology have come true. I've not read it because I've still got some rusty nails that haven't been shoved into the soles of my feet, but reviews have not been kind.

Providing a polar opposite view to Greenfield's scaremongering is The Transhumanist Reader; a new book that contains a collection of essays and philosophies on transhumanism, a movement that argues that enhancement of the human condition via technology is good, even essential, perhaps inevitable? I'll hopefully review it once I've finished it, but it's an interesting position.

There was also a Daily Mail piece about how humans will eventually evolve beaks. Because why not?

Evolution is obviously a complex process. But it's also a slow process. This means you can make claims about it and by the time it progresses to the point where you're proved right or wrong, you'll be long dead so it won't matter.

So, in order to not miss a potential bandwagon, what could humans end up being like if current cultural trends and features remain relatively constant over the next few million years? Here are some possibilities.

Colour-changing skin

Much like the chameleon, humans could eventually acquire the ability to consciously alter the colour of their skin. Maybe via chromatophores, or perhaps a more technical method will be found. Either way, there are numerous benefits that could lead to evolution making this the norm. Individuals who can change their skin colour would confuse prejudices based on race, which would be a depressingly useful advantage. In addition, the false tan/ body whitening market is presently quite a profitable one. Many people aspire to change their default skin tone, so the ability to alter it at will would be highly sought after, resulting in more mating opportunities. The sometimes unsettling orange skin tones worn by some also suggest that the ability to change skin beyond the "natural" tones would be a positive. Being able to either visually blend in or stand out at will would be a potent advantage in modern society, one that evolutionary pressures could make more common.

Selective hearing

Humans already have the ability to direct their attention to specific things that they are hearing. This is known as " the cocktail party effect", named for the scenario where it is particularly noticeable. When at a cocktail party, surrounded by conversations, it is possible to "focus" on a specific conversation that catches your attention for whatever reason, despite there being several others going on and all reaching your ear. The human ear has no physical mechanism for this; it's all done in the brain. But over time, this ability could become more important and advantageous. Given how the internet and mainstream media has seemingly given every person the impression that they should air their opinion, no matter how ill informed, on any subject they wish, the ability to more effectively control the things you listen to will become beneficial. Rather than diverting attention to more relevant inputs, humans could develop the ability to actively "tune out" things they don't want to hear, like closing your eyes to block an unpleasant sight.

Granted, people will end up less informed overall, but they'll be less stressed and angry in general, resulting in health benefits, longer lives and more pleasant demeanours, and thus making mating more likely. And so, the genes are favoured and spread.

Tentacles

Computer technology is becoming more and more commonplace in our daily lives (in the west at least). The most typical means of interfacing with this technology is via keyboard or touchscreen. Our human hands are impressively dextrous and capable of numerous fine movements. But with the increasing need to use technical interfaces, our priorities are changing. Evolution could push us towards developing digits that are more flexible than at present, taking a form that retains precision but loses rigidity, to give us a wider range and speed when typing or touchscreening, but retaining physical characteristics that make touchscreen use feasible. Our fingers could end up more like tentacles, perhaps like those on a sea anemone.

Why stop at the fingers? Although there will be limited practical reasons to develop tentacles instead of limbs, a major factor in evolution is sexual selection. If Susan Greenfield is right and constant exposure to online porn is desensitising us to sexual stimuli, alternative methods of arousal may be required. With the rise of tentacle erotica, that may be one possible outcome.

Speaking of flexibility...

Flexible skeletons

Much like the shark and similar fish, human beings could evolve to have a lot more cartilage in their skeletons. An increasingly health-and-safety conscious world where people are prepared to sue for even the most trivial injury means the danger of forceful impact is reducing, and as such rigid and inflexible bones won't be as essential to humans. It could also be argued that ergonomics is more of a concern than ever. A more flexible skeleton would obviously be of benefit as a result, especially during the birthing process, but this will only be relevant if those with a cartilage skeleton are able to attract mates. This will be more likely if the increasing enthusiasm for dance groups and the like continues. Those with cartilaginous skeletons would be able to perform moves beyond those of their more rigid counterparts, ensuring a presence on numerous TV talent shows and a resulting wide choice of potential mates.

Wings

I once spoke with someone who said he didn't believe in evolution. When asked why, his main argument was that people don't have wings. While this is definitely the case, I asked how this relates to evolution. His response was that "evolution is survival of the fittest, and wings are the best". So there's that. I don't know how much research this person had done to arrive at this conclusion, so I'm putting it here just in case. Even if it is based on some half-baked observations and a very limited understanding of how evolution works, it'll fit right in.
Dean Burnett is the pinnacle of human evolution. His majesty can be observed by following him on Twitter, @garwboy Or, check out the podcast Dean and Dave's Science Webnoise, with friend and fellow science-blogger Dave Steele

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Human evolution: the next stages | Dean Burnett

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There have been a number of speculations lately concerning the eventual form humankind will take, particularly with regards to the role technology plays in our lives and how this could reshape our physical and mental selves. Susan Greenfield recently released her first novel 2121, set in some dystopian future where all her predictions about the perils of technology have come true.