Bonus meme
I thought it was our ability to just run and run and run that broke evolution.
True enough. But given that we are going to drive ourselves to extinction in a geological blink of an eye, it really didn’t do us that great. Should have evolved into a crab.
I mean, you can’t really say that we’re going to drive ourselves to extinction, until we’ve been driven to extinction. Most things people list as likely to do this, climate change, nuclear war, are things that could conceivably do so, but honestly aren’t likely to. Destroy civilization maybe, but that just takes disrupting supply lines hard enough. Extinction means nobody, anywhere on the planet survives, even if it’s some little pocket of people in some corner of the world whose climate is good after warming is considered and which isn’t a target of any nuclear arsenals, because in a number of generations such a little pocket can grow to repopulate the planet again. It’s not an impossible thing for sure, but killing off a species capable of surviving in almost any climate zone found on the planet, with the ability to manipulate the growth of it’s own food supply, and adapt new tools actively in response to problems within a single generation, is a difficult task.
Humana have been around for several million years. Clothing alone is what, 3.5 million years old?
We had the tall stride thing going, we had the super-endurance thing going already, we had gotten good at tool-use like many other primates, in that we could use sticks and rocks to beat things and poke things, just like modern chimps and apes. (Modern primates also throw stones, it’s not the evolution-killer on its own that the meme is making it out to be.)
No, the REAL thing that soared us beyond all members of the animal kingdom is how we started abstracting information and sharing it. IE: language, writing, and the cognitive processes behind those skills that allow us to plan ahead. Not just planning ahead, but being able to set up actions far in advance, like planting seeds because we know a plant will come out of it. Moving our camps to where animal herds migrate to so we can stay close to the food, and just the day-to-day actions like preparing a fire in advance so you can see when it gets dark, bringing things with you to use later, having an idea how to ration food, being able to share your plans with others, communicating your movements to other hunters, and yes, all this made us exceptional hunters. When other primates were still mostly foraging for plants and bugs, our ancestors used this “thinking” thing to start getting massive doses of meat. Amino acids, proteins, high-density fuel, food for growing brains.
Not to mention, we’re the only creature that chooses when to reproduce. We used this foresight to plan our futures and our families. This is a massive changeup from how nature has handled reproduction. For the vast majority of life on Earth, breeding is just this thing that “happens” at certain points and everything leads to that event, and nothing really has control over how that event plays out.
Breeding is still a big deal for us, just look how horny we all are, but we decide when we’re going to have babies, and while it doesn’t seem a big deal here and now, it was a game changer when we were migrating packs of hunter-gatherers, following the seasons and the herds of animals.
Our story of how we got here is without question the most fantastic story ever. You are the product of over four and a half billion years of uninterrupted successes. A family tree going back a thousands of millions of years without break, surviving apocalypses that have turned our entire globe to ice, to fire, to water and other unimaginable catastrophes that sometimes lasted for millions of years.
So now you made it, your billions of generations of ancestors secured your survival against all odds, whatcha gonna do with it?
I mean, every existent species is the result of millions of generations. We all fill our niches, until we don’t. So even the humble tortoise is just as remarkable as us in that way, but I bet they will outlast us given how long they’ve existed.
The thing that always stuck with me about evolution is that we are related to everything. The pup I’m sitting next to is pretty close to me in terms of evolutionary time, the potatoes I ate are a lot more distant, but it is still my cousin, etc. It really makes me feel like I’m part of the world knowing that.
I was with most of this until the selective breeding part. Did prehistoric humans have a concept of this? Do we have evidence of that? If so, that sounds rather interesting. I’m just a bit skeptical is all.
The impact of human fertility cycles ("concealed ovulation’) and human evolution is a vast, deep field of study and speculation in itself, but I am making some very sweeping generalizations here, referencing people’s capability to choose when to reproduce on the broadest levels, not that there was a period or specific instance of this having an impact… more like, it made a difference over very large scales of time, as evident by the fact that our breeding cycles are nothing like most other mammals.
I think the invention of engineering is what finally broke evolution, but there are a lot of factors we have that bootstrapped us to that point. Walking upright on two legs is more efficient at the price of raw power. Many creatures can outrun a human but no land animal can come close to our jogging range. A Cheetah can go 60 miles an hour for a minute or so but a human can go 10 miles per hour for 6 hours straight. It also frees our forelimbs, already made flexible, versatile and dexterous by our distant tree swinging ancestors, for tool use. Funnily enough, another ability that is unparalleled in nature is our ability to throw things with accuracy and power. You also need pretty good hands to master fire, and thus cooking, and thus unlocking extra nutrients from the food you catch, which provides for that very hungry brain of ours. A few millennia later and we’ve pretty much got control of the biosphere itself.
science. realizing our monkey brains needs external help to actually try to be rational.
I think the invention of engineering is what finally broke evolution
While true, we can be more specific here what quality or trait allowed us to become engineers. Being able to engineer is by itself something that can even exist in genetic memory, instinctual. There are a lot of animals that do engineering, but have never come anywhere close to what humans do. Beavers, birds, ants and termites arguably are better engineers than most humans on an innate level. (I’ve also known some engineers who are incapable of some very basic life skills.)
What separated us from evolutionary processes and also allowed us to become engineers is the capability to abstract information and use those abstractions to predict the future, extending our “reach” of influence into the further future than most animals can calculate. This required us to develop strong continuity of thought and experiences and with this also came the ability to analyze and compare complicated events to find patterns. This gave us a huge edge when we were surviving around predators that were able to easily dominate us. Nowadays these abilities mostly cause of mental health conditions as we try to use tools designed for navigating glaciers to navigate a world of social media, zoom meetings, Tinder profiles, electric car recalls and democratic electoral politics.
Being able to engineer is by itself something that can even exist in genetic memory, instinctual.
I don’t think this is the case. There are creatures that instinctively construct, like ants and beavers, but their constructions are more an emergent behavior from simpler rules or systems. Their behaviors have evolved, the ants that dig slightly more efficient nests were more successful and went on to reproduce more offspring colonies.
At the root of engineering is the sentence “If I do this, then I bet I can get this to happen.” That behavior is unique to humans. It takes a lot of forebrain to do, and to develop that forebrain took a very successful omnivorous, multi-strategy primate.
Speed runs of the video game Super Mario World for the SNES are divided into a lot of categories, some allow glitches, some don’t. Glitchless runs are just about playing the game as intended as efficiently as you can. The absolute fastest run though, Any%, involves a trick where you perform a glitch that allows you to write arbitrary values into RAM, effectively reprogramming the game on the fly to trigger the end cut scene. This is called Arbitrary Code Injection. Now you’re playing a different game by a different, more abstract set of rules called 6502 assembly.
Upright bipedal gait with knees that lock, dexterous hands with opposable thumbs on highly articulated arms not significantly used for locomotion, binocular, tri-color vision granting great depth perception, the ability to sweat to stay cool for long periods of time under moderate exertion? All of that is just gettin’ gud, playing the game of evolution exceedingly well. Sometime between tying a knapped flint to a stick to make an axe and digging the first irrigation trench we arrived at that level of Arbitrary Code Injection. We’re not playing the same game as the other animals anymore.
It’s definitely these two things plus our ability to digest meat as well as plant matter, plus our communication and social skills plus…
We’re not the only ones that can do that. Wolves, dingoes and other wild dogs, and hyenas are also persistence predators. All species of the Homo genus were persistence predators but we’re the only one still around.
E:Our level of hand eye coordination is unique to the Homo genus. We’re the only living animals that can use thrown weapons effectively. Chimpanzees are the next best throwers and at a range of 6.5ft they hit their target with about 11% of their throws.
Don’t worry, animals. It’s temporary.
I dunno. I think the animals should worry. The Anthropocene is going to mean millions of species of things cease to exist because we’re changing the global climate.
I threw pinecones at birds that were picking at the window for some reason. I think it short circuits their brain to see an object coming at them. They haven’t been back since.
