Rapid evolution: Can mutations explain historical events? (John Hawks at CASW 2009)

[MrMonkeybat]

This was very interesting.

[thedeeliciousplum]

What a wonderful talk. Thanks for sharing this.

[TRYCLOPS1]

Interesting stuff about that gene in asia about some part of the hairs in the ears? And yes, a good hypothesis is about adaptation of language... but we really don't know... could've been for hearing if a tiger was near by etc... who knows... And yeah, brains could be shrinking because we don't need to store as much info in our memory. We now store everything in paper or computers for everyone to access. Maybe there is some relation between written language and the size of the brain? my regards

[Botie2]

Is it me or does it seems the start of religion and growth corollates with the brain starting to shrink allmost perfectly?

[prsaledja]

@Botie2

if i remember correctly religion appeared about 100.000 years ago..... and in my opinion the brain is shrinking because we don't need them so much i.e. surviving became easy, and with our latest development of medicine even more so... and this thing he explains about energy efficiency is not convincing since we have more food in the last 10.000 years than ever before so there is no evolutionary pressure on energy efficiency concerning the brain...