Posted on 11/18/2004 7:32:47 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Running 'key to human evolution'
People run to keep fit today but our ancestors ran for different reasons
Long-distance running may have been a driving force behind evolution of the modern human body, scientists say. American researchers said humans began endurance running about 2 million years ago to help hunt for prey, influencing the development of the human body.
Previous studies have suggested running was purely a by-product of walking.
But the study, published in Nature, said humans evolved big buttocks, a balanced head and longer legs to help gather food.
Professor Dennis Bramble, of the University of Utah, and Professor Daniel Lieberman, of Harvard University, reported that early human beings may have needed to run long distances to help hunt prey or scavenge animal carcasses on the African savannah.
Without the development from running, humans would be much more like apes with shorter legs, smaller heads and a hunched posture, the scientists said.
While human are poor sprinters in comparison with many animals, they perform well when it comes to long-distance running.
After examining 26 human body features essential for endurance running, the pair concluded humans may have evolved as they did from their ape-like ancestors because they could run long-distances.
Important attributes for endurance running include skull structure to prevent over-heating, ligaments to give spring, long legs to increase stride length and independent head and shoulder movement to aid balance.
The scientists said because of natural selection, our ape-like ancestors known as Australophithecus, who were good at running, survived, while shorter-legged ancestors died out.
Professor Bramble said: "Today endurance running is primarily a form of exercise and recreation but its roots may be as ancient as the origin of the human genus and its demands a major contributing factor to the human body form.
"Running may have helped hunters get close enough to throw projectiles or perhaps even to run some mammals to exhaustion in the heat."
Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, said the findings were "plausible" and provided a "valuable fresh look at our anatomy and some of its special features".
"Although it will require much more complete evidence for the evolution of the skeleton of early humans below the neck to test their ideas properly."
I can't wait for next month's issue of Nature. I hear it has a "scientific" article that "proves" that we evolved to an upright stance in order to reach the food items on the top shelf of the supermarket.
That's a good question. I've heard that poor eyesight is primarily a modern problem: too much sitting in front of our computer I suppose!
Yaks and bison are cold-climate animals. Elephants and rhinos are warm-weather animals. Some animals rely on subcutaneous layers of fat for warmth.
You might be right. I had just heard that somewhere, I don't have anything to back it up. I'm sure there have been studies done though.
I'll grant you that explanations in evolution often read like "just so stories".
But it might help to understand that the theory of evolution makes several different claims.
The first claim is that the Earth is old, many millions of years old. The evidence for this was already persuasive by 1800. The second claim is that all creatures on Earth descended from a common ancestor. This idea predates Darwin, indeed his own grandfather Erasmus published these ideas. The evidence for this by now is extremely strong: the relationships between species visible in their anatomy are now observed to be mirrored in their genes (where related species even share harmless mutations or "spelling errors" in the genome). It must be emphasized that these two ideas have essentially no opposition in biology.
But the third claim of evolution is the mechanism for the formation of new species: natural selection, where chance and necessity sculpt life. This is where there is debate, and exactly where you point out. The controversial theory of punctuated equilibrium was introduced to why evolution appears to happen in relatively rapid spurts separated by long periods of little change.
The weakest points in evolution is agreed to be the lack of credible explanations for the origin of life itself (3.8 billions years ago, the date of the oldest fossil-bearing rocks). It certainly wouldn't surprise me if there was "intelligent design" involved. But I am confortable with the idea that God used evolution to sculpt life; life capable of evolutionary change would be resiliant and adaptable, and I can imagine God taking pleasure in the unexpected and beautiful outcomes of evolution. This is as the Catholic Church and the mainline Protestant Churches teach (I am Episcopalian). (It also wouldn't surprise me if intelligent design, God's active intervention in evolution, was also behind the very rapid rise of modern humans.)
By the way, life does not violate the law of entropy (the second law of thermodynamics). This law states that closed systems cannot tend towards greater complexity. But the Earth is not a closed system: it receives a huge amount of energy input from the Sun. And, to the point, most life is powered by the Sun (through photosynthesis by plants). (Except for those ridge vent worms, which live off the bacterial communities that feed on the chemicals and heat from the vents.)
Yep, giant ground sloth.
So one can argue that life can evolve because God set things up with great care at the beginning to make it possible.
That's an interesting quote, for at least two reasons. First, it was triggered by Einstein's revulsion at contemplating quantum theory. He thought a better, more elegant particle theory could be devised that would be more in tune with his notions of how the universe's laws should work. So far, nobody has come up with one.
Second, when Einstein mentions God, he doesn't mean what most folks think of as God:
I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.
I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
So, you could say Einstein was wrong about God on both counts!
Maybe being a pacifist after urging the creation of the a-bomb is contradicting himself, but there's no contradiction inherent in being an ethical person and not believing in a personal God or the afterlife.
I really think that Einstein believed in God and had a huge dilemma trying to balance it with his intellect, because for guy that did not believe in God, he sure reference Him a lot.
Here are some collected Einstein quotes on religion.
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
I think he was perhaps a bit conflicted about God and religion, searching for some mystical, cosmic organizing presence in the natural world, but he stuck to his guns.
Evolutionists claim that running made us human by Dr. David Menton, AiGUSA
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