RE: Caesarian births directly affecting human evolution
December 7, 2016 at 2:12 am
(This post was last modified: December 7, 2016 at 2:17 am by Anomalocaris.)
(December 7, 2016 at 1:35 am)Minimalist Wrote:Quote:False. The caring of those with a broken bone is probably reflective of heritable behavioral trait which enhances the social support network of the bearer of the trait, which confers a survival advantage upon the bearer. This is Darwinian evolution red in tooth and claw, as evidenced by most human societies now having hospitals.
I disagree. For a small HG band - the care of an unproductive mouth would have been a serious drain on resources.
That might be, yet the band survived. And their descendant flourished. So the benefit must outweigh the drain. Evolution is about propagation of the heritable benefit that outweigh attendant drawbacks.
Indeed, human tempering of our survival odds is not a avoidance of evolution and natural selection. It IS evolution in action. We vaingloriously conceive what we do to be "unnatural". Therefore when we select using what we style as "intelligence", we deem it is not "natural selection". Nothing can be farther from the truth. We are part of nature and can never be but a part of nature, everything we do is natural, when we select, we do so because we have been so selected by nature, and our selection is itself natural selection.