RE: Are other races more evolved than Blacks?
June 21, 2018 at 2:52 pm
(This post was last modified: June 21, 2018 at 3:18 pm by Anomalocaris.)
In the context of biological evolution, evolved means responding to gene shift and screened by natural selection. All people on earth today have undergone exactly 200,000 year’s worth of evolution compare to our common ancestors from 200,000 years ago. The notion that some people now are more or less evolved may make a satisfying epitaph, but it is absolutely impossible to be true unless you have a time machine and are able to pluck people from the past or the future and put them into the comparison.
What could be true is while all people have undergone the same amount of evolution, the specific selection pressure some lineages were exposed to differed sufficiently from those of others such that the end result of 200,000 years of evolution is appreciably different by some measure.
Over time, evolution tend to move a population’s characteristics towards better conformance to the demands of its environment, subject to the limits of genetic, biochemical and biomechanical feasibility. If a population didn’t change appreciably over long time, it doesn’t mean it is therefore somehow more primitive or less evolved. It actually means it is closer to the ideal and less imperfect for its environment to Start with.
If a population changed a lot in a short time, it doesn’t mean it is therefore more advanced. It just means either it’s environment is changing rapidly and it is lagging the demands of its changing environment, or it is just maladapted and dying off in droves, thus causing rapid changes to its gene pool.
What could be true is while all people have undergone the same amount of evolution, the specific selection pressure some lineages were exposed to differed sufficiently from those of others such that the end result of 200,000 years of evolution is appreciably different by some measure.
(June 21, 2018 at 1:44 pm)Alexmahone Wrote:(June 21, 2018 at 1:20 pm)FatAndFaithless Wrote: There's no such thing as "more evolved." That's just a nonsensical concept. A cockroach is exactly as evolved as a human, or a jellyfish, or an eagle.
Humans are more evolved than bacteria in the sense that they've changed more from the common ancestor (which was probably a prehistoric bacterium).
(June 21, 2018 at 1:23 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote: What do you mean by more evolved?
Changed more with regard to the common ancestor.
Over time, evolution tend to move a population’s characteristics towards better conformance to the demands of its environment, subject to the limits of genetic, biochemical and biomechanical feasibility. If a population didn’t change appreciably over long time, it doesn’t mean it is therefore somehow more primitive or less evolved. It actually means it is closer to the ideal and less imperfect for its environment to Start with.
If a population changed a lot in a short time, it doesn’t mean it is therefore more advanced. It just means either it’s environment is changing rapidly and it is lagging the demands of its changing environment, or it is just maladapted and dying off in droves, thus causing rapid changes to its gene pool.
