Ponce
15th August 2014, 08:11 AM
I copied this from another site.....giving me a lot to think about and to the reason as to why felons are not allowed to have guns and are treated different........the power to be simply wants good puppies that want their bellies rub and not the ones that will bite if they are kicked.
=================================
Have we been domesticated? Or have we self domesticated ourselves?
Or maybe more importantly, have some modern humans been more domesticated then others?
From “The 10,000 Year Explosion”….
“In an extreme example, the Russian scientist Dmitri Belyaev succeeded in developing a domesticated fox in only forty years. In each generation he selected for tameness (and only tameness); this eventually resulted in foxes that were friendly and enjoyed human contact, in strong contrast to wild foxes. This strain of tame foxes also changed in other ways: Their coat color lightened, their skulls became rounder, and some of them were born with floppy ears. It seems that some of the genes influencing behavior (tameness in this case) also affect other traits—so when Belyaev selected for tameness, he automatically got changes in those other traits as well. Many of these changes have occurred as side effects of domestication in a number of species—possibly including humans, as we shall see.”
“The skeletal record clearly supports the idea that there has been rapid evolutionary change in humans over the past 10,000 years.
“The human skeleton has become more gracile—more lightly built—though more so in some populations than others. Our jaws have shrunk, our long bones have become lighter, and brow ridges have disappeared in most populations (with the notable exception of Australian aborigines, who have also changed, but not as much; they still have brow ridges, and their skulls are about twice as thick as those of other peoples.) Skull volume has decreased, apparently in all populations: In Europeans, volume is down about 10 percent from the high point about 20,000 years ago. These changes were spread out over time, of course.
“For example, if you look at Bronze Age skeletons from Europe (around 3,000 years ago), you find that some people still had brow ridges like those of Australian Aborigines. Hardly any Europeans have brow ridges today.
“Some changes can be seen even over the past 1,000 years. English researchers recently compared skulls from people who died in the Black Death (≈650 years ago), from the crew of the Mary Rose, a ship that sank in Tudor times (≈450 years ago), and from our contemporaries. The shape of the skull changed noticeably over that brief period—which is particularly interesting because we know there has been no massive population replacement in England over the past 700 years. The height of the cranial vault of our contemporaries was about 15 percent larger than that of the earlier populations, and the part of the skull containing the frontal lobes was thus larger
(Terry here, Frontal lobes are related to the ability to plan, and have abstract thought.)
“The key point here is that it would take only a very limited amount of interbreeding for modern humans to have picked up almost every Neanderthal allele with any significant advantage. Limited interbreeding would mean that neutral genes in humans today would look almost entirely African—which they do—while at the same time we might carry a number of functional alleles that originated in Neanderthals. Those alleles would be ones that mattered, ones that made a difference.
“This raises the question of just what the Neanderthals might have had to offer. The popular impression is that they were backward, almost bestial—and it’s certainly true that moderns had capabilities that Neanderthals lacked. But in archaeological artifacts from as recently as 100,000 years ago, it’s hard to see any real differences in the material culture of Neanderthals and the material culture of Africans—so the Neanderthals can’t have been all that far behind.
“The alleles most obviously worth stealing would be those that implemented adaptations to local conditions in Europe. That might mean, for example, acquiring the ability to tolerate
cold weather, resist local diseases, or adjust to big swings in the length of the day over the course of a year (in contrast to the tropics, where the length of the day does not vary much). These kinds of adaptations, along with the more sophisticated, technological
solutions to cold characteristic of modern humans, such as building shelters and so on, may have been important in human settlement of the far north, and eventually of the Americas.
- - - - -
“Since the elites were in a very real sense raising peasants, just as peasants raised cows, there must have been a tendency for them to cull individuals who were more aggressive than average, which over time would have changed the frequencies of those alleles that induced such aggressiveness. This would have been particularly likely in strong, long-lived states, because situations in which rebels often won might well have favored aggressive personalities.
“This meant some people were taming others, but with reasonable amounts of gene flow between classes, populations as a whole should have become tamer.
“We know of a gene that may play a part in this story: the 7R (for 7-repeat) allele of the DRD4 (dopamine receptor D4) gene. It is associated with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a behavioral syndrome best characterized by actions that annoy elementary school teachers: restless-impulsive behavior, inattention, distractibility, and the like.
“The polymorphism is found at varying but significant levels in many parts of the world, but is almost totally absent from East Asia. Interestingly, alleles derived from the 7R allele are
fairly common in China, even though the 7R alleles themselves are extremely rare there. It is possible that individuals bearing these alleles were selected against because of cultural patterns in China. The Japanese say that the nail that sticks out is hammered down, but in China it may have been pulled out and thrown away.
“Selection for submission to authority sounds unnervingly like domestication. In fact, there are parallels between the process of domestication in animals and the changes that have occurred in humans during the Holocene period. In both humans and domesticated animals, we see a reduction in brain size, broader skulls, changes in hair color or coat color, and smaller teeth. As Dmitri Belyaev’s experiment with foxes shows, some of the changes that are characteristic of domesticated animals may be side effects of selection for tameness. As for humans, we know of a number of recent changes in genes involving serotonin metabolism in Europeans that may well influence personality, but we don’t know what effect those changes have had—since we don’t yet know whether they increase or decrease serotonin levels. Floppy ears are not seen in any human population (as far as we know), but then, changes in the external ear might interfere with recognition of speech sounds. Since speech is of great importance to fitness in humans, it may be that the
negative effects of floppy ears have kept them from arising.
“Some of these favored changes could be viewed as examples of neoteny—retention of childlike characteristics. Children routinely submit to their parents—at least in comparison to teenagers—and it’s possible that natural selection modified mechanisms active in children in ways that resulted in tamer human adults, just as the behaviors of adult dogs often seem relatively juvenile in comparison with adult wolf behavior.
“If the strong governments made possible by agriculture essentially “tamed” people, one might expect members of groups with shallow or nonexistent agricultural experience to be less submissive, on average, than members of longtime agricultural cultures. One possible indicator of tameness is the ease with which people can be enslaved, and our reading of history suggests that some peoples with little or no evolutionary exposure to agriculture “would not endure the yoke,” as was said of Indians captured by the Puritans in the Pequot War of 1636. In the same vein, the typical Bushman, a classic hunter-gatherer, has been described as “the anarchist of South Africa.”
- - - - - -
(Terry here: My wife is of Amerind extraction and at some family get togethers the older generation was always puzzled by the way Africans could be forced into slavery. Even the Hopi, arguably some of the most peaceful peoples on the planet, revolted against their “Spanish” masters. And yea a pasty white hillbilly did get some rather odd looks at those get togethers. We never told them about my college experiences. Some things polite people just don’t talk about.)
- - - - - - -
“BOURGEOIS VIRTUES
“Agriculture itself, and the particular form it took in state societies, must have selected for personalities that can only be called bourgeois, characterized by the traits that make a man successful rather than interesting. One such trait was the ability to defer gratification for long periods of time. This was a practical requirement for farmers, since they had to save a portion of their crop for seed and some of their domesticated animals for breeding stock.
“This wasn’t easy. Food was often shortest just before sowing, and those early farmers had to abstain from eating the seed grain when they and their families were hungriest. This is something that classic hunter-gatherers just didn’t do: There was no way for them to store food effectively, so they either consumed it on the spot or shared it with others. Foragers had no tradition of self-denial and no inclination to deny themselves. They weren’t very good at self-denial back in the early Neolithic period, and they aren’t very good at it even today: Efforts to teach Bushmen to become herders frequently fail when they eat all their goats. People can learn new traditions, but genetic differences must make this kind of self-denial easier for some people than it is for others. It takes a certain type of personality—with
traits including patience, self-control, and the ability to look to long-term benefits instead of short-term satisfaction—and natural selection must have gradually made such personalities more common among peoples that farmed for a long time.
(Terry here again, back then there was no AFDC, welfare came from within the family, and if you really screwed up, you and your family died. Thus editing those who made really bad decision,
“Agriculture also led to the birth of property. Among hunter-gatherers, there hadn’t really been any. Although tribes sometimes claimed hunting grounds, there was no individual
ownership of land. The mobile way of life that hunter-gatherers pursued kept them from accumulating much property other than some personal tools and weapons. Farmers, being sedentary, could accumulate domesticated animals, land, and other forms of property. This became more practical and more important as states appeared and limited local violence. Law and order allowed for population gains that increased the scarcity and value of land. In some cases, governments made property safer and more secure.
“Farmers could thus accumulate resources that increased their fitness and that of their descendants—if they decided to do so, and if the state didn’t take too much. But those choices didn’t come easily. Hunter-gatherers routinely shared resources, partly in order to cement relations with other members of the tribe, partly because there often wasn’t anything else to do with those resources. Try eating a whole giraffe before the meat goes bad.
“Even with the wife and kids helping, it can’t be done. The effective cost of sharing that meat is zero. Foragers aren’t selfish.
“Farmers, in contrast, have to be selfish. At minimum, they can’t afford to give away seed grain or breeding stock—not if they want to stay farmers. More than that, farmers could gain increased fitness by being miserly, at least in comparison to foragers. And once there was property, laziness must have decreased.
“There were many ways in which hard work could produce enduring assets that could increase an individual’s fitness or that of his children and relatives. Farmers could save to buy more land or livestock. They could build long-lasting improvements like buildings or irrigation works. This was not really possible for hunter-gatherers—there was no way for them to accumulate wealth. If they had full stomachs and their tools and weapons were in good shape, hunter-gatherers didn’t work. They hung out: They talked, gossiped, and sang. They were lazy, and they should have been: Being lazy made biological sense. They could usually obtain enough food fairly easily, since constant local violence kept human numbers below the land’s carrying capacity.
“When law and order let human density increase, farmers eventually had to work harder and harder just to survive. Here again, selection must have favored those odd people who like to work, even when there was enough to eat. Ultimately, this meant that both sexes had to work hard. In fact, for most people, that became the only way to produce enough to feed and raise a family. That pattern is not universal.
“In situations where resources are abundant, men sometimes do little work. Men working hard to feed their families—“high paternal investment,” we call it—is common among contemporary hunter-gatherers and may well have been a standard feature of the ancestors of all modern humans. Women bring in most of the calories in such societies (from plant foods), at least in warm climates, but the meat contributed by male hunters is a vital source of protein and other essential nutrients.
=================================
Have we been domesticated? Or have we self domesticated ourselves?
Or maybe more importantly, have some modern humans been more domesticated then others?
From “The 10,000 Year Explosion”….
“In an extreme example, the Russian scientist Dmitri Belyaev succeeded in developing a domesticated fox in only forty years. In each generation he selected for tameness (and only tameness); this eventually resulted in foxes that were friendly and enjoyed human contact, in strong contrast to wild foxes. This strain of tame foxes also changed in other ways: Their coat color lightened, their skulls became rounder, and some of them were born with floppy ears. It seems that some of the genes influencing behavior (tameness in this case) also affect other traits—so when Belyaev selected for tameness, he automatically got changes in those other traits as well. Many of these changes have occurred as side effects of domestication in a number of species—possibly including humans, as we shall see.”
“The skeletal record clearly supports the idea that there has been rapid evolutionary change in humans over the past 10,000 years.
“The human skeleton has become more gracile—more lightly built—though more so in some populations than others. Our jaws have shrunk, our long bones have become lighter, and brow ridges have disappeared in most populations (with the notable exception of Australian aborigines, who have also changed, but not as much; they still have brow ridges, and their skulls are about twice as thick as those of other peoples.) Skull volume has decreased, apparently in all populations: In Europeans, volume is down about 10 percent from the high point about 20,000 years ago. These changes were spread out over time, of course.
“For example, if you look at Bronze Age skeletons from Europe (around 3,000 years ago), you find that some people still had brow ridges like those of Australian Aborigines. Hardly any Europeans have brow ridges today.
“Some changes can be seen even over the past 1,000 years. English researchers recently compared skulls from people who died in the Black Death (≈650 years ago), from the crew of the Mary Rose, a ship that sank in Tudor times (≈450 years ago), and from our contemporaries. The shape of the skull changed noticeably over that brief period—which is particularly interesting because we know there has been no massive population replacement in England over the past 700 years. The height of the cranial vault of our contemporaries was about 15 percent larger than that of the earlier populations, and the part of the skull containing the frontal lobes was thus larger
(Terry here, Frontal lobes are related to the ability to plan, and have abstract thought.)
“The key point here is that it would take only a very limited amount of interbreeding for modern humans to have picked up almost every Neanderthal allele with any significant advantage. Limited interbreeding would mean that neutral genes in humans today would look almost entirely African—which they do—while at the same time we might carry a number of functional alleles that originated in Neanderthals. Those alleles would be ones that mattered, ones that made a difference.
“This raises the question of just what the Neanderthals might have had to offer. The popular impression is that they were backward, almost bestial—and it’s certainly true that moderns had capabilities that Neanderthals lacked. But in archaeological artifacts from as recently as 100,000 years ago, it’s hard to see any real differences in the material culture of Neanderthals and the material culture of Africans—so the Neanderthals can’t have been all that far behind.
“The alleles most obviously worth stealing would be those that implemented adaptations to local conditions in Europe. That might mean, for example, acquiring the ability to tolerate
cold weather, resist local diseases, or adjust to big swings in the length of the day over the course of a year (in contrast to the tropics, where the length of the day does not vary much). These kinds of adaptations, along with the more sophisticated, technological
solutions to cold characteristic of modern humans, such as building shelters and so on, may have been important in human settlement of the far north, and eventually of the Americas.
- - - - -
“Since the elites were in a very real sense raising peasants, just as peasants raised cows, there must have been a tendency for them to cull individuals who were more aggressive than average, which over time would have changed the frequencies of those alleles that induced such aggressiveness. This would have been particularly likely in strong, long-lived states, because situations in which rebels often won might well have favored aggressive personalities.
“This meant some people were taming others, but with reasonable amounts of gene flow between classes, populations as a whole should have become tamer.
“We know of a gene that may play a part in this story: the 7R (for 7-repeat) allele of the DRD4 (dopamine receptor D4) gene. It is associated with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a behavioral syndrome best characterized by actions that annoy elementary school teachers: restless-impulsive behavior, inattention, distractibility, and the like.
“The polymorphism is found at varying but significant levels in many parts of the world, but is almost totally absent from East Asia. Interestingly, alleles derived from the 7R allele are
fairly common in China, even though the 7R alleles themselves are extremely rare there. It is possible that individuals bearing these alleles were selected against because of cultural patterns in China. The Japanese say that the nail that sticks out is hammered down, but in China it may have been pulled out and thrown away.
“Selection for submission to authority sounds unnervingly like domestication. In fact, there are parallels between the process of domestication in animals and the changes that have occurred in humans during the Holocene period. In both humans and domesticated animals, we see a reduction in brain size, broader skulls, changes in hair color or coat color, and smaller teeth. As Dmitri Belyaev’s experiment with foxes shows, some of the changes that are characteristic of domesticated animals may be side effects of selection for tameness. As for humans, we know of a number of recent changes in genes involving serotonin metabolism in Europeans that may well influence personality, but we don’t know what effect those changes have had—since we don’t yet know whether they increase or decrease serotonin levels. Floppy ears are not seen in any human population (as far as we know), but then, changes in the external ear might interfere with recognition of speech sounds. Since speech is of great importance to fitness in humans, it may be that the
negative effects of floppy ears have kept them from arising.
“Some of these favored changes could be viewed as examples of neoteny—retention of childlike characteristics. Children routinely submit to their parents—at least in comparison to teenagers—and it’s possible that natural selection modified mechanisms active in children in ways that resulted in tamer human adults, just as the behaviors of adult dogs often seem relatively juvenile in comparison with adult wolf behavior.
“If the strong governments made possible by agriculture essentially “tamed” people, one might expect members of groups with shallow or nonexistent agricultural experience to be less submissive, on average, than members of longtime agricultural cultures. One possible indicator of tameness is the ease with which people can be enslaved, and our reading of history suggests that some peoples with little or no evolutionary exposure to agriculture “would not endure the yoke,” as was said of Indians captured by the Puritans in the Pequot War of 1636. In the same vein, the typical Bushman, a classic hunter-gatherer, has been described as “the anarchist of South Africa.”
- - - - - -
(Terry here: My wife is of Amerind extraction and at some family get togethers the older generation was always puzzled by the way Africans could be forced into slavery. Even the Hopi, arguably some of the most peaceful peoples on the planet, revolted against their “Spanish” masters. And yea a pasty white hillbilly did get some rather odd looks at those get togethers. We never told them about my college experiences. Some things polite people just don’t talk about.)
- - - - - - -
“BOURGEOIS VIRTUES
“Agriculture itself, and the particular form it took in state societies, must have selected for personalities that can only be called bourgeois, characterized by the traits that make a man successful rather than interesting. One such trait was the ability to defer gratification for long periods of time. This was a practical requirement for farmers, since they had to save a portion of their crop for seed and some of their domesticated animals for breeding stock.
“This wasn’t easy. Food was often shortest just before sowing, and those early farmers had to abstain from eating the seed grain when they and their families were hungriest. This is something that classic hunter-gatherers just didn’t do: There was no way for them to store food effectively, so they either consumed it on the spot or shared it with others. Foragers had no tradition of self-denial and no inclination to deny themselves. They weren’t very good at self-denial back in the early Neolithic period, and they aren’t very good at it even today: Efforts to teach Bushmen to become herders frequently fail when they eat all their goats. People can learn new traditions, but genetic differences must make this kind of self-denial easier for some people than it is for others. It takes a certain type of personality—with
traits including patience, self-control, and the ability to look to long-term benefits instead of short-term satisfaction—and natural selection must have gradually made such personalities more common among peoples that farmed for a long time.
(Terry here again, back then there was no AFDC, welfare came from within the family, and if you really screwed up, you and your family died. Thus editing those who made really bad decision,
“Agriculture also led to the birth of property. Among hunter-gatherers, there hadn’t really been any. Although tribes sometimes claimed hunting grounds, there was no individual
ownership of land. The mobile way of life that hunter-gatherers pursued kept them from accumulating much property other than some personal tools and weapons. Farmers, being sedentary, could accumulate domesticated animals, land, and other forms of property. This became more practical and more important as states appeared and limited local violence. Law and order allowed for population gains that increased the scarcity and value of land. In some cases, governments made property safer and more secure.
“Farmers could thus accumulate resources that increased their fitness and that of their descendants—if they decided to do so, and if the state didn’t take too much. But those choices didn’t come easily. Hunter-gatherers routinely shared resources, partly in order to cement relations with other members of the tribe, partly because there often wasn’t anything else to do with those resources. Try eating a whole giraffe before the meat goes bad.
“Even with the wife and kids helping, it can’t be done. The effective cost of sharing that meat is zero. Foragers aren’t selfish.
“Farmers, in contrast, have to be selfish. At minimum, they can’t afford to give away seed grain or breeding stock—not if they want to stay farmers. More than that, farmers could gain increased fitness by being miserly, at least in comparison to foragers. And once there was property, laziness must have decreased.
“There were many ways in which hard work could produce enduring assets that could increase an individual’s fitness or that of his children and relatives. Farmers could save to buy more land or livestock. They could build long-lasting improvements like buildings or irrigation works. This was not really possible for hunter-gatherers—there was no way for them to accumulate wealth. If they had full stomachs and their tools and weapons were in good shape, hunter-gatherers didn’t work. They hung out: They talked, gossiped, and sang. They were lazy, and they should have been: Being lazy made biological sense. They could usually obtain enough food fairly easily, since constant local violence kept human numbers below the land’s carrying capacity.
“When law and order let human density increase, farmers eventually had to work harder and harder just to survive. Here again, selection must have favored those odd people who like to work, even when there was enough to eat. Ultimately, this meant that both sexes had to work hard. In fact, for most people, that became the only way to produce enough to feed and raise a family. That pattern is not universal.
“In situations where resources are abundant, men sometimes do little work. Men working hard to feed their families—“high paternal investment,” we call it—is common among contemporary hunter-gatherers and may well have been a standard feature of the ancestors of all modern humans. Women bring in most of the calories in such societies (from plant foods), at least in warm climates, but the meat contributed by male hunters is a vital source of protein and other essential nutrients.