Wednesday, September 14, 2005

The Evolving Human Brain

Gene changes related to brain size occurred sometime between 5800 years ago and 37,000 years ago. Modern humans came into existence some 200,000 years ago. That means the brain was still evolving in significant ways well after the development of the genus Homo. (During the last 9-19% of the time the genus has been around.)

The linked article explains the steps involved in arriving at this conclusion, and it's an interesting read. Among other things, it seems to follow that the process of brain evolution is by no means at a standstill – we can predict further changes will take place in the next few thousand years. (We might even be right!)

However, it's worth looking at the titles in the "references" section. These include "Reconstructing the evolutionary history of microcephalin, a gene controlling human brain size", and "Adaptive evolution of ASPM, a major determinant of cerebral cortical size in humans", both published in Human Molecular Genetics.

Notice what's going on in these articles. Evolution is not being proven in these articles – it's assumed as a fundamental process on which further research is based.

Research articles assume Newton's laws and the laws of thermodynamics without seeing the need to re-establish them, even though they're "just theories". Real science treats evolution the same way. Any "debate" over whether evolution is real exists only at the political level.

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