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Author | Topic: How Evolution changed humans’ appearance | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
WJK Junior Member (Idle past 3755 days) Posts: 22 Joined: |
Theme: How evolution improved human beauty!
In our society we not only see beauty or attractiveness in the bodies of other people, but we mentally grade it and in some cases measure it in the form of beauty competitions for females and body development competitions for men amongst other competitions centred around appearance of our bodies. An outstanding competition for females is the Miss World competition for beautiful women from around the world. The winner of a Miss World competition must be considered near the pinnacle of female beauty. If we could determine the genealogical lineage of Miss World, we would see that lineage going back generation by generation without a break back to a single living cell, but for our purposes here, consider the line back near to the start of our species, say some 200,000 years ago. The line would be through a female at every generation, some tens of thousands of generations. Let’s choose a random generation at about the 200,000 year mark and give the female mother of that generation the title MotherOne. We can call her partner in producing a daughter for the next generation, FatherOne. My limited research does not allow me to conjecture up images of MotherOne and FatherOne of that generation, but I would guess that in appearance they would be closer to other Great Apes than to Miss World. So what happens during the succeeding generations that changes the images of the women to finally arrive at Miss World. The daughter of MotherOne and FatherOne inherits physical characteristics from both parents through Chromosomes X and Y and introducing FatherOne into the line could make significant changes to the child’s appearance, but they need not improve her appearance or beauty level. But there is the possibility of another factor being introduced into the biology of the child, and that is the introduction of a hereditary mutation. The probabilities of a mutation effecting an improvement in the appearance of the child may be very low, but as it can occur at every generation, in tens of thousand of generations the probabilities improve. As the generations from MotherOne unfold, changes in the appearance of the progeny are affected by the factors mentioned above, but is there another factor that may have a greater effect on the appearance of Miss World’s female ancestors? At each generation Motherx will have a Fatherx from the local male population. In many of those generations Motherx will have a choice for Fatherx and may well choose according to the beauty level of available and suitable adult males in the local population. This introduces a bias in favour of increased beauty in many succeeding generations, culminating in Miss World. If we accept that in Miss World’s earlier generations humans recognised beauty levels in each other, then the above hypothesis may be reasonable, with mate selection being a strong driving force. I wonder if recent scientific research throws any light on the hypothesis. WJK in Adelaide, South Australia.
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WJK Junior Member (Idle past 3755 days) Posts: 22 Joined: |
My emphasis was on Motherx. If her daughter was to gain improved appearance perhaps her best chance would be for Motherx to choose an attractive mate. If Fatherx does the choosing I didn't think there was much chance of the daughter's appearance improving.
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WJK Junior Member (Idle past 3755 days) Posts: 22 Joined: |
Human beauty may not have been very important to Miss World's line through the evolutionary process, but it appears to have happened and I find it interesting to conjecture the mechanism at work that effected the change. I'm only considering this one case - there are obviously multitudes of procreations that produce beauty levels like mine!!!!!
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WJK Junior Member (Idle past 3755 days) Posts: 22 Joined: |
If you don't believe that homo sapiens as a species started some 200,000 years ago then my whole argument is worthless to you.
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WJK Junior Member (Idle past 3755 days) Posts: 22 Joined: |
I'm sure you would agree that our logic allows us to examine information about a topic and accept or reject aspects as acceptable or not.
Anatomists and other human scientists have published a wealth of data about human evolution, including some theoretical images of early humans. Of course, you and I know that these images are unproven, but over a lifetime we learn to accept what is reasonable and reject what is not. You might reject, I do not!
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WJK Junior Member (Idle past 3755 days) Posts: 22 Joined: |
Thanks for the Wikipedia reference. I think it is essential to understand 'sexual selection'.
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WJK Junior Member (Idle past 3755 days) Posts: 22 Joined: |
I get the impression that your thoughts are dealing with present-day people.
My interest is in the 200,000-year period and tens of thousands of generations from an image I have of early homo sapiens to the present. Such marked differences and so long to make them.
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WJK Junior Member (Idle past 3755 days) Posts: 22 Joined: |
If Fatherx does the choosing, then he is probably one of a homogeneous group of males of that generation with a low probability of having an improved appearance over the others. Motherx needs to do the choosing based on the male who she sees is more attractive than the rest.
Please accept that I believe the major changes did not occur in modern times and that over many generations improved appearance happened in the early days when male appearance changed by chance and by heredity mutation. As populations increased through stages of cavemen, tribes, villages, etc. the chance of a male mutation to a better appearance (to Motherx of that generation) improved.
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WJK Junior Member (Idle past 3755 days) Posts: 22 Joined: |
RAZD
I must emphasize that my hypothesis was based on a single unbroken lineage from MotherOne to Miss World. I believe that in the enormous time between the births of these two women, huge changes occurred in their relative appearance and it is interesting to conjecture what could have caused the changes. Looking at what factors determining the appearance of the daughter of Motherx at any generation that are under Motherx's control, they seem to be very limited. When we became more civilized, when food supplies were established and living conditions were not geared mainly to survival, then Motherx may have had time and inclination to devote to other things such as finding an attractive mate from the eligible male population of her local area. Such larger male populations improved the probability of hereditary mutations giving a male an improved change of appearance which can spread through the population at that and later generations. In any case random changes in appearance of both sexes can have an effect on sexual selection and introduce a bias in the evolutionary process in favour of improved appearance. RAZD, Please be aware that I am searching for a reasonable explanation of the change. Let me know if you have your own explanation.
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WJK Junior Member (Idle past 3755 days) Posts: 22 Joined: |
I'm sorry you are getting that impression.
I must emphasize that my hypothesis is based on a single lineage from MotherOne to Miss World and I'm considering only Motherx as the child-bearer at each generation. Motherx will mate with Fatherx at each generation and her daughter will inherit traits from both. Why I think Fatherx will have more influence on inherited genes is because mating selection for Motherx can involve many males which improves the probability of a mutation in one of the males which improves his appearance, thus making him more attractive to Motherx, if she has a choice of selection. This can be a bias in mate selection spread over countless generations to effect the change of appearance. Do you have your own explanation of the massive change?
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WJK Junior Member (Idle past 3755 days) Posts: 22 Joined: |
I don't think it is any different for earlier humans.
My hypothesis is based on Motherx at every generation, where she mates with Fatherx and gives birth to a daughter. I believe that there is a bias in the evolutionary process for Miss World and I find it interesting to try to find the reason for this bias. I don't believe Motherx had much control over the process apart from selecting or being selected by Fatherx. The reason I think this is that there is not much she can do to effect her chromosome x and thus the appearance of her daughter due to chromosome x. A single person's chance of a hereditary mutation which improves that aspect is pretty remote, while the chance of a male in the wider population is much better and it can spread through not only the next generation, but succeeding generations which could be picked up by sexual selection by Motherx through Chromosome y. I believe a significant improvement in the appearance of humans would spread like wildfire through the population! Do you have your own explanation?
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WJK Junior Member (Idle past 3755 days) Posts: 22 Joined: |
In my learning mode, I am always pleased to hear opinions of others and take them into account!
I must try to find some evidence that 200,000 years ago, MotherOne "would be far more similar to Miss World than to the other Great Apes". Perhaps my hypothesis might have been more credible if I had placed MotherOne some time earlier when she would have been one of the species which later led to both humans and chimpanzees - from my limited memory, was it homo erectus?.
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WJK Junior Member (Idle past 3755 days) Posts: 22 Joined: |
Many thanks for that correction. Not being a professional I have just picked up bits and pieces over the years on this subject.
You are obviously highly knowledeable on this subject and I would like to hear your opinion on what I have called the hypothesis of evolutionary change from MotherOne to Miss World - do you think there was a bias towards a more attractive appearance, and if so, what was the process to achieve it?
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WJK Junior Member (Idle past 3755 days) Posts: 22 Joined: |
Good question! Do you think this evolutionary nonsense is just pure chance in the content of Chromosomes x and y?
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WJK Junior Member (Idle past 3755 days) Posts: 22 Joined: |
Thanks for your comments! You are giving me a biology lesson and for that I'm grateful.
So can you comment on the hypothesis that a bias exists in the process of evolution from MotherOne to Miss World? In spite of my ignorance on human evolution I find it interesting to examine the way our appearance changes with time and is the primary reason for putting up the article. So far we seem to be skirting around the edges.
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