Modern Humans are anomalous. We have no business being here. We have the intelligence to make computers and travel to our moon, yet our basic behavior is pretty much identical to chimpanzees in the wild, which we’re very closely related to according to our DNA.
This makes no sense. Evolution doesn’t happen in sudden bursts and leaps, that theory to explain our presence doesn’t account for the slow evolution of every other creature on Earth, just us. That somehow our type of ape was special, and leaped ahead of all the other creatures to replace our fangs and coats of hair with intelligence and inventiveness.
The only way to speed up the process of evolutionary change is by breeding. We can create a whole new breed of dogs in just a few human generations but if we leave the new breed alone and isolated, they will look the same a thousand years from now that they look today. They won’t morph into a different looking breed. They will, if thousands more years pass and evolutionary forces are there to cause changes, but only then, and their behavior will change as well.
Different breeds of dogs have all sorts of bred-in behavior patterns. Some are very aggressive, some very docile, some nervous and high strung, some shy, some loving and loyal. Bird dogs don’t need to be trained to lift a leg and point, they were trained to long ago and now it’s in their DNA. Behavior patterns are part of evolution’s physical changes and part of the way we breed animals. Only we do it much faster than evolution and we do it to suit us, not the animals.
If I were breeding chimpanzees to perform useful work, I’d want them to walk more upright and have more intelligence. I’d need them to be capable of speech and a useful level of understanding of what was wanted of them. They would need to have much better brains than they have now.
Neanderthal Man appeared at least 200,000 years ago, apparently out of nowhere and has been thought for decades to have predated modern Man. Yet now we know that Homo Sapiens has been around just as long, and there was another human type, the Denisovans, that we were all interbreeding with. In fact we were apparently all interbreeding with each other.
What if we weren’t? What if we were being bred, like dogs, and then were bred with other breeds for particular qualities, and what if the breeders were only interested in having good workers who could and would follow orders? That would explain our sudden appearance as intelligent beings where before there were these rather stupid, very ape-like primates, and if it wasn’t important to our breeders to breed our violent nature out of us, because we weren’t capable of being a threat to them anyway, then why bother to do it?
No one knows what our true story is, that far back, all we can do is look at the present and try to work backwards to figure it out. Fortunately, the more our technology advances, the more we come to discover.
Unique gene passed by extinct human species makes Tibetans superhuman
https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/genetic/tibetan-unique-denisovan-gene-5454/
A unique gene that makes the Tibetans genuine supermen (atop the Himalayas of course)
The gene in question is called EPAS1 and helps the Tibetans adapt to extreme altitudes of 15,000 feet or more. In a way, Tibetans are superhuman mountain people, since they are able to survive in conditions that could normally kill a non-Tibetan.
“We have very clear evidence that this version of the gene came from Denisovans,” said principal author Rasmus Nielsen, a Berkeley professor of integrative biology, in a press release.
The Denisovans are a group of ancient humans that have only recently come to our knowledge. In March 2010, scientists announced the discovery of a finger bone fragment of a juvenile female who lived about 41,000 years ago, found in the remote Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia – a cave which was also inhabited by humans and Neanderthals. Nobody knows what Denisovans looked like because there are so few fossils. But geneticists have managed to sequence their entire genome to a high degree of accuracy.
A breakthrough discovery
Particularly, the gene only activates a high-altitudes or atmospheres with low-oxygen content. It’s during this time that a normal homo sapiens gets in trouble, because the low-oxygen atmosphere triggers a rush of hemoglobin, which is the red-colored protein responsible for transporting oxygen in blood. But it’s too much of a good thing causing blood thickening, which can result in heart attacks and death. When the EPAS1 gene activates, however, only a slight increase of hemoglobin is triggered – just enough to compensate for the oxygen reduction.
That’s pretty interesting. Makes me wonder how these Denisovans developed that gene, did they live at high altitudes for millennia? When people specialize their bodies, like weight lifters or runners, they can do amazing things. We’re so adaptable as a species, it’s like we have this massive tool chest that allows us to do almost anything if we’re focused enough. Why is it that no other creature on Earth comes anywhere close to this?