The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution
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21 C. Stringer and C. Gamble, In Search of the Neanderthals: Solving the Puzzle of Human Origins (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994).
22 In The Social Conquest of Earth, Edward O. Wilson stresses the importance of the evolution of advanced social life, achieved in two very different ways, by Homo sapiens and by social insects such as ants and termites.
23 C. Spearman, “‘General intelligence,’ objectively determined and measured,” American Journal of Psychology 15 (1904): 201–292; J. Duncan et al., “A neural basis for general intelligence,” Science 289 (2000): 457–460; I. J. Deary et al., “Genetic contributions to stability and change in intelligence from childhood to old age,” Nature 482 (2012): 212–215.
CHAPTER 10
1 That is, bad luck: one can’t help but think that Hamlet would have had much sympathy with William Bell, who wrote the lyrics of the blues standard “Born under a Bad Sign”: “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.”
2 I am grateful to Walter Gratzer for alerting me to this, along with many others in a similar vein, such as “Scientists Make Gorillas Pregnant.”
3 M. J. Noad et al., “Cultural revolution in whale songs,” Nature 408 (2000): 537.
4 M. S. Brainard and A. J. Doupe, “What songbirds teach us about learning,” Nature 417 (2002): 351–358.
5 Now I am older and past my prime, I can play practically anything, even Whitesnake.
6 As reported by Humphrey Carpenter in J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (London: HarperCollins, 1977).
7 C. Henshilwood et al., “Emergence of modern human behavior: Middle Stone Age engravings from South Africa,” Science 295 (2002): 1278–1280.
CHAPTER 1 1
1 When anyone uses the word “surely” in an argument, it usually means that they’ve had to resort to special pleading.
2 J. M. Dally et al., “Food-caching western scrub-jays keep track of who was watching when,” Science 312 (2006): 1662–1665.
3 N. J. Emery and N. S. Clayton, “Effects of experience and social context on prospective caching strategies by scrub jays,” Nature 414 (2001): 443–446.
4 S. Baron-Cohen et al., “Does the autistic child have a ‘theory of mind’?,” Cognition 21 (1985): 37–46.
5 S. Ramsden et al., “Verbal and non-verbal intelligence changes in the teenage brain,” Nature 479 (2011): 113–116; K. Powell, “How does the teenage brain work?,” Nature 442 (2006): 865–867.
6 In the notorious song by Harry “The Hipster” Gibson. I have a truly marvelous anecdote about this song, but this footnote is too small to contain it. And, in case you were wondering, the perpetrator wasn’t Mr. Murphy. He was just as puzzled by the occurrence of nembutal in his overalls.
7 You can find it in English in Borges’s collection, Labyrinths.
8 K. Smith, “Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will,” Nature 477 (2011): 23–25.
9 See for example the interview with vision researcher Christof Koch in Science 335 (2012): 1426–1427.
10 N. J. Dominy and P. W. Lucas, “Ecological importance of trichromatic vision to primates,” Nature 410 (2001): 363–366.
11 N. J. Dingemanse et al., “Behavioural reaction norms: Animal personality meets individual plasticity,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 25 (2010): 81–89; J. Stamps and T. G. G. Groothuis, “The development of animal personality: Relevance, concepts and perspectives,” Biological Reviews 85 (2010): 301–325.
12 D. Cyranoski, “Pet project,” Nature 466 (2010): 1036–1038.
13 M. Wolf et al., “Life-history trade-offs favour the evolution of animal personalities,” Nature 447 (2007): 581–584.
14 The literature on this is enormous. See for example M. Nielsen et al., “A longitudinal investigation of self-other discrimination and the emergence of mirror self-recognition,” Infant Behavior and Development 26 (2003): 213–226.
15 T. Suddendorf and E. Collier-Baker, “The evolution of visual self-recognition: Evidence of absence in lesser apes,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 276 (2009): 1671–1677; J. M. Plotnick et al., “Self-recognition in an Asian elephant,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 103 (2006): 17053–17057; D. Reiss and L. Marino, “Mirror self-recognition in the bottlenose dolphin: A case of cognitive convergence,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 98 (2001): 5937–5942; H. Prior et al., “Mirror-induced behavior in the magpie (Pica pica): Evidence of self-recognition,” PLOS Biology 6 (2008): e202, doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060202.
16 See for example J. L. Brown and A. M. Eklund, “Kin recognition and the major histocompatibility complex: An integrative review,” American Naturalist 143 (1994): 435–461.
AFTERWORD
1 I’m thinking of Independence Day, a popcorn movie, which I reviewed somewhat witheringly in Nature 386 (1996): 681.
2 The first person to show me this paragraph taken out of context by creationists will be featured on my blog.
3 See for example R. L. Mancinelli et al., “Biopan-survival I: Exposure of osmophiles Synechococcus sp. (Nageli) and Haloarcula sp. to the space environment,” Advances in Space Research 22 (1998): 327–334.
Index
Acanthostega, x
Acheulian (or Acheulean), 130
Adams, Ansel, 163
adapid, ix
Aelian (Aelianus Tacticus): Tactics, 29
Alexander the Great, 149
algae, 44
Alvin (submersible), 2
“aquatic ape” hypothesis, 114–15, 140
Archaeopteryx, 53–55, 57
Ardipithecus (genus), 96
Ardipithecus kadabba, 94
Ardipithecus ramidus, 94, 121–22
artificial selection, 21; analogy with natural selection, 21
Atapuerca, Sierra de, 88
atlatl, 124–26
Australia, human colonization of, 3, 5, 78
Australopithecus (genus), 11, 74, 76, 84–85, 88–90, 92
Australopithecus afarensis, 5, 93–94, 122
Australopithecus africanus, 82–83, 87, 93, 95
Australopithecus anamensis, 94
Australopithecus garhi, 134
Australopithecus robustus. See Paranthropus robustus
Australopithecus sediba, 87, 134
autism-spectrum disorders, 152, 158–59
Bacillus cereus, 42
bacteria: cooperation of, 44, 46; metabolism of, 43; profusion of, 42–43
Bateson, William, 35, 82
Beethoven, Ludwig van: Pastoral symphony, 151
Bell, William: “Born under a Bad Sign,” 194n1
Beowulf (Old English poem), 59–61, 65, 71
Beowulf Effect, 61, 71
Berreby, David: Us and Them, 98
biofilms, 44, 46
bipedality, 95, 106–7; evolution of, 112–23, 169–70; in Ardipthecus ramidus, 121; in Australopithecus afarensis, 122; in Oreopithecus, 123; and sexual selection, 117–18, 120–21; teleological explanations of, 113–14, 117
birds: evolution of, 50–54; flight and flightlessness in, 51–54; song learning in, 147–48, 150
Black, Davidson, 84
Borges, Jorge Luis: Funes the Memorious, 160–61
Bramble, Dennis, 122
Broom, Robert, 83–84, 184n29
Brunet, Michel, 94–95
Burgess Shales, 64, 66
Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 99
Carroll, Lewis: Humpty Dumpty’s recitation, 148; Through the Looking-Glass, 20
Cartesian theater, 109, 130, 161–62, 164
cave paintings, 110, 132
childhood, 132–33, 158
chimpanzee, 14, 17, 63, 74–75, 81, 83, 93, 95, 114, 128
chloroplasts, 44, 46
Chou Kou Tien. See Zhoukoudian
Churchill, Winston, 148
Cicero (Roman writer), 28–30, 37
Clayton, Nicky, 135–37, 158, 163
Clegg, Brian, 127
clothing, evolution of, 120–21
&nb
sp; coelacanth, 79–80
color, perception of, 163
communication. See under language
complexity: costs, 46, 50; equation with improvement, 42–43, 47; evolution of, see under evolution; measurement of, 43, 46–47; step changes in, 46
conodonts, 67–68
consciousness. See sentience
cookery, influence on human evolution of, 125, 139, 141–43
cormorant, Galápagos flightless, 51
Corvidae see crow family
creationism, 101–5
cretinism, 8–9
crow family, 135–36, 138, 144–45
cystic fibrosis, 44
Dart, Raymond, 82–83, 85, 95
Darwin, Charles, xiii, 12, 14, 27, 30, 32–34, 57, 113; The Descent of Man, 81: The Origin of Species, 12, 14, 20–21, 30, 33–34, 38, 43, 53, 80; imperfection of fossil record, 14, 40, 57; natural selection, 27; “tangled bank” metaphor, 12, 14, 32, 37, 46, 94, 108, 139, 164; visit to Galápagos Islands, 4
Darwin, Erasmus, 29–30; Zoonomia, 29
Darwinism: eclipse of, 35, 37, 82; social dimension of, 38
Darwinius masillae, ix–xi
Dawkins, Richard: The Greatest Show On Earth, 32
Deep Time. See In Search of Deep Time (Gee)
Deinonychus, 53–54
Denisovans, 7, 78, 92, 136
Dennett, Daniel, 163: Consciousness Explained, 109, 130, 161, 163
Descartes, René, 161
Diamond, Jared, 116, 126, 147; The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee, 189n16
diseases: of childhood, 26; inherited, 26–27; natural selection and, 27
Dmanisi, 89
DNA (deoxyribose nucleic acid), 32, 44, 46, 47, 49, 93; ancient, 77–78; mitochondrial (mtDNA), 91–92; nuclear, 91
double extinction, 70
dodo, 51
dogs, 160, 165; domestication of, 126–27; social behaviour of, 150, 155–56, 166
Doushantuo phosphorites, 67
Dragon-Bone Cave. See Zhoukoudian
Dubois, Eugène, 81, 84
Dunbar, Robin, 109, 152, 154, 163; Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, 152
ebu gogo, 79
effective population size, definition of, 182n4
Eldredge, Niles, 39
elephant birds of Madagascar, 52
Elliot Smith, Grafton, 82, 83
encephalization quotient, 138, 143
endonuclease, 49–50
endosymbiosis, 44–45
English language, evolution of, 58–59. See also Old English
Eoanthropus. See Piltdown Man
EQ. See encephalization quotient
evolution: community of descent, 31–32, 57, 102; complexity, 42–44, 46–47, 50; costs and benefits, 46–47, 50; definitions of, x, 20, 28–30, 33; demonstration of, 16; “descent with modification,” 31–32; fossils as evidence of, 57; in the sense of generation, 33, 35; human, 11, 13, 40, 55, 73–79, 83–84, 91–93; on islands, 4, 6, 52; limitations of, x; linear view of, 9, 11, 46, 76, 104; loss as a consequence of, 12–13, 17, 40, 46, 50, 54–55; perfection in, 47; popular views of, x–xi, 13, 40; progressive, 12–14, 17, 37–38, 40, 42, 76, 104, 113, 164; purpose, 44; relationship with natural selection, 28, 37, 39, 45; social dimension of, 38; transformation, 30–31, 35, 37, 39; treelike pattern of, 33–34, 39; trends in, x, 12–13
“expensive tissue hypothesis,” 140
Falk, Dean: The Fossil Chronicles, 174n13, 184n24
feathers: as airfoils, 51; in dinosaurs, 52
Fisher, Ronald A., 116
Flores, 3–6: fauna of, 4–5; stone tools from, 131
Form and Function (Russell), 35
fossilization, 11, 15; cases of exceptional preservation, 63–64; processes of, 61–63, 65, 67; unlikelihood of, 61–63
fossil record, 14, 40; completeness of, 66–70; human, 75–76, 93; imperfection of, 57–58; reliance on presence of rocks, 70
fossils: causes of, see fossilization; as evidence for evolutionary change, 57, 99; etymology, 61; interpretation of, 56, 100–101, 103
FOXP2 (“language gene”), 55
free will, 162
generation, theories of, 35–36
genes, 23–24, 49
genetics: discovery of, 23, 34–35
Georgia, Republic of, 10–11, 89
Gibraltar (skull), 80–81
Gibson, Harry “The Hipster,” 195n6
Gigantoraptor, 53
gluteus maximus, 193n7
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 34
gossip. See under language
Gould, Stephen Jay, 13, 39, 42, 61, 64; Full House, 42; Wonderful Life, 13, 39, 61, 64
grammar. See under language
grandmother hypothesis, 142–43
“great chain of being,” 34, 36
Haeckel, Ernst, 14, 36–38; misinterpretation of natural selection, 37
hand axe, 89, 90, 127, 130–31, 133
Harvey, William: Exercitationes de generatione animalium, 33
heritable variation. See under variation
Hesperornis, 52
Hinton, Martin, 85
HMS Beagle, 4
hominin, definition of, 174n7
Homo (genus), 6, 76–77, 86–90, 92, 134; coexistence with Australopithecus, 7, 76; coexistence with Neanderthals, 7
Homo antecessor, 89
Homo erectus, 7, 76–77, 84, 87–90, 122, 130–32, 139–40; association with hand axe, 130–31, 133, 149; comparison with Homo floresiensis, 10; development of, 132; evolution and spread of, 11, 89–90; origins and definitions of, 87; presence on Flores, 3–4, 6; presence in Georgia, 10–11, 90; size trends, 10
Homo ergaster, 89
Homo floresiensis, 5–11, 57, 73, 76–80, 88, 90, 109; as anachronism, 8; brain, 5–6, 8–10; comparison with Homo erectus, 10, 90; cretinism, 8–9; criticism of, 6–8; discovery, 4–5; distinctiveness as a species, 7; geological age of, 5, 9, 78–79; “Hobbit,” 6–8, 10–11; implications of, x–xi, 7, 11, 77; microcephaly, 7–8; naming of, 6; as pathological version of Homo sapiens, 8; Sundanthropus florianus, 6; tools, 5–6, 9, 88
Homo gautengensis, 87
Homo georgicus, 89
Homo habilis, 11, 86–87, 90, 107, 133–34, 139
Homo heidelbergensis, 88–89, 130, 139
Homo neanderthalensis. See Neanderthal Man
Homo rhodesiensis, 89
Homo rudolfensis, 86–87
Homo sapiens, 7, 76–80, 88, 90, 106, 127, 132, 144; chin as hallmark of, 5; evolution in Africa, 5, 7, 75, 90–92, 139; evolution of large brain, 138–41; interbreeding with Neanderthals, 7, 78, 91; presence on Flores, 3, 5; technology of, 132; variation in, 74–75
human evolution. See under evolution
human exceptionalism, xi, 11, 73; applied to Homo floresiensis, 7;
humpback whales, 146, 150
Independence Day (movie), 196n1
In Search of Deep Time (Gee), xii–xiii, 101; creationist misuse of, xii–xiii, 101–3
intelligence, 108–9, 134, 135, 137; artificial, 163; general features of, 137, 144; relationship with brain size, 135–38, 144–45; relationship with social behavior, 137, 144–45; Spearman’s “general intelligence,” 144
intentionality, 154, 165
IQ (intelligence quotient), 144
island dwarfism, 4, 10
Java Man. See Pithecanthropus
kakapo, 51
Keats, John, 157; Ode to a Nightingale, 158
Keith, Arthur, 184n27
Kimeu, Kamoya, 89
Kipling, Rudyard: If, 148
Koobi Fora, 87
kouprey, 79
Kromdraai, 83
LaBelle, Patti: “Lady Marmalade,” 148, 151
Lamarck, Jean Baptiste de, 34, 39: Philosophie zoologique, 34
Lamarckism, 35
language, 109, 133, 146–56; as nonverbal communication, 151, 155; as social behavior, 150, 152–53; as vocal communication, 146–47, 151; gossip, 152–53; learning, 149–50; meaning, 147–51, 1
55; relationship with grammar, 147
last universal common ancestor (LUCA), 176n26
Lazarus taxa, 70
Leakey, Louis, 86, 88, 133, 139
Leakey, Mary, 86
Leakey, Richard, 87, 89
Lehrer, Tom, 1–2, 159
Lewis, Clive Staples, 153
Liang Bua cave, 3–5, 9, 78
Lieberman, Daniel, 122
LINEs (long interspersed elements), 49–50
Linnaeus, 33
locomotion, human, 112–13, 122
London Review of Books (journal), xii
Lowell, Percival, 99–100
“Lucy.” See Australopithecus afarensis
Lyell, Charles: Principles of Geology, 30
Madagascar star orchid, 106
Maddox, John, xi–xii; What Remains to Be Discovered, xii
major histocompatibility complex (MHC), 166
Malapa, 87
Margulis, Lynn, 43
Martin, Robert D., 17
Martineau, Harriet, 38
Maynard Smith, John, 43
McGowan, Chris, xi
Meinig, D. W. (historian), 59
menopause, 142–43
microcephaly, 7–8
Microraptor, 53–54
Miller, Hugh, 96
mimiviruses, 49
mirror self-recognition, 165
“missing links,” ix–x, 7, 16, 31, 46, 55, 57, 73; allure of, 2;
mitochondria, 44, 46, 91
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). See under DNA
“mitochondrial Eve,” 91–92
moas, 52
Morgan, Elaine, 114
“multiregional continuity,” 91
Mycobacterium leprae (leprosy bacillus), 48
Mycobacterium tuberculosis (tuberculosis bacillus), 48
mycorrhizae, 45–46
Nariokotome, 89
Nash, Ogden: An Introduction to Dogs, 160
natural selection, 163–64; as agency of progression, 13, 47; analogy with artificial selection, 21; Haeckel’s misinterpretation of, 37; influence of environment on, 24–28; influence of superabundance on, 26–28; influence of time on, 27–28; influence of variation on, 21–28; mechanism, 32–33; relationship with disease, 27; relationship with evolution, 28, 32–33, 39, 47; simplicity of, 21, 39, 47
Nature (journal), x–xii, 1–3, 5–6, 82, 83, 91, 95
nature philosophy, 33–34, 36–37
Neanderthal Man, 7, 84–85, 88, 90, 130, 136, 139, 143–44; discovery of, 80–81; genes in modern humans, 7, 78, 91
nematodes, 65–66