Fermi Paradox

[Green Baron]

Yummy :-)

 

[Diche Bach]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_(ecology)

. . .  SNIP . . .

Several pieces even leave the Earth orbit and spread the digestion reuslt around the star.

DAMN! Always running out of like allowance within hours of logging on to this board! 

[PB666]

On 9/1/2016 at 10:21 AM, Sigma88 said:

just because humans feel like they are above nature that doesn't mean they are.

humans are interfering with evolution/natural selection just as everything else is.

asteroid impacts interfere with evolution/natural selection. but I bet you don't consider those some kind of non-natural-phenomenon

Asteroids are natural selectors. Which by the way Kimura set down in the fifties or so that just about all the evolution that we see is the result of variable selection, kind of replaces natural selection.
Over time selection varies, today asteroids, tomorrow humans, and later on a red-giant sun. If you look at the most evolved genome humans have modified its not genetically modified corn or soybeans, its actually 8000 year old bread wheat, its genome consists of a fiddley wheat, a spelt and a goat grass. Large chunks have been removed. Its not clear how humans managed this, but it appears that the A and B genomes (wheat and spelt) formed first, then the goat-grass as added later. The various contaminants were common in the fields at the time and luck would just have it that. But the question of cultivation, humans are not the first, leaf cutter ants cultivate.

What we do is evolution, whatever tag you want to place on it, artificial selection just divides variable selection into a antropocentric view of evolution. The word artificial implies intentional, but some of what is claimed to be artificial was not intentional. The dingo, for instances, was not intended to be a free roaming wild dog, nor was it neccesarily meant to introgress with European breads but alas thats how some of the Australian dog breeds came about.
 

 

[Sigma88]

@PB666 that's exactly what I meant.

Edited September 12, 2016 by Sigma88

[Diche Bach]

So  . . . little bit of a side-step but actually still on topic for the thread . . . was reading up about Osiris Rex a bit the other day. Was really surprised that they have _already_ detected evidence of amino acids in either comets or asteroids!? Wish I could find the page I was reading.

If that is true, I am stunned because that to me would have been one of the most momentous discoveries of human history, and I just missed it.

Have you guys encountered anything about this in your flights of fancy?

I know they are confident Bunny (or whatever the name of the target asteroid for Osiris Rex is) has CARBON in it/ on it, but that is a helluva lot different from amino acids as far as I know.

[Green Baron]

 

The early domestications where not intended, how could they have been. There was no imagination of a life with household plants and animals, it happened over the course of a few thousand years that the whole package of storage, animals, plants and rigid buildings developed. And all the time hunting was still a large part in nutrition. The complete package then spread out. For the mesolithic population in central europe it wasn't even attractive to lead a life in work, dirt and sicknesses. Much has been written and is actually published, just don't read Wikipedia, you are sure to miss the big picture :-)

I don't even see an "interference" in these early active uses like i do not see an "interference" of insects with evolutionary processes because they have no plan. I see it there where a goal, an intention comes into play and where the foremost natural species are replaced by the artificial ones. Which is, by the way, a great concern these days, a legal and a technical/biological one. The main difference between @Sigma88and me was the view whether the artificial processes inside the natural ones were natural or not.

Sure, an asteroid is natural selection, just in a very drastic way. Is it large enough then biological evolution is reset to a basic state or completely eliminated. Thanks to the configuration of our solar system that only happened in an early phase of the earth (but see the nasa page of neos, an impact cannot be totally ruled out). Adaptation needs time, a few generations at least, depending on which attributes are adapted to which conditions and whether the variations in the code allow for that adaptation. If not -> extinction. Speciation needs a long time and a free niche in which the new species can evolve without intermixing with the ancestors. Human interference does not grant the time for that adaptation, which is the reason for an actual extinction event.

I do not question evolutionary principles, i only call that interference. The other view is that it is not interference because we cannot escape the natural constraints.

 

 

Edited September 12, 2016 by Green Baron

[Diche Bach]

Actually, foragers seem to have known fully well how to domesticate plants. Many of them who have been intensively studied in historic times engaged in "passive" domestication. For example, a lady picking berries observes that, in this clump of six bushes, this one is the "best," so she does a bit of digging/weeding/pruning/replanting to help it in favor of the other five. When she and her band come back around to this part of their seasonal round in a year or whatever, the good one will have increased in size numbers relative to the other lower-yielding ones. She almost certainly undersood that: if she and her children took the time to replant 10 or 20% of the "high yield" berries they were collecting, she could turn that little patch into more of a "garden" and less of a "natural clump of berry bushes." But in a world of plenty broken up by nothing more than seasonality and geographic dispersion, why bother? Her and her ancestors had been passing by that clump of berry bushes for as anyone could remember, and knew the times of year to head round that part to exploit it (even to the point of knowing how any particular years variations on weather would impact any particular resource in their territory and thus how to adjust their seasonal round to take advantage of opportunties). If anything, settling down and becoming dependent on a handful of crops may well have led to LESS expertise about botany, climate, physiography, and ecology more generally.

The "development" of agriculture probably had more to do with a desire NOT to roam around more than it had to do with a desire to make a living off of intensified domestication. They still are not sure, but population pressure and warfare around the epicenters of the Neolithic seem likely explanations. Also worth keeping in mind: for many thousands of years large fractions of humanity remained foragers else nomadic pastoralists, and these "Bar bar bar . . ." folks tended to be a good reason to build walls around your cities.

Also, much of the innovations and cultural "discoveries" that made agriculture work had more to do with social organization, who gives orders and who takes orders, as well as food storage, preparation and division of labor, not necessarily so much with "discovering" how to get grasses to yield more. Indeed, turning the earliest domesticates into what they became later: much more energetically dense if not nutrition-dense foods, often took many generations (a process that has continued in fits and starts throughout the entire history of civilization and with the latest innovations being labeled "Genetic Modfiied Organisms" . . . LOL, we humans have been "genetically modifying organisms for thousands of years, just doing it the old fashioned way! Facilitating some individuals breeding with others!). But the earliest agricultural societies probably suffered a good bit deal of various malnutritional disorders and related pathologies as a result of becoming dependent on a more narrow variety of foods.

[Green Baron]

40 minutes ago, Diche Bach said:

So  . . . little bit of a side-step but actually still on topic for the thread . . . was reading up about Osiris Rex a bit the other day. Was really surprised that they have _already_ detected evidence of amino acids in either comets or asteroids!? Wish I could find the page I was reading.

If that is true, I am stunned because that to me would have been one of the most momentous discoveries of human history, and I just missed it.

Have you guys encountered anything about this in your flights of fancy?

I know they are confident Bunny (or whatever the name of the target asteroid for Osiris Rex is) has CARBON in it/ on it, but that is a helluva lot different from amino acids as far as I know.

Actually the elements are not rare. So that's not such a big surprise.

Furthermore: population pressure and warfare is an outcome of domestication, not a reason that drove it. In the neolithic the process of building the "neolithic package" had already ended.

And, i never heard of a "desire" not to roam around, a hunter/gatherers life is by far easier than a farmer's. It is not attractive to live "domesticated". The causes why that was developed at that time in that area is unknown, speculation futile. It is only observable that once it had begun it didn't stop. The steps and timeframes from pure hunter gatherer over mixed states to fully developed package are quite clear. I'd rather ask myself why didn't it happen 115.000 years earlier, in OIS-5e ?

 

Edited September 12, 2016 by Green Baron

[Diche Bach]

20 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Furthermore: population pressure and warfare is an outcome of domestication, not a reason that drove it. In the neolithic the process of building the "neolithic package" had already ended.

Well, that is one school of thought  one of several.

When I say 'desire not to roam' around, what I mean is: the motivations to settle down probably didn't initially have to do with "and this would be a great way to have more / better food, cause we are so hungry all the time."

My guess is, it had more to do with "Well what are options these days? We cannot keep roaming around like Grandma and Grandpa did because _insert problem (with population pressures/territoriality/intergroup violence being seemingly prime candidates), so what do we do?"

Quote

Actually the elements are not rare. So that's not such a big surprise.

Cargon, oxygen, nitrogen (along with sulfur and phosphorus) "not rare?"  I was under the impression that the organic elements were among THE MOST rare in the universe/galaxy/solar system with Earth alone having any relative abundances of these which gets into the ~1% ballpark . . . all from memory so don't quite me on that exact number, but . . . "not rare" is not what I understood carbon and the others to be in the cosmos. EXCEEDINGLY rare is what I understood them to be. Please do correct me if I'm in error, not an area of specialization for me by any means, just something I've taken a passing interest in over the years . . .

Worth noting: we humans have been "masters" of domestication for a LOT longer than we have been "farmers"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1078803/Mans-oldest-friend-Scientists-discover-grandad-modern-dogs--31-700-years-ago.html

Edited September 13, 2016 by Diche Bach

[Green Baron]

"Settling down" was not an act, it was a process of a few (not many) 1000s of years. The conditions had to be right. The people in the process didn't realize that they were actually about to change their lifestyle. Childe's "neolithic revolution" was influenced by a communist's view that man has to be master of his work and fate. Hunger most surely became an obvious problem after settling down, with the buildup of population-pressure. In every generation grandma and grandpa didn't live that different than the young folks, the process wasn't obvious.

Hunter/gatherers know no population pressure, to natural reasons. A mobile life forbids for a woman to have the next child before the other one is self-reliant. They probably had rather a problem with too few than many ...

 

Yes. Dog was domesticated long before a domus existed. See the site "Bonn-Oberkassel" :-)

 

Edit ... Fermi-Paradox, we strayed from the path :-)

Edited September 13, 2016 by Green Baron

[Bill Phil]

23 minutes ago, Diche Bach said:

with population pressures/territoriality/intergroup violence being seemingly prime candidates), so what do we do?"

Cargon, oxygen, nitrogen (along with sulfur and phosphorus) "not rare?"  I was under the impression that the organic elements were among THE MOST rare in the universe/galaxy/solar system with Earth alone having any relative abundances of these which gets into the ~1% ballpark . . . all from memory so don't quite me on that exact number, but . . . "not rare" is not what I understood carbon and the others to be in the cosmos. EXCEEDINGLY rare is what I understood them to be. Please do correct me if I'm in error, not an area of specialization for me by any means, just something I've taken a passing interest in over the years . . .

 

Lighter elements such as those are among the most common in the universe, after the big ones (hydrogen, helium). In fact, carbon is the fourth most abundant, after oxygen. The order is hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, neon, iron, nitrogen, silicon, magnesium, and sulfur. Of course, that is from Wikipedia....

[Diche Bach]

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

Lighter elements such as those are among the most common in the universe, after the big ones (hydrogen, helium). In fact, carbon is the fourth most abundant, after oxygen. The order is hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, neon, iron, nitrogen, silicon, magnesium, and sulfur. Of course, that is from Wikipedia....

Right, but the ranking is sort of irrelevant, given that two elements (H and He) comprise 99% of the universe and not much less relatively speaking for the solar system. From this standpoint, everything is rare except H and He

[Bill Phil]

3 minutes ago, Diche Bach said:

Right, but the ranking is sort of irrelevant, given that two elements (H and He) comprise 99% of the universe and not much less relatively speaking for the solar system. From this standpoint, everything is rare except H and He

Sure. But hydrogen makes a large portion of organic molecules, too. And nitrogen/oxygen/carbon is in quite a few places in the solar system.

[Diche Bach]

I tracked down the comment that sparked this discussion of elements, one line in the Osiris Rex Wiki Page

Quote

In particular, 101955 Bennu was selected because of the availability of pristinecarbonaceous material, a key element in organic molecules necessary for life as well as representative of matter from before the formation of Earth. Organic molecules, such as amino acids, have previously been found in meteorite and comet samples, indicating that some ingredients necessary for life can be naturally synthesized in outer space.^[1]

This statement is derived from this source: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/may/HQ_11-163_New_Frontier.html

and a search for "organic" in that article turns up two entries, both in this paragraph

Quote

RQ36 is approximately 1,900 feet in diameter or roughly the size of five football fields. The asteroid, little altered over time, is likely to represent a snapshot of our solar system's infancy. The asteroid also is likely rich in carbon, a key element in the organic molecules necessary for life. Organic molecules have been found in meteorite and comet samples, indicating some of life's ingredients can be created in space. Scientists want to see if they also are present on RQ36. 

Unfortunately, while the NASA source says simply "organic molecules" (lots of organic molecules don't have a lot to do with amino acids) the wiki pages adds "amino acids" and this is peculiar to me.

"Organic molecules" . . . oh sure, that didn't get my attention at all. Water is an organic molecule after all!

But Amino acids from meteorite and comet samples!? Really?

I am highly skeptical that is accurate

[Bill Phil]

1 minute ago, Diche Bach said:

 

"Organic molecules" . . . oh sure, that didn't get my attention at all. Water is an organic molecule after all!

 

No, water is not an organic molecule. There is no carbon present at all.

3 minutes ago, Diche Bach said:

I tracked down the comment that sparked this discussion of elements, one line in the Osiris Rex Wiki Page

This statement is derived from this source: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/may/HQ_11-163_New_Frontier.html

and a search for "organic" in that article turns up two entries, both in this paragraph

Unfortunately, while the NASA source says simply "organic molecules" (lots of organic molecules don't have a lot to do with amino acids) the wiki pages adds "amino acids" and this is peculiar to me.

"Organic molecules" . . . oh sure, that didn't get my attention at all. Water is an organic molecule after all!

But Amino acids from meteorite and comet samples!? Really?

I am highly skeptical that is accurate

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stardust/news/stardust_amino_acid.html

[Diche Bach]

Ah thank you Phil! Wow, that is pretty damn cool. I recall that they had predicted comets may have organics in them, but I somehow missed that they had actually discovered them.

So water, not organic . . . only stuff that binds with carbon? I always found that to be a strange way to divide the field of chemistry, but perhaps were I to study the subject more it would make sense. Why is that particular division conceived that way?

ADDIT: and also, why the hell does a comet

Quote

 highly probable that the entire comet-exposed side of the Stardust sample collection grid is coated with glycine that formed in space," 

That is mind boggling to me, but the again as you've noted, my understanding of organic chemistry is pretty rough . . . so maybe it isn't as amazing? How the hell did that stuff get there!?

Edited September 13, 2016 by Diche Bach

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, PB666 said:

Asteroids are natural selectors.

Very poor selectors. An asteroid devastates a half of continent, eliminating whole populations, no difference: ill or healthy species.
Of course if you don't mean selection lucky vs unlucky ones. But then the evolution theory would be formulated "Survives the most lucky s.o.b."

7 hours ago, PB666 said:

Its not clear how humans managed this, but it appears that the A and B genomes (wheat and spelt) formed first, then the goat-grass as added later.

It's clear.
"Look! An edible grass! Let's gather as much as we can hold!"

5 hours ago, Green Baron said:

a hunter/gatherers life is by far easier than a farmer's.

While you're enough young and healthy to walk and gather, and there is enough berries and mushrooms around.
Potatoes/carrots at least grow near the hut.

5 hours ago, Green Baron said:

The causes why that was developed at that time in that area is unknown, speculation futile. It is only observable that once it had begun it didn't stop.

1000 humans living together will always bend 100 people occasionally happened aside.

5 hours ago, Diche Bach said:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1078803/Mans-oldest-friend-Scientists-discover-grandad-modern-dogs--31-700-years-ago.html

A fat and tasty dog with a 30000 years old medal on its neck.
What any tribe needs.

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Hunter/gatherers know no population pressure, to natural reasons.

They became settlers when the Ice Age finished and this finished mostly all big animals, covered with 100 m layer of water almost all populated places, and caused them to hunt Scratte gophers with arrows rather than Sid and Manny big animals with spears. This looks like a population pressure.

Edited September 13, 2016 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

They became settlers when the Ice Age finished and this finished mostly all big animals, covered with 100 m layer of water almost all populated places, and caused them to hunt Scratte gophers with arrows rather than Sid and Manny big animals with spears. This looks like a population pressure.

Morning :-)

The last glacial maximum was long over. And id didn't have that impact in Palestina / Kurdistan where the early neolithic emerges first (besides many other places) as in central europe or north america. It's not directly connected, maybe indirectly. And the global sea level rise didn't cover almost all "population places", only those at the sea. And at that time there existed no settelements yet, only "kjöckenmöddinger" hills. What you mean could be the breaking of the natural dam in the marmara strait and the filling of the black sea which was a catastrophic event that destroyed a lot of late neolithic settlements in the basin. (If it took place).

Nope, humans kill actively from bacteria to top predator. And passively by destroying habitats. This will look like a catastrophic extinction event. Population above was connected to humans, not animals. Settlers have no such limitations as mobile groups for the amount of children they can have. Pressure comes when it's too much work to keep them fed or it was a bad year of farming.

Dogs weren't eaten, we'd find the bones with specific marks at fire places. They were hunting companions. Dog "domestication" could have been an incident or a self domestication. Incident version: a pack of wolves comes too close to a human camp. They are killed. Whelps survive, daddy let them live, the daughter "Daddy, they are so cute and will die, let me keep them !". Daddy hesitates cause there will be more mouths to feed, but it's been a good hunting season and the shaman says next season will be better. So they keep them. They are not allowed to mix up with the wild ones not far away for a few generations, otherwise we wouldn't recognize them as house- (read yurt-)hold dogs. The larger ones are chased off or killed (too dangerous at night), the smaller ones allowed as companions.

 

Edit: these domestications probably happened every now and then, it's not like there was a fair every year where dog breeders met to exchange their creations :-)

 

Edited September 13, 2016 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

And the global sea level rise didn't cover almost all "population places", only those at the sea.

Afaik, 85% of current population still lives near the sea.
If we take a look at the depth map of Mediterranean, we can see that almost all Eastern part is a plane covered with thin layer of water, 100 m or less. And it became underwater when the water level got 100 m higher.

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

And id didn't have that impact in Palestina / Kurdistan where the early neolithic emerges first

Yes, Cyprus and Zagros, too. But those civilizations appeared after the sea raising. Of course, mountains and plateaus themselves always were above the water.

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

Population above was connected to humans, not animals.

Any population is connected to food, and when the food extincts, they need another source of food.
Afaik, the Ice Age glacial maximum final was the threshold when the plants and animals pattern has dramatically changed, and the human population significantly decreased, as also lifespan, while goats replaced buffalos in their loot.

P.S.
Just a one more speculation. Dogs and (less) domestic cats look "childish" compared to their wild prototypes. Dogs can bark, more communicative, credulous than wolves. As I've heard, their necks allow them to look back rather than wolf. So, they look like an overage wolfling. Domestic cats are... er... more liberal.
Probably, when hunters/gatherers brought home different miniscule squeaking trash (infamous to eat, but unthrifty to throw out),
those of critters have survived who looked more kawaii and wagged the tail with greater amplitude to quickly get a human patron to protect the small beast from righteous anger of compatriots finding a chicken stolen while boots liquided. So, the more infantile it looked - the more chances to survive it had. A natural selection in artificial circumstances. Neoteny or die.

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

Dogs weren't eaten

Dogs are eaten, btw.

Edited September 13, 2016 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

45 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Afaik, 85% of current population still lives near the sea.
If we take a look at the depth map of Mediterranean, we can see that almost all Eastern part is a plane covered with thin layer of water, 100 m or less. And it became underwater when the water level got 100 m higher.

Today yes. Ice age hunter gatherers no. They lived in the cold steppe where the hunting animals were. And the eastern part of the mediterranean has depth of >4000m. Pls. do take a look at a chart.

 

Quote

Any population is connected to food, and when the food extincts, they need another source of food.
Afaik, the Ice Age glacial maximum final was the threshold when the plants and animals pattern has dramatically changed, and the human population significantly decreased, as also lifespan, while goats replaced buffalos in their loot.

Ice age hunter / gatherer where not restricted by food. Such restriction arises in developed neolithic societies. The processes at the end of the last glaciation are well understood, the advance of flora and changes in fauna documented. I do not have to time to describe everything i know because the subject is HUGE, climate, flora, fauna, inventions, sites .... if you're really interested, read a book or three, different views on the shadings of neolithisation and then we speak again ;-)

Quote

P.S.
Probably, when hunters/gatherers brought home different miniscule squeaking trash (infamous to eat, but unthrifty to throw out),
those of critters have survived who looked more kawaii and wagged the tail with greater amplitude to quickly get a human patron to protect the small beast from righteous anger of compatriots finding a chicken stolen while boots liquided. So, the more infantile it looked - the more chances to survive it had. A natural selection in artificial circumstances. Neoteny or die.

That is a primitive view ("Neotony or die") but the basics may be correct. Every mammal baby looks cute, evolution has arranged for it that babies aren't killed as easy as grown-ups (modern psychopaths and cultural achievements like distant killing with automatic bombs excluded).

But for the ancients it was only the first step. Then the new acquistions needed to be seperated from the wild population, procreation under human control for several generations, in order to become "domesticated", smaller and less dangerous and of different color than the wild ones. One single intermixture with the original genes in that process and the effects of domestication are corrected. For generations they were a burden, something extra to feed. So these h/g groups must have lived in an abundance to afford keeping these animals.

Again: that was not an active plan like "we'll have a companion in 50 years".

Quote

Dogs are eaten, btw.

The h/g groups did not. Maybe a single individual at times but i know of no such site. In the neolithic yes. Pop. pressure, shortage, you know ;-)

 

Edited September 13, 2016 by Green Baron

[Green Baron]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Very poor selectors. An asteroid devastates a half of continent, eliminating whole populations, no difference: ill or healthy species.

Well, yeah, in a strict sense, selecting all is a valid selection as well. An asteroid impact, if big enough, is not biological evolution because evolution is more than selection. Evolutoion has the outcome of being "successfull" in filling niches, if time, energy and other constraints permit. No niches, no evolution.

Which hopefully brings us back to fermi and his paradox :-)

 

[magnemoe]

9 hours ago, Green Baron said:

"Settling down" was not an act, it was a process of a few (not many) 1000s of years. The conditions had to be right. The people in the process didn't realize that they were actually about to change their lifestyle. Childe's "neolithic revolution" was influenced by a communist's view that man has to be master of his work and fate. Hunger most surely became an obvious problem after settling down, with the buildup of population-pressure. In every generation grandma and grandpa didn't live that different than the young folks, the process wasn't obvious.

Hunter/gatherers know no population pressure, to natural reasons. A mobile life forbids for a woman to have the next child before the other one is self-reliant. They probably had rather a problem with too few than many ...

Yes. Dog was domesticated long before a domus existed. See the site "Bonn-Oberkassel" :-)

Edit ... Fermi-Paradox, we strayed from the path :-)

Yes, it was probably an pretty long process, the neolithic hunters was not nomads traveling every few weeks but had an winter camp. Note that the oldest town in the world, that in Turkey predates farming. (near modern time hunter gatherer had to travel all the time as they was restricted to areas too poor for farming)
So you did some low intensity farming on the side, Think some tribes in Amazons do the same. Over time population density increased so you had to farm more and more. 
As other says switching to full time farming was not something you wanted to do, very hard work and they ate less well and was shorter. 
However the farmers would push out the hunters because they had far higher population density. In Europe we can see that another culture takes over then farming starts

Related to Fermi paradox, this was probably another bottleneck, no domesticating plants or animals result in no farming. Probably harder for an pure predator as they would need to domesticate animals.  

10 hours ago, Diche Bach said:

Also, much of the innovations and cultural "discoveries" that made agriculture work had more to do with social organization, who gives orders and who takes orders, as well as food storage, preparation and division of labor, not necessarily so much with "discovering" how to get grasses to yield more. Indeed, turning the earliest domesticates into what they became later: much more energetically dense if not nutrition-dense foods, often took many generations (a process that has continued in fits and starts throughout the entire history of civilization and with the latest innovations being labeled "Genetic Modfiied Organisms" . . . LOL, we humans have been "genetically modifying organisms for thousands of years, just doing it the old fashioned way! Facilitating some individuals breeding with others!). But the earliest agricultural societies probably suffered a good bit deal of various malnutritional disorders and related pathologies as a result of becoming dependent on a more narrow variety of foods.

Yes the GM scare is especially funny then you thing that the other option is to use random mutations. To make it more fun, use radioactivity to cause more mutations then look and see if you find something good, no its not worse the UV light and cosmic radiation, it just increase the mutation rate a lot. 
Probably that gave the idea to Spiderman and lots of the other mutant superheroes
I prefer to do it after an plan, yes an superhero designed by an committee would be more boring. 

[Green Baron]

13 hours ago, PB666 said:

 humans are not the first, leaf cutter ants cultivate.
 

Sorry, missed that one. You guys have is a very convenient definition of "cultivation", including symbiosis and co-evolution ;-)

 

[Diche Bach]

2 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Sorry, missed that one. You guys have is a very convenient definition of "cultivation", including symbiosis and co-evolution ;-)

 

Yes, and you may have missed it but "Chimpanzees have culture." Its the new thing in natural sciences: tearing down the anthropo-barriers!  (I love repeating that, it must make the hyper-PC PoMos go ape-poopy given their highly anthropocentric notions of identity, subjectivity, relativity, etcetarativity)

Hell, crows probably have culture, maybe even horses!

I really enjoyed Kerbiloid's posts up above, but I wanted to point out: asteroids do fit the definition of natural selectors quite nicely, even if they destroy the entire biosphere by melting the surface of the planet into a molten lake.

Natural selection is merely the elimination of that which is worse relative to that which is better given any particular environmental conditions.

A bolide impact changes environmental conditions = new rules about what is worse/better.

We should be thankful for this, because apparently we exist because a nice asteroid changing Earth enough to open up some niches for our mammal ancestors to radiate into, thus faciliating the evolution of the primates (but you probably already knew all that . . . it was mostly just for the spectators).

Also, I take 'mild' issue with the notion that the transformation from full-time foraging to full-time farming "took a long time" 10,000 before present (BP) to 7,000 BP doesn't strike me as "a very long time."

Yes, it didn't happen in a couple generations, but 3,000 years is only 35 to 190 or so generations depending on whether you want to define a generation in terms of the maximal lifespan or the time to sexual maturity.

Edited September 13, 2016 by Diche Bach