Sunday, March 12, 2006
Come out of that cave and see how much things have changed
Comment and opinion from the Times and The Sunday Times (UK):
"THE FASHIONABLE notion that we're simply well-dressed cavemen - pinstripes and hair gel on the outside, grunting hunter-gatherer on the inside - has taken a clubbing.
Evolution didn't grind to a halt when we shed the loincloths - indeed, we are still evolving. Scientists at the University of Chicago have identified more than 700 new variants of genes that first appeared between 5,000 and 15,000 years ago. These spread rapidly among successive generations in particular populations and are involved in taste, smell, digestion, skin colour, hair texture and skeletal structure.
The change was prompted, it seems, by the shift from foraging to agriculture about 10,000 years ago."
technorati tags: sunday, times, cavemen, evolution, foraging, agriculture
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