Re: Questions about the Upper Paleolithic


Paul Crowley wrote:
> <lsj@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1124888685.279429.158010@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
[snip]
>
> > There is some evidence that life did get nastier in the neolithic
> > revolution. But life was no vacation before that either -- the
> > average lifespan in the paleolithic was nowhere near threescore
> > and ten. If the paleolithic had been a paradise, the population
> > wouldn't have remained near-static for millennia, and then started
> > to _in_crease in the neolithic.
>
> Some poor thinking here. Most populations
> of most species 'remain static'. No one
> claims that they occupy paradise, but they
> are (by definition) well adapted to the niche
> they occupy.

Populations 'remain static' simply because organisms
are killed off as fast as they can reproduce.
Since most critters can reproduce pretty fast, life
has to be nasty, brutish and above all short to keep
the population static. Call it well-adapted, if
you like -- critters that aren't well-adapted die
off even faster -- but don't call it paradise.

> With farming, etc., humans found a new
> niche -- which allowed them to expand
> their numbers enormously. But we are
> not well-adapted to it -- not as it was, nor
> as it is now. Give us another few hundred
> thousand years (assuming it's just a natural
> process) and we might learn how to cope
> with being couch potatoes.

Some poor thinking here. An extremely successful
organism is by definition well adapted. Adaptedness
is not measured by how healthy or happy we are, it's
measured by reproductive success. And our reproductive
success is demonstrated by the fact that our population
is not static.

Sure, we can imagine even better adaptations. But we
are even now very well adapted indeed to exploiting our
current niche, or we wouldn't be doing so well, filling
up the planet. Even couch potatoes do cope in an
evolutionary sense, even if we may not approve of their
lifestyle -- they typically live long
enough to reproduce, so it'll be a while before natural
selection does anything about them.

More generally, one might argue that the key adaptation of
Homo sapiens is not to life as a hunter-gather, our key
adaptation is to be clever enough to find and exploit new
resources.

Best regards, HLK, Physics
Sverker Johansson U of Jonkoping
----------------------------------------------
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
ATHEISM IS RELIGION
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH - adapted from
CREATIONISM IS SCIENCE George Orwell

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: What is biological life?
    ... >>>troubled that there is no crisp definition for biological life. ... >>I noticed a couple of things that seem to be common to all living ... They reproduce ... > maybe of individual characteristics common in a group, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Images: A Womans Right To Choose
    ... Arbitrary crapola. ... gay couples etc etc etc cannot reproduce in kind ... It is now accepted, for instance, that the unborn child is able to sense the ... We should never forget that the birth process is not the 'start' of life - ...
    (rec.photo.digital)
  • Re: How to increase lifespan indefinetely...
    ... >>be a gradual evolution of longer lifespans, ... lifespan, these Methusalah flies bred much later in life than normal flies. ... problem with the number of times their cells can reproduce. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: what is life
    ... >> I don't think anyone doubts that life must be able to reproduce itself, ... >> without having the ability to reproduce. ... > and most would still judge such an organism to be alive. ... Lomatia tasmanica is the product of a long process of evolutionary ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
Loading