Re: evolutionary success of humans


Francois Sabot wrote:
> Ron O wrote to sci.bio.evolution on the 24/11/2005:
>
> >
> > pauldepstein@xxxxxxx wrote:
> > > I understand that there are approximately 6 billion humans. How
> > > does this compare with the total number of living mammals? Is
> > > there any other mammalian species as numerous?
> > >
> > > I am a little bit puzzled by our evolutionary success because we
> > > have an enormous number of relative disadvantages compared to other
> > > mammals. Here are just a few of them.
> > >
> > > 1) Long gestation period.
> > > 2) Almost no multiple births.
> > > 3) Bad hearing.
> > > 4) Poor mobility -- slow on land, and terrible at swimming and
> > > climbing.
> > > 5) Terrible sense of smell.
> > >
> > > Paul Epstein
> >
> > Until the development of agriculture humans were outnumbered by a lot
> > of different mammals. The number of humans was probably counted in
> > the millions. That should tell you something about why our numbers
> > are so great at this time. It wasn't until agriculture that
> > civilization that could accomodate increased population sizes came
> > into existence that our population exploded.
> >
> > Ron Okimoto
>
> Moreover, the population in the "modern countries" has increases only
> recently, with the progress of the medicine, the better diet, and the
> evolution of life conditions.
> I read somewhere that the population in France for example was only 10
> millions of people two centuries ago...
>
> --

The genetic data indicates that the human population may have fallen to
as few as around 1000 individuals around 100,000 years ago. It was
during the series of ice ages and a period of environmental flux. We
only have about 1/5 the genetic variation of other species like chimps.
I've seen estimates that since Homo erectus spread out of Africa that
the world population of Homo has only been a couple of million for the
past two million years.

Ron Okimoto


.

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