The theories I've seen suggest that the first mammals to gain an evolutionary toe-hold in the shadow of the dinosaurs were small, shrew-like creatures... but that homo sapiens only evolved many millennia later from ape-like beings which lived in, and eventually descended from the trees. Now scientists have found a tree-shrew in Malaysia which may cast a rather less flattering light on this evolutionary progression. It seems that the pen-tailed tree-shrew spends the vast majority of its time completely stotious... the worse for drink, to an extent which would render the average human utterly incapable (or, to use the technical term, "hat-racked"). It seems to suffer few, if any ill effects from this disreputable life-style, whereas alcohol is frequently blamed for many of the social and medical ills which afflict the modern human.
Is it not more plausible, then, that humans actually evolved when some subset of tiny, primitive tree-shrews just couldn't hold their booze or their allotted branch, lost their grip completely and didn't descend voluntarily so much as simply fall out of the trees? In other words, we don't represent the culmination of evolutionary improvement at all... we're just the ones who couldn't stand the pace.
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In several of his books, Steven Jay Gould argues that it is a distortion to view evolution from a human-centric position - as if the purpose of evolution is to produce a few billion ill-adapted mammals, rather than say a few trillion excellently adapted insects. Given that insects (and bacteria and other creatures) outnumber and outmanoeuvre us so successfully, we can only conclude that our evolutionary purpose (POSIWID) is to provide food for creatures like these that are higher up the food chain.
Posted by Richard Veryard on July 29, 2008 at 04:03 PM GMT+00:00 #
Nuts (respectfully) to SJG... Bill Bailey has already been there and made that case in his own inimitable style...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_IbyWxEq-0c
Posted by 82.33.65.43 on July 29, 2008 at 04:07 PM GMT+00:00 #