Burns

I am a Pacific North westerner, and as such, it is that time of year where the entire land has been on fire for months, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down. Fire is a real danger here. The interesting thing about it is how little humans have adapted to cope with this very real and expected phenomenon. We expect firefighters to be able to contain it. Every year when we turn on the news and read about destroyed houses, we don't immediately make sure our home has fire insurance. Somehow this yearly phenomenon is never expected to affect us.

Wild animals cope with fire. They've evolved mechanisms to deal with it, and while they don't operate under the assumption that it will happen to them, just as humans do, they have very good instincts on how to handle it, just as we don't. Animals without the capacity to outrun the fire burrow beneath the earth to escape the heat. Animals with the capacity to run do just that. That's not to say they all survive, however, and please do not think I'm arguing humans be more like animals in their ability to leave everything and run.

I am merely observing that in the case of a wildfire, we the human species have made it extremely difficult to pick up and run. To drop everything and get out. Because from an evolutionary standpoint, that is the only intelligent thing to do. But we, the most intelligent species, have built very stationary shelters, and filled them with things that matter to us emotionally and culturally (such as photos and trinkets), which in turn make us hesitate to preserve ourselves biologically.

Our first priority should be to live, and, if possible, ensure the lives of others. After that, time permitting, we should think of our pets, and then, only then think of inanimate objects.

Out Of Africa

Recently I went to see the new exhibit at California Academy of Science(CAS), called Skulls. This exhibit is, obviously, about skulls, more specifically, the skulls of vertebrate animals.

It was a wonderful exhibit, and I enjoyed myself very much. I encourage you all to go if you live nearby. My opinion was that the only thing they could so better would be to include more about comparative anatomy, but I'll post about that later.

After I saw this exhibit I went to the African exhibit, which was very interesting, and included a bit about human origins. Now I'm not criticizing this exhibit for the content it included, that was presented beautifully, I'm miffed about what the exhibit didn't include, which was some of the other models about human evolution.

CAS included only the Out of Africa model, which admittedly has the most support right now, but is in no way proven to the point that it is a theory and not a hypothesis.

So I'm going to go over the major hypotheses of human origins, so that you readers may know the options.

The Multiregional Continuity Model
Says: "After Homo erectus left Africa and dispersed into other portions of the Old World, regional populations slowly evolved into modern humans"
Means: Modern humans evolved from their ancestors (that lived all over Africa, Europe, and Asia) all together (albeit slowly) in every location
Looks Like This:

(thanks to Fred the Oyster for the graph)

The Out Of Africa Model
Says: "Modern humans evolved in Africa, migrated out of Africa, and replaced all populations which had descended from Homo erectus"
Means: Modern humans evolved in one location, and the earlier species were outmatched by how super duper awesome modern humans were... I kid... sort of
Looks Like This:

Apologies for poor image quality, and thanks to discover magazine

Now to be sure, Out Of Africa has the most support, but more recent discoveries have challenged it a bit. The timing of human dispersal is controversial, and likely will remain controversial until we discover more fossils, so I'm not going to weigh in on either theory as being more likely than the other. I simply think that both should be considered, and there is nothing wrong with presenting two opinions to the public, or admitting that science has yet to uncover all of the facts.

Sources:
actionbioscience

The Petralona Man

We were all Africans

Genetic Support for the out-of-Africa theory