Oh...    I'm not trying to be a thorn in your ass, Hamby.  Honest.  I have a lot of respect for you.

I first read about female chimps being the bread winners in a book I read a couple months ago on human evolution.  I read some of it out loud to my wife and we both laughed about guys being slack asses.

I'd like to point out that this study is not the be-all end-all.  There are other studies that contradict it.  The more I read about human evolution and primate behavior the more confused I get.

Actually it would be really cool to hang out with you sometime and talk about human evolution.  We both are really interested in it apparently.  We could probably trade some books back and forth.

While the new study is enlightening, you can't directly apply it to our ancestors.  But I'm of the opinion that our most ancient ancestors didn't eat much meat anyway, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was absolutely right.  Australopithecine teeth aren't suited for ripping and tearing tough, uncooked meat--they still look like the teeth of an animal that eats fruit and nuts.  I favor the idea of a bipedal scavenger myself--you get an early form of tool use in the cracking of bones for marrow in with the package.  If you're interested in bipedalism (I think it's the more interesting question--but I'm more of a physiologist by trade, so there you go), Peter Wheeler's theory of lessening radiation exposure and heat stress by reshaping your total surface area and losing your hair still holds up pretty well.  It's fairly clear that everything in an intertidal zone (mussels, crabs, little water bugs) is absolutely obsessed with controlling temperature--a long way from a warm-blooded plains ape, I know, but maintaining homeostasis is still our biggest energy drain after supplying that big honking brain (which probably only got big enough to start thinking about trading anything for sex after it got up on two legs).  No mention of any kind of bartering among modern primates need be mentioned here.  They weren't alive back then, either.

Interestingly enough, no one's ever found a prehistoric Chimpanzee fossil.

Yeah, I've read about the upright stance of humans being a product of minimizing how much of our bodies are exposed to the sun.  Also the finer hair and improved sweat glands for cooling.  Interesting stuff.

"The first convincing chimp fossil has been discovered by scientists.

The two incisors and a molar, probably all from the same individual, date from around 500,000 years ago. They were found in sediments that include fossils of two early humans - Homo erectus or Homo rhodensiensis - suggesting that chimp and human ancestors were contemporaries. A possible fourth tooth is still awaiting analysis."

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7917

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4201666.stm

Clarification:  Chimps hunt meat in packs, but they don't organize to kill animals bigger than them.  They hunt for monkeys and small animals.  Human ancestors went to the trouble of learning how to organize well enough to kill animals as a team.

Then again, hunting in a team isn't anything new.  Lions do it, too.  My question isn't how team hunting evolves.  I want to know why our ancestors, of all the primates, switched to a more carnivorous diet, AND went through all the trouble of getting a big brain and developing culture.  Did females randomly select big brains, and then hunting developed as a "side effect" of males getting smarter?  Did males begin to get smarter to ply women for sex?  If that's so, free hands (upright posture) would have been clearly advantageous without the need for the meat theory.  Tool use would explain it perfectly well.

Anyway.  I'm just sort of musing out loud, not trying to make any kind of coherent statements

A few points...

Brain size is not a sufficient gauge of intellect. There are many animals with larger brains than homo sapiens, but none of them can do calculus.  So, the point that Lucy had a similar sized brain to chimps does not mean much.

We must recognize that meat is a far richer fuel source than vegetation - the caveate being, it is harder to get. Should a sufficient source of meat be available, it can fuel big brains and select for certain attributes.

If we look at other mammals, carnivorous or omnivorous animals tend to be more intelligent than herbovoirs. Predators are typically more crafty and have greater intelligence and problem solving skills across the board. They HAVE to be, because they HAVE to hunt in order to survive. Dolphins, whales, large cats and canines bear this out when compared to buffalo and gazelles. There are exceptions such as pachyderms, but the rule is generally that predators have a leg up in the brains department.

Personally, I think humans are where they are, because we evolved from and still are opportunists. We make use of whatever is available to us. Our teeth are testament to that fact.

As far as IQ points?  No.  As far as birthing problems?  Yes.  Humans don't have problems giving birth due to how intelligent the child is.  It's the size of that big, honkin noggin that's causing the problems.

I've read Carl Sagan's book Broca's Brain that covered the problems trying to correlate intelligence to brain size.  And the studies of Homo Floresiensis throw even more questions into the mix.

Good call.  I had forgotten about that.

Duh... brain fart on my part.

 To all the ladies out there: don't let this discourage you from buying me steak. Steak is an aphrodisiac for sure.

The amount of genetic evolution that takes place over the course of 300 years will be negligible at best. At this point, the totally determining factor for the trajectory of human future is culture, memes (if you believe in memes), not genes. Memes change a lot faster than genes.

This raises the question of what the human future will be like in the context of our genes. We have fucked up pretty badly, especially over the last 50 years or so, in terms of determining a reasonable future. One important thing worth noting is the "slaves-to-the-genes" hypothesis is problematic. The problem comes from the fact that the notion appears internally contradictory. We are programmed to do certain things by genes. In the ensuring the continuity of genetic material, we (the carriers of genetic material) are in possession of toolkits, physical embodiments of the genetic material, that are the basis for the successful continuity of the genes. It is, however, a logical error, to extend this principle to state that it is not possible for the organism in which this toolkit is embodied to counteract the programming of these genes. The toolkits in question are there because they are successful at generating the proliferation of the genes, thus they flourish under natural selection. An aspect of the toolkit we possess is flexibility. This flexibility in effect, this flexibility is a primary feature allowing this toolkit (OK, from now on, when I say toolkit, read: the brain) allows for the counteraction of instinctual programming that results from the genetic material. This raises the question of why it is advantageous.  The answer is because we usually don't counteract the instructions programmed by genetic material, although we are capable of doing it. We are capable of doing it because the flexibility of our toolkit allows for the production of a second-order set of abstract replicators that Richard Dawkins call memes. Meme flourishing does not necessarily reflect the instructions of genes, they only reflect the selectivity of memes. In some cases, the selection of memes depends on genetic programming. In some cases, it does not.

So, it would be correct to say that our genes program us to be selfish, short-term-thinking organisms with all the other previously mentioned traits that are causing such catastrophe on our environs, but it would be inaccurate to say that we cannot counteract this. We are perfectly capable of long-term thinking, of conservationism, of a myriad of things that counteract our psychology. Because if we weren't, this would constitute a tight limitation on the flexibility of our primary selective advantage, which in turn would loosen selective advantage. Thus, it may be overly hasty to say "we will destroy our environs because we are selfish, short-term creatures who are incapable of doing otherwise". What we will do, in the future, will depend on memes. Because I reject this hypothesis just put in quotes, I am probably not as pessimistic about the human future as Hamby, although that should not be interpreted to say that I am optimistic in the manner that the poster I quoted is.

One reason confusion is created by these metaphors is that people have this image that genes are like evil little slave-masters that watch over us. This isn't the case. Genes are genes. Stretches of nucleic acid holding the code for a physical organism which possesses certain phenotypic traits determing their phenotype. If we do something counteractive to pyschological instinct, then it is not as if these dissenting actions will be locked down. Genes don't care what you do. They don't care about anything, because they are not conscious. One thing that is commonly pointed out is that if life is "heredity+environment" then the degree to which one or the other affects phenotype (here "phenotype includes our personality and our tendancies, as well as things like hair and eye color), then the ontogenic flexibility of that characteristic will determine the degree to which the trait is determined by one or the other factor. Something like eye color, for instance, has no flexibility. You are stuck with the eye color you've got. Something like the human brain, as its primary advantage, has ultra-high flexibility. It wouldn't be an advantageous thing to carry around if it didn't. Because of this, it is perfectly possible for people to think long term, and to not burn through the planet if some effort is put in. Our genes are no excuse. So we should not fall into the idea that we can't possibly do something if it is counteracted by our programming of nature.

Lastly, there is a mistake some people make and that is to say that our modern tendencies toward such things as birth control, abortion, etc. constitutes a violation of embedded instinct towards having children. This is inaccurate. The embedded instinct is sexual urge, this in turn results in the production of children. The latter is only indirectly embedded. The former is much, much harder to bring under control, and doing so can have damaging psychological consequences.

PS are you (H) going to look at the Llama thread? You should. It's funny.

DG, I don't think I disagree with anything you've said, but I do want to clarify my opinion on the future (and present) of humanity a little.

Yes.  It is also an error to assume that because we can, we will.  The heart of my stance on humanity's future stems from the belief that we will override our genetic predispositions to some degree, but not enough to prevent some pretty bad problems.  i don't believe we will drive ourselves extinct.  I believe we'll drive nearly everything extinct, and then we will adjust to the new (much worse) conditions.

Some genetic predispositions are harder to overcome than others.  Sugar is an easy example.  We are genetically designed to eat sugar just about any time we can get it because sugar is an indication of being non-poisonous and nutritious.  Millions of people bypass this programming and eat very little sugar (incidentally, by doing this, they approach the nutritional intake that our genes originally designed the cravings for.)

On the other hand, the genetic predisposition to reproduce isn't just a predisposition -- it's the single strongest drive any surviving creature has outside of staying alive long enough to reproduce.  Among creatures without the ability to predict the future (pretty much all of them besides us) the normal means of maintaining stable populations are starvation and predation.  We've pretty much dealt with those two, so long as the environment remains stable and the means to domesticate and farm still exist.

That's the main thrust of my view.  The ability to farm and domesticate will be outstripped by our population at some point.  Whether this is from pollution, extinction, or environmental changes, and whether environmental changes are primarily non-human or human in origin, is irrelevant.  At any given point, no matter how bad things are getting, the average human being is going to feel entitlement, particularly with regard to reproduction, which is going to be the single most relevant trait that we're going to have to address if we're going to avoid a grim future.

I do not say this.  I say that we will very likely destroy our environs because we are nearly exactly like every other creature with regard to reproduction, and we tend to reproduce regardless of the logical reasons not to.  We are capable of controlling our reproduction en masse, but we are very unlikely to do so because it is programmed with such ferocity into our genes.

Mass conservation is, I think, an extension of Game Theory that does not come easily to humans.  It requires a second order logic wherein the normal solution to the Prisoners' Dilemma doesn't apply anymore, and the defect/cooperate choice is replaced with defect/cooperate/cooperatively sacrifice, where both parties gain no significant advantage from choosing the most advantageous option for the species.

I believe that people who think that humans are capable of mass movements towards conservation and sustainable population are falling victim to the outdated idea that evolution can happen from the group level.  Instead, the principle of the selfish gene has taught us that group evolution is an emergent characteristic of individual selection.  {EDIT:  Change to:  "I believe that people who think humans are likely to engage in mass movements towards conservation".}

I agree.  Despite my opinion that the effort won't matter, I do everything I can because I do believe that I could be wrong.  Morally, I feel an obligation to be as environmentally active as possible even though I believe that our efforts will, in the long run, be futile.

As you say, our genes are just genes. Excuses are for humans, not genes, and I make no excuses for the excess of humanity.  I think that you and I just come down on different places in the same spectrum.  We agree that the human brain is incredibly adaptable.  We just disagree on how much the brain will adapt.

In a way, it's like religion.  You and I are empirical proof that the tendency to conform to social norms regarding superstition is just that -- a tendency, not a requirement.  However, the 85% of the population that does conform to social norms regarding superstition is a stinging indictment against the view that humans can deviate from our "programming" en masse.