Proteins, Apes & Us (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, April 15, 2012, 12:12 (4606 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The first hominins were tree-dwelling and entered the savannah when their uprightness allowed it. Key alteration in evolution theory: Upright BEFORE savannah.-This certainly does have enormous implications for the theory of evolution. You may disagree with some of what follows, but let's just see where it leads us. A random, back-straightening mutation would fit in with Darwinian evolution: when the "fledgeling" hominin goes down into the savannah, it finds the mutation beneficial, undergoes additional refinements, and Natural Selection ensures that the upright savannah-dweller survives and flourishes. Exactly the same process would apply if the whole thing was pre-planned by your designer God. -However, supposing the innovation (i.e. the mutation to uprightness) was not random but was a direct response to environmental pressure? Then we have a very different scenario. As I've suggested in earlier posts, one or more localized events in isolated areas might have destroyed the forests and changed them into savannahs. In order to survive, the monkeys HAD to come down from the trees. And by dint of epigenetic mechanisms, directed by the intelligent cells that form all the communities of our different organs (Margulis), some monkeys straightened their backs, and the rest of the body adjusted accordingly, in due course creating the hominins we believe to be our ancestors. Maybe different forms of hominins in different areas (convergence), but all brought into being by the pressures of the environment, as opposed to the randomness (Darwin) or pre-planning (David) of mutations. This scenario has no bearing on the chance v. design debate, because of course it doesn't settle the all-important question of how such an adaptive, innovative mechanism could have originated. I'm only putting it forward because I find it more convincing if we attribute the change to a RESPONSE required by the environment rather than to an out-of-the-blue innovation that then has to seek a new environment to accommodate itself. But that means savannah before uprightness.