Zuk does a good job of portraying her ideas and
evolutionary concepts in “Paleofantasy” making the book full of many great
passages. One of the passages that stood out to me from the section I read this
week however was when she was explaining how the beak size of finches were
modified based off of wet and dry seasons: “What this means is that
populations, and species, can and do change rapidly, over and over again, as
the forces of nature change around them” (78). Although this is not a lengthy
quote, it summarized her entire argument and the examples she previously stated
explaining the importance of the environment on the evolution of organisms and
their flexibility in adapting. I also thought it was interesting that Zuk
devoted an entire chapter to the evolution of drinking milk and consuming dairy
products. This supported her main argument that humans are not the same as they
used to be in Paleo times because she describes the ability to digest milk as
“the poster child for rapid evolution in humans” (93). She went into detail
about the development of lactose tolerance and then stated that drinking milk
was favored by selection so people started domesticating cattle and gene
frequencies for lactase persistence increased. I also liked when she
quoted an anthropologist Alan Rogers who said, “We live in a radically changed
environment, that we ourselves created” (102). I thought this was a powerful quote because I
always thought of evolution in terms of organisms adapting to their own environments
but this statement added the aspect of humans being able to modify their own
environment according to their needs. This made me wonder why humans have the
ability to change their environment on such a large scale and whether this
ability is an adaptation itself?
I like your final question Rija as I would argue that the ability to modify our environments sets humans in a unique situation. I would think that being able to modify the environment is an adaptation when we do so for the benefit of ourselves, but many people create harmful environments that can be injurious to themselves. I suppose that people who create such environments would be less likely to reproduce in general, but that is not always the case as people who create toxic environments to themselves and their offspring still manage to reproduce.
ReplyDeleteHi Rija. I too was intrigued by the idea that humans can change their genome by changing their environment. In terms of your question, I agree with Logan in that changing the environment to better ourselves could be thought of as a form of adaptation. However, you asked why humans have the ability to change their environment on such a large scale, and it made me wonder if humans were the only species who could make such a large impact. My initial thought would be no, but what do you think?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback! Tyesha, I was actually thinking about that while writing this post as well! I feel like there are species that can modify their environment to better themselves to some extent but couldn't think of any that do so on the scale that humans do. I thought that it was interesting how Rogers had expressed this aspect of evolution (adapting to the environment by changing it).
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