Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Evolution and Human Behaviour

Master's
Language: EnglishStudies in English
Subject area: biology
Qualification: MRes
Kind of studies: full-time studies
Master of Research (MRes)
University website: www.ncl.ac.uk
Evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. Evolutionary processes give rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules.
Human
Humans (taxonomically Homo sapiens) are the only extant members of the subtribe Hominina. The Hominina are sister of the Chimpanzees with which they form the Hominini belonging to the family of great apes. They are characterized by erect posture and bipedal locomotion; high manual dexterity and heavy tool use compared to other animals; open-ended and complex language use compared to other animal communications; and a general trend toward larger, more complex brains and societies.
Evolution
[While research] … has revealed unexpected, stunning complexity, no progress at all has been made in understanding how that complexity could evolve by unintelligent processes.
Michael Behe, as attributed without citation in Awake! magazine (anonymous), January 2015
Evolution
Even in her transfigured state, the thought of goal-oriented evolution gave Evelyn the creeps. It smacked of Intelligent Design, the ludicrous evangelism of engineers masquerading as biologists, their PowerPoint presentations riddled with evasions and half-truths and pseudoscience. Such thinking confused causes and effects; it complicated unnecessarily the idea of evolution, a field where explanations are valuable only for their parsimony.
Joe Pitkin, A Murmuration of Starlings in Rich Horton (ed.) The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013, p. 367 (Originally published in Analog magazine, June 2012)
Evolution
Anthropological, biological, and genetic evidence all put the origin of modern humans at between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, probably in Africa. There is also much data that show an outburst of cultural behavior occurring around 50,000-40,000 years ago in Europe. That's when archaeologists date the oldest evidence of burial ceremonies, body ornaments, and cave paintings.
William J. Cromie, "Facing up to modern man", Harvard University Gazette (7 March 2002)
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