Quotes About Evolution

The only thing we can try to do is to influence the direction scientists are taking. But since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, the real question facing us is not 'What do we want to become?', but 'What do we want to want?' Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven't given it enough thought.

There are two conflicting theories. The 'Interbreeding Theory

At the time of the Cognitive Revolution, the planet was home to about 200 genera of large terrestrial mammals weighing over fifty kilograms. At the time of the Agricultural Revolution, only about a hundred remained. Homo sapiens drove to extinction about half of the planet's big beasts long before humans invented the wheel, writing or iron tools. This

good hunters, and apparently took care of their sick and infirm. (Archaeologists have discovered the bones of Neanderthals who lived for many years with severe physical handicaps, evidence that they were cared for by their relatives.)

What is a spaceship compared to an eternally young cyborg who does not breed and has no sexuality, who can share thoughts directly with other beings, whose abilities to focus and remember are a thousand times greater than our own, and who is never angry or sad, but has emotions and desires that we cannot begin to imagine?

if humankind doesn't annihilate itself meanwhile – the Scientific Revolution might prove itself far greater than a mere historical revolution. It may turn out to be the most important biological revolution since the appearance of life on earth.

Why not go back to God's drawing board and design a better Sapiens?

The most likely answer is the very thing that makes the devate possible: Homo sapiens conquered the world thanks above all to its unique language

Sostenemos como evidentes por sí mismas dichas verdades: que todos los hombres han evolucionado de manera diferente; que han nacido con ciertas características mutables; que entre estas están la vida y la búsqueda del placer.

The system may prefer downgraded humans not because they would possess any superhuman knacks, but because they would lack some really disturbing human qualities that hamper the system and slow it down.

Ever more scholars see cultures as a kind of mental infection or parasite, with humans as its unwitting host. Organic parasites, such as viruses, live inside the body of their hosts. They multiply and spread from one host to the other, feeding off their hosts, weakening them, and sometimes even killing them. As long as the hosts live long enough to pass along the parasite, it cares little about the condition of its host. In just this fashion, cultural ideas live inside the minds of humans. They

In 1700 the world was home to some 700 million humans. In 1800 there were 950 million of us. By 1900 we almost doubled our numbers to 1.6 billion. And by 2000 that quadrupled to 6 billion. Today there are just shy of 7 billion Sapiens

Si nuestra mente es la de los cazadores-recolectores, nuestra cocina es la de los antiguos agricultores.

Hace exactamente 6 millones de años, una única hembra de simio tuvo dos hijas. Una se convirtió en el ancestro de todos los chimpancés, la otra es nuestra propia abuela.

Think for a moment about the Agricultural Revolution from the viewpoint of wheat. Ten thousand years ago wheat was just a wild grass, one of many, confined to a small range in the Middle East. Suddenly, within just a few short millennia, it was growing all over the world. According to the basic evolutionary criteria of survival and reproduction, wheat has become one of the most successful plants in the history of the earth.

Quién fue el responsable? Ni reyes, ni sacerdotes, ni mercaderes. Los culpables fueron un puñado de especies de plantas, entre las que se cuentan el trigo, el arroz y las patatas. Fueron estas plantas las que domesticaron a Homo sapiens, y no al revés.

If cooperation is the key, how come the ants and bees did not beat us to the nuclear bomb even though they learned to cooperate en masse millions of years before us? Because their cooperation lacks flexibility. Bees cooperate in very sophisticated ways, but they cannot reinvent their social system overnight. If a hive faces a new threat or a new opportunity, the bees cannot, for example, guillotine the queen and establish a republic.

but we have incontrovertible evidence of domesticated dogs from about 15,000 years ago. They may have joined the human pack thousands of years earlier.

But the soul has no parts. You might argue that human souls did not evolve, but appeared one bright day in the fullness of their glory. But when exactly was that bright day?

Until the Scientific Revolution most human cultures did not believe in progress. They thought the golden age was in the past, and that the world was stagnant, if not deteriorating.

In 1700 the world was home to some 700 million humans. In 1800 there were 950 million of us. By 1900 we almost doubled our numbers to 1.6 billion. And by 2000 that quadrupled to 6 billion. Today there are just shy of 7 billion Sapiens. Modern

Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn't easy.

Esta discrepancia entre éxito evolutivo y sufrimiento individual es quizá la lección más importante que podemos extraer de la revolución agrícola. Cuando

La cultura puede transformarse en respuesta a cambios en su ambiente o mediante la interacción con culturas vecinas. Sin embargo, las culturas también experimentan transiciones debido a sus propias dinámicas internas.