Toward The End - The Evolution Footsteps Of Human Beings

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　　　　　　　　　　Toward The End - the Evolution Footsteps of Human Beings 

Edited April 16, 2017 by sgylfg

[sgylfg]

[Abstract] As human beings, the words that we take most pride in are: "other animals can only passively adapt to the environment, while human beings can create a better living environment." But we could not ever have imagined that it is just the superior environment created by ourselves that leads us to the road of extinction. Why is that so? The reason is simple, that is, the biological evolution (The Evolution).

Edited April 16, 2017 by sgylfg

[sgylfg]

      The day is not too distant when human beings end! This is absolutely no sensation. The end of mankind is neither because of the nuclear war, nor the environmental catastrophe, nor the asteroid’s hitting the earth, but rather because of the evolution direction of human beings – toward destruction.

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      All the living creatures are constantly evolving with no exception of human beings. The mankind has evolved from the apes, which no one in academia doubts. But now there is a view that the evolution of modern people has had great tendency to slow or even stop, on the grounds that human beings have a more and more comfortable artificial environment while are subject to less and less impact of natural factors. In fact, this is a wrong understanding. The reason for biological evolution lies in the gene mutation, which naturally occurs. Whatever environment it is, it cannot prevent the occurrence of mutation. Whether living in the remote mountains and wilderness, or live in a warm rooms, the mutation will happen all the same. Goldfish is an example. Goldfish’s ancestors are wild gold crucian carps, and after entering into the artificial environment that is much superior than the natural environment, there are much larger changes happens than in nature during the hundreds of years.

[sgylfg]

      The principle of biological evolution is well known by all of us, that is mutation - selection - survival of the fittest. The process of selection (natural selection) is the process of retention and elimination, that is, the retention of favorable traits and the elimination of unfavorable traits, which thus enables the biological population to preserve the favorable traits. These traits, such as the run ability of the hare, protective color of the fur, are essential to its survival. In the process of reproduction of generations, due to the continuous mutation of genes, each trait will produce many different variants. Only those with the strongest running ability and the best protective fur color could get the more chance of survival. Deteriorating running ability, blackening fur, or whitening fur are all unfavorable and thus have been eliminated, as a result the population stably maintains these favorable traits. It is relative to the selection factors whether the traits are favorable or unfavorable, in natural conditions, the selection factor is the natural environment. Take the European geometridae for an example. There are two variants, black and white, and when the bark is white, the white one could hide well and more of them are reserved. However it is not favorable for the black to hide and many of them are eliminated, therefore, the white prevails in number. When the dust pollution blackens the bark, the disguise of black moths improves, and the number increases to the opposite of the white. This is a well-known example of evolution.

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      So, what happens if a trait is in a status that is unfavorable with it and not harmless without it? This kind of example is not rare in nature. For most animals, the importance of the eye is palpable. In the normal environment, the eye defects are extremely detrimental to survival, so as those with eye defects have been eliminated, the population preserves good visions. When the fishes enter the dark underwater cave, the eyes no longer play any role. No matter how good the vision is, it will not have any help to the survival. And the loss of vision will not cause harm to survival, then the eyes became a useless trait as they are unfavorable with and not harmless without. How it would be if a trait is useless? Nature has already given the answer; the fishes in the cave will eventually lose their sight and become blind or eyeless fish. As the gene mutations are mostly harmful, in case the eyes and vision have gene mutation, there will always be some problems or defects. When the environment no longer plays any role of selection and elimination on these variants, these defects will accumulate and spread generation after generation. To a certain time, the entire population will lose sight and become blind fish. At this time the eye as a useless vestigial organ continues to exist. But the vestigial organ will not exist forever, and it will continue to decline until it finally disappears and the fish becomes eyeless.

[sgylfg]

      There are so many similar examples, and this is the "use and disuse" phenomenon in the biological evolution. The useless traits are bound to decline. The reason why the traits become "useless" can be various. The eyes degenerate as they are not useful into the dark. Most birds living in the sea can fly, and if the penguins could ever fly, the flight capacity would be useful. Because they adopt the way of swimming for a long time, the flying feathers have degenerated and the wings have become swaying oars. The reason why the leaves of the cactus evolve into spines is because the stem substitutes the function of the leaves. The way of relying on photosynthesis to survive has not changed, and rather this task has been transferred to other organs, therefore the original organ degenerates. Nude mice live underground in the borrowed holes for their whole lives and never walk out of the caves, thus they have become as blind as blind fish. Because of the long-term life in cave, the warm protection role of hair is no longer important, so they have become bare-skinned as result of the fur degeneration. For many species of artificial breeding, many self-defense traits that their wild ancestors possessed have degenerated or disappeared, or changed to better satisfy requirements of the humans. The defense tasks are to be borne by the human beings. For example, the goldfish has a colorful body and moves slowly and clumsily. They are unable to survive in the river but only to live in the aquarium as ornamental for people. For many crops, those traits that fruits’ wild ancestors have such as hard shells, trichome, poison, and hard thorns, etc. have been greatly changed after domestication to be more suitably tasted by humans. Ducks cannot hatch eggs, which is the behavior degradation, therefore the hatch task are done by the artificial as replacement....... In short, once the traits of the creatures become useless and their lacking do not endanger the survival, then they will surely degenerate and eventually disappear. Here I would also like to explain two concepts; evolution refers to the biological evolution generation after generation. During the evolution process, there are always some traits that start from scratch, enhance and increase, while other traits ends up losing, degenerating, and disappearing, where the latter is called degradation. Therefore, degradation is a manifestation of evolution, and evolution contains degradation. The “use and disuse theory" is the summary of evolution performances, and evolution and degradation cannot be considered as two opposite processes.

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      It should be noted that, before Darwin, Lamarck had proposed an evolutionary theory of "acquired genetic traits ", which has proved to be wrong. But when proving the mistake of Lamarck, people have made another mistake and defined his theory as with "use and disuse theory". In fact, "use and disuse theory" is just a phenomenon rather than a theorem, of course, cannot even be called “theory ". Lamarck theory should be called as" acquired inheritance theory". Lamarck’s finding of "use and disuse” phenomenon is a great contribution instead of a mistake, and it is thus an academic mistake to define the theory of Lamarck as "use and disuse theory".

[sgylfg]

      So what about the evolution of mankind today? In recent years, there have been more and more prominent health problems, which are the most significant signs of human evolution. People always think that with the development of scientific and technological and the improvement of medical technology, one day human will enter the eternal healthy state with any perplexing disease. However, the reality facing to us is that the morbidity rates have been surging, the incidence of diseases is increasingly trending to younger and younger age, new difficult and mysterious problems continue to emerge, non-disease "sub-health state" is also popularizing, the overall health of the population continues to decline, and the desired comprehensive health becomes far beyond of our reach. So, why all these things are happening? Let us have a look at the relationship between health and evolution.

[sgylfg]

      From a biological point of view, the health or non-health has always been showed through the strength or weakness, superiority and inferiority, and presence or absence of some traits. And the superiority and inferiority of the traits are just determined by the evolution, and they have been in evolution. Just compare the importance of the health traits for the modern Homo sapiens and the ancient anthropoid and then we could know how health evolves.

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      Without all the modernity, the anthropoid and protohuman had lived under the same conditions as the common wild animals. Back to that time, the physique of human beings enjoyed the common characteristics of wild animals: strong, powerful, attack-resistant, strongly immune to diseases, resistant to cold and heat, and excellent at hearing and vision. The superiority and inferiority of all these traits are a matter of life and death and withstand the harsh tests. In the past 10,000 to 20,000 years, the development of wisdom has brought a lot of application technologies and has greatly improved the living conditions, which makes those excellent physical qualities are less and less important and nearly “useless". As mentioned earlier, the useless traits are inevitable to decline, herein "useless" means that the survival will not be endangered in absence of these traits, rather than the common meaning.

[sgylfg]

      In ape era, people spent their day and night in the wild, from spring to winter, facing all kinds of weather of wind, frost, rain and snow while without any equipment like coat, quilt, house or stove. Same with the other wild animals, their bodies could fully adapt to the natural environment, and even until today, this is the still case for the livestock and poultry such as cattle, sheep, etc. After the mankind invented the heating methods and anti-cold items, the cold-resistance trait became "useless", kept degrading, and basically lost by so far. Modern people in the winter without coat, stove and house will die, which is unique in the biology world. In nature, whether it is the giant homothermal animals, or the tiny heterotherm creatures, none of them have to rely on heating to resist cold and to survive. Modern people’s ability of heat-resistance is much stronger than that of cold-resistance; it is because for a long time, the popularity of heat-prevention/cooling technology and equipment are falling far behind heating and cold-resistance. The use of the refrigerating machine just starts recently. After the popularity of the refrigerating machine, given enough time, people will die from heat without air-conditioning just as the case in winter without coat and stove.

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      Similarly, the bones of modern people have been greatly degraded. The thickness of Peking man's skull is nearly two times as that of the modern people and the teeth are also larger, therefore it is speculated that the systemic skeleton should be generally stronger than that of the modern people. In ape-man era, whether it is general labor, vital fights, or any other activities, none of them is not relying on physical power as there is no machine. A solid skull can withstand collision or crash. The food at that time was not as soft and refined as in modern, which required them to have strong and tough teeth; teeth was also a wrestling weapon, therefore the mouth of the apes protruding forward. As the skull of modern people becomes thinner and teeth smaller, the morbidities of poorly-aligned and easily-decayed teeth, osteoporosis, osteomalacia, aseptic necrosis, etc. have been also rising. Some people will have fracture from a slight fall, and some patients even have extreme “congenital osteogenesis imperfecta”, who will fracture when wearing by a bit of effort."Congenital osteogenesis imperfecta ", congenital skull defects or abnormally thin skull have become very common, They need to be implanted with artificial bones or wear a special helmet for life.With strong and sharp nails, modern apes can quickly climb the tree by clinging to the bark and also scamper on the steep rock like on the flat ground. Presumably, human’s remote ancestors— dryopithecus must also be the same. Modern people almost do not need nails, so they degenerate to the thin and soft shells.

[sgylfg]

      Similarly, the strength of primitive man is much stronger than the modern people. Nowadays, with a variety of machinery human life has become less effort-requiring and more relaxing, where physical strength has nothing to do with the survivability. Wild animals follow the rules of natural selection—reserving the strong and eliminating the weak. For example, before feeding the young birds, penguins run first and the young try to catch up, so those weak ones will be eliminated without obtaining food, which is a quite common phenomenon among many creatures. It is so cruel and merciless from the perspective of the current social consciousness of mankind, however the penguin maintains to be strong species by doing so. This is the survival way found during the evolution of millions of years, while the countless creatures failing to find the way have long been rotted in the dust of history. Contrary to the human beings, a wide range of care and assistance are provided to the weak, every effort are made to the freak or morbid to ensure their survival, and the infant mortality is made to the minimum. The strong will have to do more high-risk labor work, which benefits the survival of the weak and the ill. In the long run, the strength keeps degenerating with each generation. Of course, we are by no means advocating abolishing the humanitarian care or making the infirm engage in dangerous work. Here we just state one problem of biological evolution, and how to solve this problem is another thing.

[sgylfg]

     The apes and other wild animals have tough skin, and are born with fur, scales or feathers which provide good protection. Modern people’s skin looks soft and delicate with such poor protection that a slight scratch could cause injury. As a result of wearing clothes for a long-time, the fur has completely degraded. Nowadays, the skin lesions are more and more, and all kinds of inflammation, allergy and other morbidity are rising. It is reported that one patient was without dermis, but a thin film of epidermis. As a slight touch will cause bleeding, the body must be wrapped with gauze tightly. This is an extreme example.

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      For the living creatures in natural state, their body must have sufficient self-regulating and self-balance ability, and only in this way could they be ensured to have enough vitality in the ever-changing environment. For some important microelements, their amounts that are contained in the natural food and water is not uniform and constant, rather they are greatly different. This requires the body must have enough adjustment ability to respond the changes, so that it does not get poisoned when there is too much and it has replacement and compensation ways when there is too little. The food, medicine and other conditions for people are many times superior to that of other animals, and thus the automatical adjustment ability of people’s body has been greatly degenerated. For cretinism, people already know it’s hereditary. It is lucky that this can be solved by adding iodine, and unlike color blindness there is no prescription for it. So cretinism is named as "iodine deficiency disorders", and tried to forget its hereditary origin. Diabetes in the past is an incurable disease, and the patients can basically survive now through methods such as medication, injection of insulin, diet control and so on. So, the body’s function of automatically adjusting sugar metabolism is replaced artificially. From the biological point of view, when the body no longer needs this feature, it becomes "useless", The body's function will inevitably decline, and as a result the morbidity rate continues to rise with tendency to be younger and younger. A variety of "iodine deficiency disorders" are also following the same law.

[sgylfg]

      In recent years, the incidence of vision defects are also rising rapidly, People are always attributing it to the lack of light or improper use of the eyes and other external reasons. However, despite of the popularity and improvement of health care, the incidence rate does not decline as expected, but rather rises and changes with the passing days. Those various kinds of eye lesions can by no means be explained by external reasons. If we know the eye development history of the blind fish, it should be not difficult to understand the experience process of human eye. The difference lies in that the human eye become useless not because of entering the darkness and they still need vision. As the vision defects do not affect survival, it might be deemed "useless" from the perspective of evolution.