whats everyones thought on humans and why were we the only ones that ever evolved to be this intelligent, howcomes every other species just hasnt ever become this self concious and generally interactive with social and personal creativeness on this earth, isnt it true that many other species have been on this earth far longer than humans, why us why so fast? i am aware of scientific standpoints on this matter but just want to hear if anyone else has other opinions about it.

put it tis way.....as things stand i am not particularly proud to BE a human. however a saving grace is thqt i realize, it isn't ALL humanity who is frantically trying to destroy--irrevesibly--the balance of Nature. it is a certina mindset which is against its v ery self. andin a roundabout way this answers your question

how come we are 'different'. i reckons its thepower of being able to ABSTRACT. so for example i can make a tool because i can picture the parts needed and where to get them, make tem etc, and iwrite tis down, and others help me etc

ting is though. ts abstractionsgot well out of hand. 'we' have abstracted feeling apart from intellectuality and now worship the latter......

humans evolved because, as primates, the only thing we really had to help us survive was our large brain. so we used it. we thought of things to do ahead of time instead of just doing what came to our minds at the moment. we also have hands that can manipulate things more easily than other animals, so that allowed us to realize our thoughts in the physical world. this comes after a long line of primates, and before that rodents, and so on down the evolutionary line; each one with a brain increasing in size over generations and thousands of years. the reason, in a nutshell, is because the we are the present product of a line of organisms that evolved to survive solely on more and more complex thinking; on planning ahead.

yeah but why do we have such a huge brain?, ive heard many stories about certain diets etc, but thats questionable. there are plenty of animals that could have evolved hige brains because of a need, why us.

I disagree that higher intelligence is limited to humans, we are just too myopic to see it. Dolphins, whales, certain birds, apes, and octopi are all intelligent. We are different from them in some ways, perhaps due to language or hallucinogens, or just dumb luck.

And maybe we intentionally or (as evidence suggests with neanderthals) unintentionally killed off all the other close competition (debatable question, I know).
In other cases I'd agree with spidergoat.

I disagree that higher intelligence is limited to humans, we are just too myopic to see it. Dolphins, whales, certain birds, apes, and octopi are all intelligent. We are different from them in some ways, perhaps due to language or hallucinogens, or just dumb luck.

I think dumb luck is a good answer. We have better communication skills although that's probably dumb luck too.

That too, probably the combination of both.

Natural Selection is at the same time both a dumb process and an extremely elegant. Dumb in the sense that natural selection is rooted primarily in random genetic mutations. Elegant in the sense that through advantage or neutrality of mutations, the trait spreads until it can lead towards a whole new species developing.

whats everyones thought on humans and why were we the only ones that ever evolved to be this intelligent, howcomes every other species just hasnt ever become this self concious and generally interactive with social and personal creativeness on this earth, isnt it true that many other species have been on this earth far longer than humans, why us why so fast? i am aware of scientific standpoints on this matter but just want to hear if anyone else has other opinions about it.

There had to be a first... We were it... That we know of...

yeah but why do we have such a huge brain?, ive heard many stories about certain diets etc, but thats questionable. there are plenty of animals that could have evolved hige brains because of a need, why us.
those that survived, survived because they had a larger brain than most and could therefore think of how to survive better. as a result, only those with the best brains survived and the best brains tended to be the largest.

Actually that is incorrect. There is a maximum optimal brainsize limit, after that the speed of communication between various regions of the brain gets slower which results in decrease of intellect, i.e., computing capacity. Our biological brain can not get much bigger than it is now.
That was the result of a research done by neurologists in France some years ago.
If you wish I can find which institute/lead scientist it was.

Actually that is incorrect. There is a maximum optimal brainsize limit, after that the speed of communication between various regions of the brain gets slower which results in decrease of intellect, i.e., computing capacity. Our biological brain can not get much bigger than it is now.
That was the result of a research done by neurologists in France some years ago.
If you wish I can find which institute/lead scientist it was.
ok, but that doesn't disprove my statement. that only proves that our brains can't get any larger than they are now, it doesn't mean that they couldnt get any larger (from a significantly smaller size) thousands of years ago. in fact, the neanderthal brain was larger in size than the modern homo sapien. thats probably why they all died out and humans lived on.

Progress is a product of need.
Successful species, within a specific environment, do not need to evolve if the environment remains relatively stable.

In man the right amount of weakness and the right ingredients coincided to result in a brain that could alter environmental rules and improvise surrogate tools to the ones they were lacking by nature.

Other species haven’t evolved, beyond a certain point, because they didn’t have to.

on another note quickly, all of the hommanid type species that "previously" existed in the past ie goliaths, hobbits, neanderthal etc, they say we possibly wiped them out or ate them etc haha anyways, i dont think they were wiped out i think they all still exist to a certain point, but we all crossbred with each others species, thats why we have such random genetics today like dwarfs really small people really big people etc, fat skinny blood lines you know, yeah i think the "melding" of all the hommanid species made us evolve any thoughts on that theory of mine?.


peace

I've got five dogs and I see them making decisions all the time. So watch out, chimps and gorillas aren't far behind.

If we can use the term hyper-advanced...

justagirl wrote...
I think dumb luck is a good answer. We have better communication skills although that's probably dumb luck too.

Correct. But perhaps once one species has become lucky, once one species becomes hyper-advanced, that species, or more accurately, this species, precludes the advancement of any other, through abuse of the planet, through carnivorous harvesting and through the establishment of a 'top' of not only a phagistic chain, but also a phagistic web.

We are a lucky (to us) fluke, an unlucky fluke to other species if they had the brains to think about it.

The dinosaurs did very well for 150 or more million years without getting much (if any) more intelligent. Intelligence seems to be neither evolutionarily inevitable nor necessary for the long term survival of a species.

if our brains cant get any/much larger than they are now this means that it couldent have gotten larger beforehand so our ancestors must have had these sized brains to begin with so why were they so large for a creature quite small for the brain size?. an elephant has a large brain like we do, but an elephant is a big creature wieghing roughly 6000 kilos, compared to te average man who wieghs around 80/90 kilos.



and about human random genetics, think about this for a second, what other species has such random and diverse differances as humans do. if you look at a herd of elephants or gazell or any other species of animals they all kinda look the same, but humans do not look the same atall we have a very diverse and mutated gene system if you look at the human species all over the globe, its to diverse to be a pure gene pool we must have bred witht he other type of homanid biengs a long time ago, hobbits are still among us, retarded neanderthals are everywhere, (look at bush) goliaths are still among us, the inteligent coastal dwelling homanids are still here, the large fat types aswell (not fat from eating fat from herreditory genes), i believe we cross bed with other types of homanids and our genetics became more speratic and we evolved in strange and benificial ways, i will say more points on this later on when i have finished researching this theory of mine in more detail,

Why not ? Ever heard of coincidence ? ;)

Nothing is a coincidence, everything is governed by laws.

exactly




peace

Nothing is a coincidence, everything is governed by laws.
The two are not mutually exclusive.

I have heard that sceletonremains has shown that homo sapiens crossbred with neanderthals , so you might have a point E.F.O.Chi .......

Selfconciousness and intelligens do excist among other species, only not to the level of us humans .....

The bonobo DNA is more than 98 % like ours - could be interesting to crossbreed a bonobo ape with a human - it should work - has it been done ?

Just to see how much crossbreeding would mean - or ad to abilities .....

I have heard that sceletonremains has shown that homo sapiens crossbred with neanderthals , so you might have a point E.F.O.Chi .......

Selfconciousness and intelligens do excist among other species, only not to the level of us humans .....

The bonobo DNA is more than 98 % like ours - could be interesting to crossbreed a bonobo ape with a human - it should work - has it been done ?

Just to see how much crossbreeding would mean - or ad to abilities .....

i suspected something of that nature happened and people think my theorys are crap,


peace.

JustaGirl had the right idea when she called it dumb luck that we developed intelligence.

I do not think there is any good evidence that our ancestors bred with Neandertals, although in the last 20 or so years it has been discovered that the two speciaes coexisted for many thousands of years. I do not think there is any evidence that the two species traded, fought, or interacted. I do not think there is any reason to suppose that they did not interact. There is just no evidence either way.

It is my belief that there was sex between the two species. There is ample evidence that one of the two species has had sex with sheep, goats, rubber dolls, and almost anything else that had an orifice of a suitable size.

There is some speculation pertaining to the red hair gene in European peoples being linked with the Neanderthals.

http://www.dhamurian.org.au/anthropology/neanderthal1.html

Prince James: Some cursory searches suggest to me that the Dhamurian Society is not a reliable source of scientific information. I am not interested enough to investigate further. For the time being I will trust my memory of other sources, which strongly imply that our ancstors did not breed with Neandertals.

Dinosaur:

I did not check the resource's legitimacy. I had previously read an article on a more scientifically-oriented site and was simply looking for it. However, right now I cannot find anything on the matter, so I think you might well be right as to the legitimacy of this claim.

Concerning the evolution of the brain:

Mutations happen randomly yes. and the successful ones that allow for adaptation to environment stay around due to natural selection yes.


there is a gene that turns on during development which controls brain growth among all animals with brains. when the gene shuts off, the brain stops growing. one idea is that a random mutation of this gene occured among chimps allowing it to stay in the 'on' position longer. this is the primary sientific theory for the development of human intelligence.

explain to me how anything is random in the universe, not a single thing is random, everything happens for a reason, its just like this, imagine you have a ball its just there nothing else, just a ball, the ball will stay there for the rest of existance, unless something makes it "do something" and if anything in the universe happens its because another force/energy/thing has caused it to do so.


peace,

Do not forget just how intricate our world is.

Think about how many things had to fall in place to bring you to this exact point in time. Also, the most miniscule thing can change everything further down the line.

when stating that mutations are random i was referring to the linking and crossing over of alleles within a pair of chromosomes.

random here does not imply that there was not a definable causal relationship. but that the cause of the particular mutation through reproduction is not based on a specific need for that lifeform in adapting to its environment. many unsucessful mutations occur, they are not widely adopted and as the carrier does not reproduce, that mutation is ended. the successful ones continue thus giving the overall appearance that the scpecies is adapting to the environment. this is natural selection but the point is the term random can still exist and does not mean that one action can have two equally likely outcomes (which would generate randomness); rather, that mutations are not predetermined and do not follow a pattern of occurence.

oh ok then i missunderstood my bad, i understand your point now,


peace

EmptyForceOfChi: The world of our senses is controlled by quantum phenomena, which are random processes. It might be more accurate to say that everything is random. Causality could be a very convincing illusion resulting from the law of large numbers.