On human evolution on Nature

[nadinbrzezinski]

the series has been fantastic, but the idea that concepts such as burial go back half a million years are fantastic... The implications of current thinking are also incredible. It used to be believed that the genetic bottleneck of humanity was 10,000 individuals. Now they think it is 600.

That is simply incredible.

Oh and as an aside after what I saw with Cookie and Connie after Tuky died, and what I have since I am not sure we are the only ones capable of these advanced thoughts...

[Blue_In_AK]

1. Is this a different series

than the three-part one on Nova? That one has also been fascinating.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. It is the same seriies

[Bigmack]

2. Yup... it's Nova.. and it IS great. nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Neanderthal was able to speak

I am learning so much... Incredible

[Blue_In_AK]

5. It really has been an amazing series.

I loved the way that they've examined all the different discoveries, tying them together. I haven't seen the last show yet, but I've got it on record.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. I try to keep with all of this but Ida, the other one

TLC put together, and this, really have put a lot of the new research together... and to me the most valuable is the bottle neck. We may actually survive, as a species mind you, an ecological collapse.

[Blue_In_AK]

12. Perhaps if we are bottlenecked down again

we can do away with war for a while. It's kind of a gruesome thought, but I was thinking a couple nights ago that war is one of the ways (apparently) that human beings cope with overpopulation. If there were only a few of us, maybe we'd learn how to cooperate to benefit each other.

I'm really sick of war -- it just seems like we should have evolved past that. There ought to be, and there are, more humane ways of birth control.

[rug]

6. Don't forget Mitochondrial Eve.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Oh she was a CYLON :-)

I had to laugh when they did that in the last episode.

[Roland99]

10. Sykes' book was a good read.

[endless october]

9. i will have to check out that series.

[Johonny]

11. yeah it was a great series

you have to remember though these scientist tend to be more "certain" on these TV series than they do in their journal articles. If you watched the Ardi special and then read the Science articles the level of absoluteness was very different.

The other implication of course is, if our ancestors did bury their dead and have symbolism, then did perhaps religion evolve with us as a species? If so, what a bitter pill for creationist to swallow :)

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. Oh absolutely...

these specials are the cliffs notes for the people.

And yes, religion did evolve and I will even make a crazy statement, it was adaptive at one point as the means to communicate culture I suspect these days it is maladaptive.