Genes
Question # 1 What are genes? Question # 2 How large a part of our personality is inherited? Question # 3 What characterizes us, homo sapiens? Question # 4 What characterizes homo erectus?
Question # 5 Who were neanderthalls?
Question # 1 What are genes?
If you imagine your DNA as a cookbook, then your genes are the recipes. The genes tell your cells how to function and what traits to express. When genes are written in the DNA alphabet, they are, for example, A, T, C, and G. Example If you have curly hair, it is because the genes you inherited from your parents are instructing your hair follicle cells to make curly strands. https://www.23andme.com/en-int/gen101/genes/
Human beings have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes. Each one of us has the same set of genes. https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/basics/gene https://www.23andme.com/en-int/gen101/genes/
Question # 2 How large a part of our personality is inherited?
Personality traits are between 40% and 60% heritable.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1044045074 page 104. http://hbr.org/2011/07/the-unselfish-gene/ar/4
6 creativity studies of identical twins show that 25% to 40% of what we do innovatively stems from genetics. That means that about 2/3 of our innovation skills come through learning. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10054210-the-innovator-s-dna location 311.
The human population will become more alike as races merge.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/11/091124-origin-of-species-150-darwin-human-evolution.html
Question # 3 Where do we, homo sapiens, come from?
A short summary of how life on Earth developed:
About 4 billion years ago, life on Earth started with a single-celled organism. This single-celled organism gave rise to other single-celled life.
About 3 billion years ago, multicellularity evolved. This includes fungi, plants
and animals.
The first animals to develop a backbone were fish. One fish lineage came onto land and gave rise to, among other things, the mammals and reptiles. Some reptiles become birds, some mammals become primates, some primates become monkeys with tails, and others become the great apes, including a variety of human species.
https://www.ted.com/talks/prosanta_chakrabarty_four_billion_years_of_evolution_in_six_minutes
Monkeys Reptiles and humans and birds
Fish
Fungi and plants
Single-celled life
https://www.ted.com/talks/prosanta_chakrabarty_four_billion_years_of_evolution_in_six_minutes
Humans evolved in East Africa about 2.5 million years ago from a genus of apes called Australopithecus, which means Southern Ape.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2407692503 Page 5.
http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_pagel_how_language_transformed_humanity.html minute 13.
160,000 – 200,000 years ago is the origin of our species, homo sapiens. http://www.thersa.org/events/our-events/wired-for-culture, March 1, 2012. http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_pagel_how_language_transformed_humanity.html, minute 7. http://jp.dk/rejser/andet/article2751188.ece?page=2 http://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/v/human-prehistory-101--prologue
http://youtu.be/-UnWtH7rpNw minute 7.
160,000 – 200,000 years ago
10,000 years ago
For the last 10,000 years, homo sapiens has been the only human species on Earth.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2407692503 Page 5.
Contrary to our ancestors Homo erectus and the Neanderthalls, we – homo sapiens – have the ability to learn from each other, build on ideas of each other. Therefore, we develop more than Homo erectus and the Neanderthals did. http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_pagel_how_language_transformed_humanity.html, minute 5.
http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_pagel_how_language_transformed_humanity.html, minute 6.
Around 50,000 years ago, about a hundred people moved from Africa to Asia. Everyone alive today, who has any non-African ancestors, is probably descended from this group. https://www.23andme.com/en-int/gen101/prehistory/outofafrica/
Wanderings have been the engine of human worldwide expansion. If a group split once every 40 years and moved about 100 kilometres to the East, the distance from East Africa to China would have been covered in about 10,000 years.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2407692503 Page 48.
Question # 4 Who was homo erectus?
Our ancestors, the Homo erectus, evolved about 2 millions years ago on the African savanna.
http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_pagel_how_language_transformed_humanity.html
http://youtu.be/-UnWtH7rpNw minute 7.
160,000 – 200,000 years ago
10,000 years ago
How homo erectus may have looked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus
For 1 million years, homo erectus made the same hand axes over and over again. In other words, they were not good at learning from each other, for example watch and copy from others. As a result they could not improve on ideas of each other. http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_pagel_how_language_transformed_humanity.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_pagel_how_lan guage_transformed_humanity.html, minute 5.
Question # 5 Who were neanderthalls?
Between 1% and 4% of the DNA of modern Europeans and their descendants on other continents is of Neanderthal origin.
Neanderthals were larger and heavier than us. http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21692847-neanderthals-parting-gifts-homo-sapiens-were-disease-causing-genes http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/02/13/our-lost-cousins-neanderthals/O2cSNRBhPjcJYl76EoDAxK/story.html
How neanderthals may have looked
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal
Neanderthall
Homo sapiens
http://www.ted.com/talks/svante_paeaebo_dna_clues_to_our_inner_neanderthal.html
Neanderthals lived in Europe and Central Asia and died out 40,000 years ago.
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21692847-neanderthals-parting-gifts-homo-sapiens-were-disease-causing-genes http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/02/13/our-lost-cousins-neanderthals/O2cSNRBhPjcJYl76EoDAxK/story.html
http://youtu.be/-UnWtH7rpNw minute 7.
160,000 – 200,000 years ago
The tools of the Neanderthals were somewhat more complicated than those of homo erectus. The tools of neanderthals also changed very little over the 300,000 years that neanderthals lived.
http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_pagel_how_language_transformed_humanity.html, minute 5.
http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_pagel_how_language_transformed_humanity.html, minute 5.