Archive for neoteny
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Human Evolution and Frameshift Mutations
How did humans evolve from early primates? How did “human like” traits such as a smaller jaw relative to apes and hairlessness pop up when they don’t appear in the wild in any real frequency? The typical explanation for why humans have smaller jaws than early primates is that our diets changed and our brains got bigger, pressures that caused a smaller jaw. But there’s another way to look at this – what if our diets changed and our brains got bigger due to proto-human society dealing and adapting to an increasingly frequent and nearly catastrophic mutation of the jaw?
Chimpanzees and Neoteny
One of the biggest “human” questions is “where did we come from?”. While the mechanisms of evolution are well established, the route humanity took to get to its present state is not as well detemined.
