The Human Evolution Story so far

After writing about Religion, and Passion & Success, and nearing the end of the year, I decided to return back to my older interests on evolution, especially the Human evolution.

Many of us would have heard about Neanderthals, our (Homo sapiens sapiens) closest relatives. Neanderthals (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) have become extinct from this earth, 28,000 years ago. They were said to be ruling this earth  for more than 200,000 years, especially in regions of today’s Europe and Western Asia. They lived in regions around today’s Israel, Mongolia, Italy, Gibraltar, and Britain, but gradually moved from place to place. 

Research shows that modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) invaded Europe, starting a little more than 40,000 years ago which means that Neanderthals and our current species would have lived together in the same region or territory for a period of 12,000 – 15,000 years. This makes it interesting. The Neanderthals and modern humans probably lived most of their lives without seeing each other; or rather kept away from each other from the landscape. 

The last batch of Neanderthals are believed to have lived in the now British territory of Gibraltar, some 28,000 years ago. The prime reasons being cited for extinction of Neanderthals are Climate Change and subtle differences in their behavior and biology. It is known that Neanderthals were bigger in size than Homo sapiens sapiens, and therefore would have required 4034 Calories per day, while a modern human being required only 2200 calories per day, which might have caused the Neanderthals to hunt for bigger animals only (like horses, deer, bison and Wild cattle etc..),  though they ate vegetables and other plant food, they served only as supplementary food items for them. 

Humans on the other hand might have hunted for smaller animals, survived with plants and vegetables (latter activities were primarily carried out by women), during the extreme climatic conditions that were changing rapidly within a span of few decades. Therefore humans survived with diversified diet. Another theory is that, Neanderthals had different cognitive capabilities than modern humans; as they reproduced 4 years earlier than in modern humans and therefore matured earlier.

Now the developing story of our history is about the discovery of a new Denisovans – another sub-species of Homo sapiens, who seem to have coexisted in Asia with Neanderthals and early modern humans. To begin with, the common ancestor of modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans would be Homo heidelbergensis, (though some scientists consider it an European species ancestral to neanderthals alone) who existed 700,000 years ago and began to diverge into these two groups and so far. But now a discovery in the Caves of Siberia, called the Denisova Cave, a new human species – Denisovans seem to have existed 190,000 years ago. The surprising and interesting thing is that, this cave seems to have been home for both Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Denisovans are closer to Neanderthals in their DNA and reveals that both might have interbreed with each other. However it is highly likely that Denisovans might have interbreed with another species (yet-to-be identified) which would have created them.  The DNA analysis also tells that traces of Neanderthal DNA (approx 2.5%) in found all non-Africans today and of Denisovan DNA (5%) found in today’s Melanesians – the aboriginal Australasians.  This means that humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) interbreed with both Neanderthals and Denisovans and also provide strength to the argument that Neanderthals were with the West, and Denisovans with the East. 

Prior to this, the discovery of the remains of Homo sapiens idaltu, another extinct sub-species of us, was found in Ethiopia in 2003. This species is argued as the ancestors for us – Homo sapiens sapiens.   The discovery of yet another species – Homo floresiensis – known as Hobbit (as they were known to be very short) through the remains found in Indonesia  in 2004 tells about another human species that is considered to be from Homo erectus, another of our sibling that would have lived with the modern humans for a long time.   

Well, the story does not end here, and hopefully,  even more mysteries of our species will be unraveled in future. 

Sources of Info: 

• National Geographic , October, 2008
• Scientific American, August 2009 
• Scientific American, August 2012
• National Geographic, July 2013
• New Scientist, November 2013

God and his Open System

As (I might have) indicated earlier in my blogs (such as “Secrets of Nature”, “Beliefs on Evolution“, and Superior Evolution), it makes sense for us to perceive the creations of God – essentially the Universe, as a System and of course, I believe that God has created this system.

I also sometimes believe that it is this System, created by God, that creates each one of us, than God himself creating each one of us individually, and the system has also spawned up the entire earth and the world we live in. We are all components or entities within the system, and I believe that god has designed and put in place controls, limitations and other mechanisms for the effective functioning of his system, and of course, god will and can control his system.

One secret to understanding God’s own system is to understand nature that will unlock all the secrets of the system. Talking more from the system theory perspective, a system, is called a closed system, if it does not interact with the external world. In such case, a closed system cannot change and also cannot evolve. However, as we know the system created by God, the Universe, is subject to change and evolution, and hence very much an open system.

As the main system, created by God is open, all the entities and all the other subsystems within it, can only be open naturally. Hence, it is highly impossible to design and have a fully closed system, and run it for long!, as in a closed system, there cannot be developments or enhancements possible. So, for a system to function, it should try to mimic the parent system, and hence should be open, and should interact with diverse external environments to enrich and sustain itself. This could be true for families, organizations, countries, cultures etc…. as these are all sub-systems within the global system.

Well, now the IT people, may ask if God has created a open system, where is the source code?. My answer is, the source code is available for all of us, but we have surrounded ourselves with such worldly illusions, that we are unable to see it, – forget deciphering it!.

Thinking about The Secrets of Nature

Well, I had thought of writing many things in this blog, in the past few months; but was extremely busy with my work to take my time off. Though today is no different from the busiest days, I had a pressing thought, that pushed me to blog.

Thinking about the secrets of nature, humans (some of them) do believe that they are the superior beings, and have all powers vested with them. But, I got an analogy, that was striking to me, when I was dwelling upon these thoughts.

According to the Big bang theory, the world started as a single cosmic atom, and kept splitting into stars, planets, and moons. All of these have a life; i.e., they have a birth and death. It is an accepted fact of science, that stars, planets and other heavenly bodies do have life and death. Similarly, even in our body there are thousands of organisms in the form of bacteria, that are born, and live and die. Probably according to these organisms, your body is their world, as earth is to you, and some times, they jump from one body to another, as man plans to visit/stay in other planets like mars.

So, the universe (like the heavenly objects), humans and even the smallest creatures (like the bacteria) do have a birth, life and death. A striking aspect that differentiates one from the other is the longevity.

Continuing to think in this fashion, it leads to a thought that the earth we live in, could be our master, and we are like those countless bacteria that live in our body. As we take steps to keep our body in a healthy condition, the earth too sometimes takes these steps, that comes to us as natural disasters like, floods, earthquakes etc…

So, taking this analogy further, when we pollute our environments, we behave like those bad viruses in our body, to our master – the earth; As long as we are good in maintaing the health of our master – the earth, we would be safe, otherwise, we are bound to be punished by our master.

I do sometimes think, that humans have been given a greater control over other species in the earth is to protect our master – the earth from being damaged/polluted/ruined by others and at the same time to protect the good species (similar to good bacteria in our body) from being annihilated. Therefore in my thinking, humans could have evolved as an ‘intelligent medicine’ to save the earth, while in reality, we may be using that ‘intelligence’ to meet our own self-interests and therefore ruining the objectives of our master – the earth.

Hope everyone realizes this.

Superior Evolution

I had an opportunity to visit the Birla Science Museum, while I was in Hyderbad last week. The Birla Science Museum had tools for scientific demonstrations, and also portrayed real dinosaur fossils. Apart from that there was a replica of the now submerged city of Dwarka near Gujarat. The thing that struck me most was the mention about the origin of life, in the dinsosaur part of the museum.

“The earth is old by 460 million years and if this is shortened into one day, then life began at the 7th hour. Dinosaurs came at 22:30 and disappeared at 23:40. As far as man is concerned, he was born in just the last minute of the day. ”

That harped my mind, whether the man is really the so- called evolved creature!. That opens a possibility that there may be superior creatures evolved at some later point of time. Also, if you look at the other creatures that were around, the first living being were unicelled, then followed by multi-celled, vertebrates, mamals etc… So, there seems to be a superior evolution happening. But ofcourse, dinosaurs, the giant creatures that ruled this earth are no more now. But few million years later, man the creature is seeming to be master of earth. But how far it lasts is an interesting question!!. Again the possibilities seems to be too many to think of – whether man will be replaced by another superior creature or he evolves himself into a far more superior creature or he just sits there, while another superior creature evolves in the years to come are matters of interest, and would lead to inconclusive debates (atleast in our life time, until man does some thing foolish to destroy himself!!)

And to end, an Australian aboriginal proverb in today’s newspaper again struck me. It says ‘All of us are visitors to this point of time and to this place‘.

My beliefs on Evolution

As promised in my previous post, here are my beliefs or thoughts on evolution. Here’s the one liner.

“Everything in this universe will evolve”.

I mean to say that it doesn’t matter whether something is alive or not. Anything and everything in the Universe (including the world we live in) will evolve or change, in due course of time. Here time could be anything between a millisecond to a billions of years.

But that said, I also believe that changes or evolution to all of the things in the universe is happening (almost) always. The thing is that, we realize them only after a significant period has passed or rather I should say, we realize them only after we attain the capability of realizing them.

The question, whether, things change for the better or for the worse may arise. I believe that most of us are not in a position to differentitate between the good and the bad. Ultimately, I like to say that, (quoting some philosphical thoughts) everything will change for the better.

The above statements are my beliefs. I don’t think it will be hard to prove, but I don’t have the patience or interest to prove it scientifically. Though I am a scientist (by designation), my areas of work are on Information Technology. So, I would like to say that these thoughts are on a philosophical note.