Stumbles
Evolution is not only determined by natural selection. Apparently culture also plays a strong role in shaping the path of evolution as the following article from The New York Time explains:
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: March 02, 2010
As with any other species, human populations are shaped by the usual forces of natural selection, like famine, disease or climate. A new force is now coming into focus. It is one with a surprising implication - that for the last 20,000 years or so, people have inadvertently been shaping their own evolution.
The force is human culture, broadly defined as any learned behavior, including technology. The evidence of its activity is the more surprising because culture has long seemed to play just the opposite role. Biologists have seen it as a shield that protects people from the full force of other selective pressures, since clothes and shelter dull the bite of cold and farming helps build surpluses to ride out famine.
And here I was thinking that the round bellied and chubby cheeked Santa with Rudolph the rednosed reindeer coming down chimneys to leave presents for children had been ar...
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