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Guess Our Bark Really Is Worse Than Our Bite
Severely EFLEarly humans swapped bite for brain NewScientist.com news service Humans owe their big brains like Chomsky? "Big brain" is the same as "fathead," right? and sophisticated culture like mud wrestling to a single genetic mutation that weakened our jaw muscles about 2.4 million years ago, a new study suggests. The slack muscles relaxed their hold on the human skull, giving the brain room to grow. Other primates such as the Paleos remained stuck with mighty muscles that squeezed the skull in a vice-like grip. So that explains why they donât have brains. Or common sense. But why did this process occur in humans and not in other primates? or Islamofacists, Paleos, and their ilk According to Hansell Stedman, an expert on muscle disorders at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, it was a simple mutation in a gene found in our jaw muscles. I think there was a large mutation behind the Paleonazisâ jaw muscles, too. In follow-up work, Stedmanâs team studied the gene in people from all over the world, including natives of Africa, South America, Western Europe, Iceland, Japan and Russia. They also studied seven species of non-human primates, including gorillas and chimpanzees. Every human which leaves out Ara-Rat had the mutation, whereas none of the animals did. Detailed genetic analysis suggests the human mutation occurred approximately 2.4 million years ago. Shortly after that, the earliest known members of the genus Homo appeared - with smaller jaws, and larger brains. Except for the genus Homo-Islamo, which kept the smaller brains, and the genus Homo-Politico, which grew much larger mouths. Posted by: Barbara Skolaut bskolaut@hotmail.com 2004-03-25 |
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