Research Outline

Argument Validation - Human Evolution

Goals

To find an accurate quote, research statistics, or 1-2 credible-evidence based sources, to validate, reiterate, and support an argument in a speech and a publication. The argument ascertains that "human beings are 100% adapted to a man-made vs. ecological environment."

Early Findings

  • We were unable to find any quote/research proving that "human beings are 100% adapted (or evolved) to a man-made vs. ecological environment."
  • Some partially-helpful insights found are given below:
  • Nathanael Massey in an article states that "With the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago, humans embarked on a new experiment -- rather than adapting to our environment, we began adapting our environment to meet our needs, slashing and burning forests to create room for agriculture."
  • Peter Ward in his article on Scientific American, a part of Springer Nature, quotes a research study published in 2007 by "Henry C. Harpending of the University of Utah, John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin–Madison", and their team. The team estimated that "over the past 10,000 years humans have evolved as much as 100 times faster than at any other time since the split of the earliest hominid from the ancestors of modern chimpanzees."
  • This 2007 study by Henry C. Harpending, John Hawks, and the team can be found here.
  • According to this study, "to the extent that new adaptive alleles continued to reflect demographic growth, the Neolithic and later periods would have experienced a rate of adaptive evolution more than 100 times higher than characterized most of human evolution."

Summary of Findings

  • We dedicated this hour of research to a targeted search for the given quote/statistics and hence, were unable to go through a considerable number of articles and studies that may have validated the argument differently.
  • Some other less helpful articles and studies we analyzed during this hour of research include: