Two million years of flaking stone and the evolutionary efficiency of stone tool technology http://rdcu.be/Iq1c

We are a worldwide social network of freethinkers, atheists, agnostics and secular humanists.
THE NAKED APE: Exploring the science and cultural evolution of human psychology, behavior, cognition, language, memory, intelligence, emotion, and consciousness. (Uh, did I miss anything?)
Location: #science
Members: 57
Latest Activity: on Friday
Those who’ve know me for some time know that I have a moderately strong interest in human consciousness and psychology. Although mind and body cannot exist without one another – and indeed they shape one another – it does seem that the very core of the human experience of ‘self’ exists in the brain alone.
We all know that much of the functioning and maintenance of our body is controlled covertly by the brain or by biological systems that work beneath our threshold of awareness. We do not consciously decide to sweat, or digest our food, or replace our cells.
And yet, in spite of the fact that we know this, we still cling to the illusion that the functioning of our thoughts, our decisions, our perceptions, our preferences, our memories, and our reasoning are under our direct, conscious control.
But neuroscience and psychology are now showing us that this simply is not the case—that the processes of mind and awareness function just as covertly as our biological systems.
That fascinates me!
How is it that the mind – that place of concealment – is also the one place in which awareness itself is known to exist?
The truth is that we don’t know ourselves as well as we’d like to believe. We don’t control our decisions, our perceptions, our motivations, or our memories as well as we think we do.
THE NAKED APE was created to explore these important topics. I welcome any post on human psychology, behavior, cognition, perception, language, memory, intelligence, emotion, and consciousness.
Started by Chris. Last reply by Chris Feb 21. 6 Replies 0 Likes
Started by Doone. Last reply by Chris Nov 17, 2017. 3 Replies 0 Likes
Started by Doone. Last reply by Neal Jun 18, 2013. 3 Replies 1 Like
Started by A Former Member. Last reply by A Former Member Jun 4, 2013. 7 Replies 0 Likes
Started by Michel. Last reply by A Former Member May 5, 2013. 3 Replies 0 Likes
Started by Neal. Last reply by Adriana Mar 20, 2013. 13 Replies 0 Likes
Started by Adriana. Last reply by Adriana Feb 6, 2013. 6 Replies 1 Like
Started by Michel. Last reply by Adriana Jan 31, 2013. 2 Replies 0 Likes
Started by Michel. Last reply by Marianne Jan 19, 2013. 2 Replies 0 Likes
Started by A Former Member. Last reply by Michel Jan 2, 2013. 6 Replies 1 Like
Nice Comment
Humans have been driving a global reduction in mammal size for thousands of years
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE—The dispersal of humans out of Africa coincided with a dramatic global reduction in the size of mammals, a new study* reveals. This “downsizing” trend may continue, suggest the authors, to the extent that, in just a couple hundred years, the largest terrestrial mammal left may be the domestic cow, weighing in at 900 kilograms (kg). Felisa A. Smith et al. sought to understand how the size of mammals has changed over time. They updated and created two datasets that capture the global distribution and body size of terrestrial mammals that lived between 66 million years ago through the present. The authors found a substantial bias in mammal extinction during the periods when humans were dispersing around the globe, whereby species that went extinct tended to be two to three times bigger than mammals that survived, a trend that was evident globally. Notably, prior to humans’ migration out of Africa 125,000 years ago, Africa was home to mammals of smaller size (with a mean body mass roughly half that of mammals found in Eurasia), which the authors suggest is reflective of the hominin-mammal interactions that had already been at play. Perhaps most striking is the reduction of mammals in the New World during the late Pleistocene, which coincided with humans’ adoption of long-range weapons. The authors report a greater than 10-fold drop in both mean and maximum body mass of mammals during this time; for example, mean mass of terrestrial mammals in North America fell from 98.0 to 7.6 kg. If current trends continue, the mean body mass of mammals in North America will drop from 7.7 to 4.9 kg in a few hundred years, the authors say. As mammals play a critical role in shaping ecosystems, the downsizing trend will have a cascading impact on other organisms.
https://popular-archaeology.com/article/humans-have-been-driving-a-...
Yeah, evolution is an always ongoing thing.
Shrinking Megafauna: hominins have hunted largest mammals to extinction since late Pleistocene. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6386/310 … #anthropocene #anthroecology
Humans Are Still Evolving Today, And Scientists Have Just Found A Whole Host Of New Adaptions http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/humans-are-still-evolving-today-we-can-see-it-written-in-our-genes/ …
Just one more of those gaps that god is supposed to be living in getting smaller and smaller.
We are living in a golden age of new information about our history and the universe
Two million years of flaking stone and the evolutionary efficiency of stone tool technology http://rdcu.be/Iq1c
She looks like a Florence
Ok, so who was in my house with a damn camera?
Homo floresiensis #Hobbit Reconstruction by Elisabeth Daynès was based on hominin fossils discovered at Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003 http://artshebdomedias.com/wp-content/uploads/daynes_flores.jpg …
Stealing that!
© 2018 Created by Atheist Universe.
Powered by
Badges | Report an Issue | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service
You need to be a member of The Burgeoning Family Tree of the Naked Ape to add comments!