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From: spaceboy@indirect.com (s p a c e b o y)
Subject: Re: Computers--Next stage in evolution? Hmmmmmm.....
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Date: Tue, 14 Feb 1995 08:08:21 GMT
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Neil Rickert (rickert@cs.niu.edu) wrote:
: In <D3vEJ5.72s@indirect.com> spaceboy@indirect.com (s p a c e b o y) writes:

: >I do agree with you upon this point.  Humans have definitely not evolved 
: >well physically.  One interesting point of research has been upon 
: >birthing of young in many species.  When humans began to walk more and 
: >more upright throughout history, this had the effect of changing the 
: >geometry of the pelvis, causing the birth canal to become much more 
: >narrow.  Over the eons this caused human young to be born more and more 
: >premature since the babies' head develops very rapidly and would not pass 
: >through the pelvis unless birth occured more early.

: Quite evidently, this is wrong.  In normal circumstances, babies
: are not born premature.  They may be very immature, but that is
: a different matter.

: By implication, you are suggesting that the immaturity of the human
: infant is an evolutionary mistake.  I am inclined to think you are
: quite wrong in this.  One cannot properly apply teleological terms
: such as "strategy" to evolution, but if one could I would suggest
: that the immaturity of birth were a matter of strategy.  This
: evolutionary "mistake" allows a significantly larger part of the
: infant's development to occur in a far richer environment than would
: be possible in utero.  Without this "mistake" we should probably be
: rather more like apes than like humans.

Well as some might discover, this viewpoint is Anthro 101.. I spoke with 
my instructor, a PhD, on this subject a couple years back and it has been 
extensively studied. 

Premature means deviating from a normal 9 month cycle by even a month.  I 
am simply pointing out that for a child to be born correctly (without 
damage to the parent internal organs) it must be born at latest 9 
months.  I am simply pointing out this change in human anatomy as it 
affects length of pregnancy term in humans.  The fact IS that pregnancy 
terms ARE affected by the changing geometry of the human pelvis over the 
ages.  It is difficult to say whether the fact that a dog can bear many 
more young than a human of course goes deeper into genetics.  Obviously 
there are large differences between homo sapiens and canines.  I am not 
saying canines are better for this fact.  I merely pointed out that 
becoming upright in stature has affected the term of pregnancy in humans.

Premature is of course the wrong word.  Births occur at the correct time 
to avoid problems.  All i meant to point out is this would have an effect 
on evolution, good or bad.  Again, premature is a bad word.  The rest of 
the post was purely opinion.  

--

s p a c e b o y @ i n d i r e c t . c o m

