Like most animals, humans have a checkered past, and our family album is now full of side branches and dead ends. And it's populated with creatures, such as the little people (Homo floresiensis) of Flores Island in Indonesia, that we could never have imagined in our wildest dreams.
The straight line has blossomed into a spreading, rather uncontrolled bush and we don’t like it. We want our history to be nice and neat, but the fossils keep messing us up.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Regrettably, there is a whole lot of truth to that statement.
I can only guess that is one of the reasons why, on our side of the pond in Tennessee and Kentucky, the 30 and 40 acre “pigmy” graveyards full of 3 to 4.5 foot skeletons are ignored.
While, at the same time, a few hundred miles away, in Ohio to Iowa, 7 foot plus skeletons in mounds are also downplayed.
“Pigmies and giants in NA? It just doesn’t make sense!” In whose mind?
If we can have “little people” living along side tall and big boned people in
Scandinavia and North Britain, as well as acknowledged pigmies living along side tall Africans, why can’t we have them to?
A bush compared to a tree? More like a bramble patch compared to a orchard.
Or, on a political note, free enterprise to a controlled economy.
Efficient, no. Effective, very.
You miss-understood me.
I like messy things.
They offer alternatives to the straight and narrow.
My professional background had a lot to do with the various transportation systems. The overlying spider webs of RR, Road, water, and air seems very inefficient.
But in the long run, it's redundancy allows for the most efficient movement of goods.
We wouldn’t be having the whole hybrid human/Neanderthal if it were a straight line. That is one discussion of no practical value, but it is fun.
It makes me wonder how they are going to incorporate it into our upcoming "Caveman" TV show? Which gender is going to hit on which?
Ouch!
Do we want to get into a "jock" vs. "nerd" thing here?
Or a "hook up" vs. "life partner" thing?
(Maybe DB can give us a guess as to how far down the road the society, “alpha,” females looked when looking for a mate?)
But we cannot ignore the idea that their may have been two genders in two species on the "hunt" here.
I can see an episode now!
Beach party around the bonfire. Everybody is full of roast Mammoth.
Scene goes to a conversation on the edge of the darkness:
"What do you see in HIM? He is not our kind!"
Yeah. Then I will go take a shower and go pick up my 10 percent check for coming up with the idea. All they need to do is flesh it out some.
On gender preferences: This was in the newspaper this AM.
I think it is a real joke. The entire attitude created by the environment they conducted the experiment in is one of “Wham Bam, Thank You Mam.!”
It is not one geared for a decision meant to cover a long term.
Dating game: Men go for looks, women are picky, study says
By Randolph E. Schmid
Associated Press
Published: September 4, 2007 [/b]WASHINGTON — Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks.
And guys won't be surprised to learn that women are much choosier about partners than they are.
"Just because people say they're looking for a particular set of characteristics in a mate, someone like themselves, doesn't mean that is what they'll end up choosing," Peter M. Todd, of the cognitive science program at Indiana University, Bloomington, said in a telephone interview.
Researchers led by Todd report in today's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that their study found humans were similar to most other mammals, "following Darwin's principle of choosy females and competitive males, even if humans say something different."
Their study involved 26 men and 20 women in Munich, Germany.
Participants ranged in age from 26 to their early 40s and took part in "speed dating," short meetings of three to seven minutes in which people chat, then move on to meet another dater. Afterward, participants check off the people they'd like to meet again, and dates can be arranged between pairs who select one another.
Speed dating let researchers look at a lot of mate choices in a short time, Todd said.
In the study, participants were asked before the session to fill out a questionnaire about what they were looking for in a mate, listing such categories as wealth and status, family commitment, physical appearance, healthiness and attractiveness.
After the session, the researchers compared what the participants said they were looking for with the people they actually chose to ask for another date.
Men's choices did not reflect their stated preferences, the researchers concluded. Instead, men appeared to base their decisions mostly on the women's physical attractiveness.
The men also appeared to be much less choosy. Men tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold, Todd said.
Women's actual choices, like men's, did not reflect their stated preferences, but they made more discriminating choices, the researchers found.
The scientists said women were aware of the importance of their own attractiveness to men and adjusted their expectations to select the more desirable guys.
"Women made offers to men who had overall qualities that were on a par with the women's self-rated attractiveness. They didn't greatly overshoot their attractiveness," Todd said, "because part of the goal for women is to choose men who would stay with them."
But, he added, "they didn't go lower. They knew what they could get and aimed for that level."
So, it turns out, the women's attractiveness influenced the choices of the men and the women.
I knew my wife of 40 plus years for 10 plus years before we got married.
We both had some limited experience with others before we settled on each other.
We were not alone in these surroundings, which were created and maintained to help in these kind of decisions.
In that environment, I knew some girls who were not exactly beauty queens that did not lower there expectations because of the lack of looks. They learned to compensate in other ways.
And the boys learned to appreciate the difference between beauty and ability. Not all went for ability, but at least they knew what they were getting. Those less than pretty girls got some real winners.
There may have been some of "following Darwin's principle of choosy females and competitive males." But the competition among the boys wasn't always base on beauty.
Where is the study based on that environment?
I met and married my dear wife all within a period of six months, nearly forty years ago, and still don't know why she accepted me!
I'm damned certain it wasn't my ravishing good looks though!
First people deny a thing, then they belittle it, then they say it was known all along! Von Humboldt
