Lactose tolerance
Has the time since the invention of agriculture been long enough for any evolutionary changes to occur, and if so, what are some of those changes?
Submitted 1 year ago by moosetwin@lemmy.dbzer0.com to [deleted]
Comments
Solemn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
superkret@feddit.de 1 year ago
Yes. One example of evolution happening even as a result from cultural differences: In Europe and Africa, people have learnt to brew alcoholic drinks to make their water safe from bacterial contamination.
People who couldn’t stomach alcohol were more at risk of getting sick from contaminated water, so there was an evolutionary push towards alcohol tolerance.People in Asia have boiled the water to make tea instead, for the same reason. They didn’t have this evolutionary pressure, which is the reason Asians on average have a lower alcohol tolerance even today.
dandroid@dandroid.app 1 year ago
My wife is Asian, and she will get very nauseous or even throw up before she will get buzzed.
CorrodedCranium@leminal.space 1 year ago
Do you mean in humans or animals?
If you mean plants I’d say it would be pretty hard to tell what wasn’t the result of some form of selective breeding at this point.
moosetwin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I’ll edit the post, I meant humans
Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
That’s an important distinction to make, since microbes evolve so fast that we have a hard time keeping up with their antibiotic resistances. Plants and animals change all the time, but it is a lot slower due to slower reproduction cycle. Humans, elephants and whales change too, but it just takes a while for us to notice it.
DrQuint@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Not necessarily. We have found some preserved remains of animals, and we also have some current animals to compare to. For the simplest example, we can compare dog breeds to wolf breeds to find out that dogs have had an increased amount of pancreatic Amylase genes since domestication (which is also one of the factors behind them getting more cases of diabetes).
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4329415/
The problem for humans tho, is that there’s no longer any intermediate species around to compare to, and our best preserved individuals are from the last 5000 years or so
VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf 1 year ago
It’s been long enough, but we’ve kept it from happening as much as it would in nature. By keeping people who have genetic traits deemed “undesirable” alive and breeding, we’re effectively keeping those traits which would otherwise die out with the carriers of those genes.
Don’t get me wrong, I much prefer having a society that doesn’t just let people die from diabetes or refuse to have offspring with dyslexic people or any such eugenics cruelty! 😂
sixfold@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
This is a common misconception. These traits are not likely due to modern medicine (which is very, very new compared to the scale of human evolution)
VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf 1 year ago
Again, I specifically said that I prefer to have a compassionate society over a (maybe) genetically superior one that practices eugenics. The tradeoff is unquestionably worth it and you’d have to be very callous to disagree.
Also, I never said that medicine was the sole reason. On the contrary, I said that it’s social society (which medicine is one of many results of) as a whole and a general disposition towards keeping your loved ones alive even if they can’t hunt. That’s much older than medicine. It’s literally a cornerstone of what a society is.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Watermelons used to be only 50mm in diameter and tasted very bitter. You had to hit them with a hammer to crack em open. Circa 3000 BC
Ilovethebomb@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s not really natural selection though, is it?
squaresinger@feddit.de 1 year ago
It is, if you count humans as part of nature, which they are in respect to natural selection.
Flowers and blossoms are selected by their attractiveness to bees and other insects. Apples were selected by their attractiveness to bears (yes, bears where the first to domesticate apples). And watermelons were selected by their attractiveness to humans.
Only GMOs don’t fall into the category of natural selection.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 year ago
No, but it is evolutionary
TheRealKuni@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s artificial selection, still a process that drives evolution. Just drives it a lot faster.
Karlos_Cantana@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
A human watermelon?
otter@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Evolution can happen very quickly for species that go through their lifecycle quickly. Diseases and microorganisms evolve very quickly for example.
Looking at agriculture specifically, domesticated animals and crops would have evolved in a particular way that’s good for food production.
If humans specifically, there are dietary changes (ex. for digestion).
Were you looking for a specific type of animal?
Mothra@mander.xyz 1 year ago
Yes there has been enough time for changes to occur, but because we humans are so widespread and mix at a ridiculous rate, you are unlikely to see many obvious changes for a long time. People from a population with a certain amount of traits will mix up with people with different traits, and because the environmental pressures are not homogeneous or stressful enough, there isn’t a dominant trend in evolution you could see today.
Unless- and I’m not sure about these because I never checked if myth or fact- it is true that humans were shorter a few centuries ago? And what about the much debated IQ increase each generation?
Bonehead@kbin.social 1 year ago
One thing that evolved...wisdom teeth. Or at least the shrinking of our jaw that creates the conditions of not having enough room for wisdom teeth. Some people like myself were born without wisdom teeth. Since we aren't grinding up random roots and undercooked meats along the occasional rocks anymore, we don't need big strong jaws as much. So we started evolving smaller jaws since the advent of agriculture.
Devi@kbin.social 1 year ago
Depending on your age, you might just be a late bloomer. My friend just gor hers at 36.
Bonehead@kbin.social 1 year ago
No, I asked my dentist that one day. I was 32 and wanted to know when my wisdom teeth were going to come in because I was terrified about getting more major dental work done. He showed me on the xrays that I literally don't have any.
Astroturfed@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Prominence of lactose tolerance maybe? Most animals are lactose intolerant and countries that produced a lot of dairy, the people became tolerant of it.
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This makes a lot of sense. Animals turn grass into milk. It’s a big advantage to be able to drink if. I’m sure in lean times this could easily make a life or death difference.
clockwork_octopus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Allegedly, overbites are a result of humanity using utensils to eat.
rynzcycle@kbin.social 1 year ago
Booze.
Origins of Human Alcohol Consumption Revealed
One model for the evolution of alcohol consumption suggests that ethanol only entered the human diet after people began to store extra food, potentially after the advent of agriculture, and that humans subsequently developed ways to intentionally direct the fermentation of food about 9,000 years ago.
Leisureguy@lemm.ee 1 year ago
“Evolution” is a broad term, and human evolution definitely includes cultural evolution — the evolution of Richard Dawkins called “memes.” A meme (in that sense) is anything that is taught to others or learned from others: how to make a musical instrument from a read, how to play some particular tune, how to dance a particular dance, and so on. Obviously, there are MANY things one can learn/teach in a community, so natural selection enters the picture, with some ideas/skills becoming prevalent while others wither away. Evolution of cultural knowledge is so rapid that it can be observed: evolution in clothing style, music, language, ways of organizing, and so on.
But I think you are talking about the evolution of our physical bodies. Lactose tolerance seems to be a recent evolutionary change, still not well distributed among humans.
Blyfh@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is a very interesting thread! Thanks for asking the question, OP.
zepheriths@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Do you mean a change because of agriculture, or just since Agriculture? This would mean within the past 10000 years was there any significant genetic differences. I don’t think we have a good way to know if any new Genes existed after the invention of agriculture, because we haven’t got full genomes yet from humans that long ago
Tolstoshev@lemmy.world 1 year ago
During the bubonic plague there was a gene mutation that made people less likely to die from the plague, but unfortunately it causes more autoimmune problems:
www.abc.net.au/news/science/…/101544092
Ilovethebomb@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Killing a third of the population is a pretty good way to speed up the process, I guess.