Are human beings an evolutionary mistake?

[Cyrano]

The most common trait in the recorded history of human beings is that we murder each other.

The reason's vary: Geography, color, religion, language, height, weight, eye color and so much more: Take your pick. We murder each other because of our differences. And, possibly, because each and every one of us wants to own it all.

IMO, human beings are a species that is hell-bent on destructing other living things, each other, and the planet that sustains us.

Want a bit more proof? Check out any day's news. Kill the blacks, browns, Asians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Shintos, Amish, -- damn. Pick it. Kill anyone who's different. Kill all the "THEMS." And kill any species that "threatens" us such as snakes, alligators, tigers, ... well, you get the idea.

And once all the wild creatures and "THEMS" are killed, lets start with those who don't believe exactly the same thing "we" believe. Follow this out to its logical conclusion, and there may, perhaps, be one single person left on Earth.

Yes, I have a point here. We humans tend to suck a lot. We tend to believe that we are superior to others because of some skill/talent we may have. We tend to believe that we will own the Earth.

Logic tells me that there are perhaps hundreds of millions, or perhaps either billions of other species that inhabit our galaxy. Is there some "universal intelligence" that caused this to come about? Beats me. But, if I had to guess, let me go back to where I began. Are human beings an evolutionary mistake?

[cilla4progress]

1. Possibly.

Are you watching Exterminate All the Brutes on HBO by any chance?

[Cyrano]

6. No. I'll try to watch it.

[zentrum]

2. Thanksfor posting this. It's a

....good question.

[Towlie]

43. No, it's not really a good question. Evolution has no intelligence and doesn't make "mistakes".

 
←

Evolution doesn't have a goal and doesn't look into the future to consider consequences. The process boils down to life forms that are most able to survive and reproduce will do just that, while life forms less capable will die out. To suggest otherwise would be like suggesting that a river made a mistake by taking the path it took.

[Silent3]

3. There are no mistakes in evolution, because there's no right or wrong in it

Evolution is just what happens.

Species that kill their own isn't a mistake. It's not pleasant for that species, but it's not a "mistake". And it's hardly unique to humans either.

Nor is planet-wide destruction for that matter. For hundreds of millions of years, this thing we now love called "oxygen" was deadly poison to most life on this planet. Then cyanobacteria began pumping that crap into the atmosphere causing many cycles of die-offs until life finally adapted, from both oxygen poison and global freezing.

[Cyrano]

8. Thank you for your certitude. Wish I was sure of anything.

[Happy Hoosier]

25. Evolution has no direction.

It’s simply a matter of which members of a species survive to reproduce. That’s it. I guess you could see the failure to adapt that results in extinction as a “mistake,” but that suggests there is deliberate intent in evolution, which there is not.

[Silent3]

36. If it's any consolation, realize that humans are also the best chance of life escaping doom...

…on this planet and surviving to spread around the solar system, or even the galaxy.

Our sun is on an inexorable path toward turning into a red giant star, one which could possibly engulf the Earth. Even if the Sun settles for merely swallowing up Mercury and Venus, the heating of the Sun well before it starts to swell into a red giant will make the Earth totally inhospitable to life in around one billion years, and far more hostile to life than “mere” global warming well before that time.

At this point, for all of the ecological destruction we humans are causing, we’re far from close to snuffing out all life. Collapsing civilization (not to be confused with life itself) is well within our grasp, as well as causing a devastating mass extinction, but life in general will go on, and probably some much smaller human population too.

We might get a few shots at spreading life beyond our one planet even if we turn out to have a bad knack for self-destruction.

[LostOne4Ever]

14. Thank you!

Teleology is the scourge of biology!

[PortTack]

27. Facts.. such a pesky thing! You are so right

[Aldemelod]

4. Last gasps of libertarian extremism

Hopefully we are seeing the end-stage of corrupt and destructive libertarian Darwinism on steroids. Humans are individuals but we are also highly social. Tribal hostilities are the norm when people are isolated or self-isolated in disconnected tribes competing for resources. But we live in a highly-interconnected time when we should be able to identify as a single tribe, a single humanity.

[Towlie]

46. Did you say "Darwinism"? And do you call gravity "Newtonism"? Do you call relativity "Einsteinism"?

 
←

Evolution is the very foundation of biology, as well as other life sciences. Renaming it after its discoverer, as if that person was the founder of a belief system, implies that one can credibly reject it. That's generally a common characteristic of the other party, not us.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Evolution doesn't make "mistakes". It's a random process without a goal or design.

That's rather the point of the theory of evolution.

But humans have increased in numbers a lot, recently. Any psychological tendency to murder is swamped by the rest of our characteristics. Perhaps our tendency to consume and pollute will cause a crash in numbers (of us - we've caused it for some other species already, though that is not unique to us, just the scale we've done it on).

[Captain Stern]

24. That's pretty much it.

Evolution just 'is'. It doesn't do good things or bad things. It doesn't make mistakes, or correct them. It's just how things are.

[John Ludi]

7. I refer to us

as a future "evolutionary footnote".

Not sure if it would occur with any (or all) other species who develop technologies advanced enough to destroy themselves...I'd like to think that there are a certain amount that make it through that funnel...but I'm pretty sure WE won't, given our past behavior and current trajectory.

You'd think that at some point a species would be able to transcend the Darwinian impulses that come from being part of the food chain with all it's attendant competition for resources, but my own observations are that very few of our own species make it to that stage as individuals. Mostly we behave like creatures with a budding neocortex barely restraining the atavistic tendencies of millions of years of limbic system hardware...and we rationalize those primal behaviors with a vain notion that we are behaving in a fully intentional way.

Oh well...

[Thunderbeast]

9. Not an evolutionary surprise....

Many mammals evolved with traits to preserve their bloodline. As an example, male lions kill competitors wanting to mate in their pride. They kill male cubs who would be future competion . Many kill to preserve territory.

We carry in our vestigial brain stems many of the same instincts. Humans have surrounded this primitive brain with a cerebrum and prefrontal cortex as an adaptation. These "add-on" accessories overlay these instincts with capacity for socialization, cooperation, and civilization.

It is not a perfect solution (war, rape, obesity), but it is the essential balance of human existence.

[Crunchy Frog]

49. Just FYI, our brainstem is neither vestigial, nor does it play a role in our behavior.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstem

Also, all mammal brains share the same basic structure.



Comlex mammalian social behaviors, which includes killing members of the same species, come from the more complex and advanced parts of our brains. They are not some kind of primitive leftover.

It's time to stop "othering" the parts of ourselves that make us uncomfortable. That's probably the only way that we can begin building societies that work around these aspects of our evolutionary heritage.

[Ponietz]

10. We are little more than apes with guns

Some of us heed our better angels but the amoral lizard brain drive for sex and resources usually dominates. ‘Intelligence’ and ‘stupidity’ begin to resemble one another.

[Cyrano]

13. Makes one wonder about the nature of evolution

Why have some "advanced" while others are still dragging their knuckles? Beats me.

Nonetheless, here's my question. Why do the "knuckle draggers" keep winning over time?

Perhaps those who have "advanced" haven't yet learned to "tame/train" those who have lagged in the process of evolution. Perhaps we are not "advanced" enough to ensure the triumph of a sane civilization.

[PortTack]

28. Humans stopped their evolutionary process centuries ago

When a species manipulates it’s environment to suit this stops the process. the knuckle draggers are still evolving because they haven’t

[Crunchy Frog]

50. No it doesn't. nt

[Gaugamela]

11. Humans become aggressive and homicidal under conditions of scarcity. Civilization manufactures

scarcity for some to keep the cogs turning. Inequality is a feature, not a flaw, of modern society—at least from the capitalist perspective.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/war-is-not-part-of-human-nature/

[Happy Hoosier]

26. Civilization developed in response to scarcity.

Task specialization allowed the development of more efficient production and means of exchange. No economic system deals with scarcity perfectly, of course, and you are correct that that conflict develops fron competing interests.

[Gaugamela]

35. You make a good point. Perhaps I should have used the word "poverty" instead of scarcity.

Poverty is scarcity in the midst of abundance. As the article indicates, war started around 10,000 years ago, which roughly coincides with the beginning of civilization. Traditional societies no doubt experienced periods of scarcity, but it was a shared condition that affected everyone. Famine isn’t poverty but rather a natural disaster. Civilization, which started with the advent of agriculture, created both abundance and poverty — hence inequality and war.

Anyway, that’s my take on it. I’m not an expert on this stuff.

[Ocelot II]

12. There are no mistakes in evolution. It just happens.

Sometimes there are dead ends and a species becomes extinct; this can be the result of any number of circumstances.

Humans are not the only species that kills its own kind. Other animals kill members of their own species as a result of competition for territory, food or mates. Male lions that take over a pride often kill existing cubs so they can mate and produce their own cubs, keeping their own genetic line going (like medieval human kings). Adorable little meerkat females kill and eat the young of subordinate females. Humans are actually less murderous than many other species. The only difference seems to be motivation; humans are more likely to be proactively violent than most species other than chimpanzees.

https://crimereads.com/the-most-murderous-mammals-adventures-from-the-dark-side-of-science/#:~:text=Unlike%20humans%2C%20meerkats%20are%20not,prevents%20subordinate%20females%20from%20mating.

[SCantiGOP]

15. Strange logic in OP

Ever see what red and black ants do when you put them together?

[LostOne4Ever]

16. Evolution is not a person

It has no goals and thus is incapable of making mistakes.

[taxi]

17. The human animal has been the same for much longer than the human mind.

Which is the greater of the two evolutionary mistakes is a matter of opinion.

[Zambero]

18. Precisely

We are not a "mistake", merely a consequence of evolution.

[hatrack]

19. On that note, there's a pretty cool book called "After Man - A Zoology Of The Future"

It's by Dougal Dixon, who's a paleontologist. It's an (obviously) speculative look at what Earth would look like 50 million years after the end of our species, and it's just delightfully imaginative.

Flightless bats the height of a human, giant predator rats, rabbits as the dominant herbivore, "Gigantelopes" filling the niche once occupied by elephants, and so on.

[PortTack]

29. My microbiology professor used to say the bacteria, viruses and many of the hosts they depend

On to propagate will be here long after we are gone!

[Klaralven]

20. It's a feature, not a bug.

Evolution favors the population that can produce the most offspring who live to reproduce themselves.

Competence in killing competing populations is favorable both for directly reducing their reproductive rate and indirectly by keeping populations below the density where they are limited by disease and starvation.

The major dispersions about 70,000 years ago are about the same age as the adoption of the bow and arrow. While bow and arrow are useful for hunting, they are even better for killing other humans from a distance, while minimizing the risk to yourself.

[maxsolomon]

21. We're Apes. Murder is a feature.

Chimpanzees do it.

They key is to instill ethics and morals into humans so that this feature is overcome. It doesn't work 100%. Obviously.

[Dawson Leery]

22. We are not.

[Crunchy Frog]

23. Chimpanzees kill others who are members of "outgroups" in a similar way to humans. Presumably

our last common ancestor had the same behavioral trait, and it has remained in both lineages. Over the eons in which that behavior has persisted in our lineage, it must have had some survival value in the ones who survived.

Natural selection doesn't see into the future, it only acts on the here and now. So no, I don't think that we're an evolutionary mistake. I just think that we've altered our own physical and social environment to the degree that many of our formerly advantageous traits have become dysfunctional.

Evolution doesn't make moral judgements.

[ananda]

30. Being over successful evolution-wise will be our downfall.

Yes, irony rules.

[Klaralven]

31. Yeast always either consumes all the sugar or excretes enough alcohol to kill itself

Cancers that metastasize usually kill the patient.

[ananda]

53. Good analogy.

Too much of anything is bad for us.

[H2O Man]

32. Recommended.

Interesting question, with some very good responses. So thank you for asking something that a lot of people think about, perhaps more frequently in the last few years. By no coincidence, it is something my brother and I talk about quite a bit -- he works at a west coast university, where the same question is frequently debated.

In my opinion -- which is of no more value than anyone else's, and less value than some others -- "modern man" is a failing species, heading to join ranks with the majority of species on earth that have become extinct. But, as others here have noted, that does not equal our being a mistake.

Although our interpretation of the fossil record has to be understood to be in the context of "incomplete," although advancing as more new fossils are found and thus expanding our insights on human evolution, some things are known for sure. I think that we can compare the length of time two of our extended family walked the earth is worthy of consideration. Let's take a brief look, rather than my usual long and tedious rants!

Homo erectus has been documented as living on a significant area of the earth for about two million years, the longest of the Homo species. There are at least ten sub-species of Homo erectus, with zero evidence of warfare between them. Their culture was relatively advanced, and included art.

Neanderthals lived on earth for about a half-million years. I assume that people here are somewhat- to fairly familiar with Neanderthals, so I won't go into detail here.

Modern human beings have walked the earth for about 300,000 years. The first 290,000 seemed to have gone fairly well, in terms of our living in harmony with a sometimes dangerous, sometimes pleasant environment. Then things slowly began to change, with the changes gathering momentum. Our relationship with the living environment became very different in modern times, perhaps especially so as a result of the industrial revolution. But I keep in mind Carl Sagan's view that the bibical "fall from grace" is a description of the evolution of our frontal lobes (which made child birth more painful, speaking of that Good Book).

While I agree completely with the comments in the OP/thread about the savage nature of a large percentage of human-kind, I think the greatest threat to our future as a species is tied directly to our destruction of the environment. We have a mistaken view of our relationship to the earth -- believing it exists soley for our human purposes -- when, in fact, all of organic life on earth, including every extinct and living form of life, exists only and entirely for the earth's purposes.

I will end with this song:

[Klaralven]

44. Some of the key developments were stone choppers, fire, clothing and agriculture

Stone tools with an edge allowed butchering of larger animals. Control of fire let us cook meat so that it was more digestible. The fat and protein helped us to evolve to be stronger and smarter.

Clothing allowed us to move from the tropic into the temperate zone, penetrating more ecological niches in an expanded geography. Tailored, multi-layer clothing enabled us to stay outside the tropics during the last ice age and then penetrate the arctic zones.

Domestication of plants and animals vastly increased our ability to exploit ecological resources. There was an interesting theory advanced recently that a desire for clothing was the driver for the first domestication of goats and sheep, as well as grasses used for fiber. The end result is that most of the land area that is not covered by mountains, glaciers or tundra, is now occupied by pastures, farms, gardens, orchards, and woodlots.

[H2O Man]

48. Absolutely right!

One of my late friends worked with Drs. Louis and Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge -- many of us loved watching their excavations there on National Geographic specials in the 1960s. I have my friend's 40-piece collection from Beds 1 and 2. They date back 1.77 to 1.88 million years, to a time the ancient ones were largely scavangers, using those sharpened stones that you accurately mention, used to take meat from other creatures' kills to bring back to their encampment. The stones had to be carried in from about two miles away, and specific stones were used for various reasons through generations.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

33. Human intelligence makes us more dangerous, but...

... I think other animal species would be even more destructive if their intelligence was vastly improved, developing opposable thumbs with nimble fingers too, while everything else remained essentially the same about them.

Edit: Life on this planet has evolved into predators of other life for billions of years. I sometimes try to imagine other worlds in our huge universe in which that somehow never happened, with all of their life totally sustaining themselves with energy and minerals. Would they randomly develop greater intelligence in that environment? Not sure.

[Iggo]

34. There's no plan, so there's no mistake.

We might be a dead end, though. Hard to tell from the inside.

[Marrah_Goodman]

37. We aren't the only species that murder each other though

But we are the ones that have found the most reasons to war on each other. We live more complicated lives.

[Generic Brad]

38. I only feel that way about spiders

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

39. Yes, and we are doomed to extinction, ...

... to be replaced by some "superior" species. It's the way.

But, not in our lifetimes, so let's party on.

:

[lame54]

40. Next time you catch yourself thinking this...

Put on a Beatles album

[Earth-shine]

41. hundreds of millions, or perhaps either billions of other species that inhabit our galaxy.

Noted British astronomer Brian Cox thinks there could be as few as one planet per galaxy supporting intelligent life.

That's the way the math goes. It's called the "Drake equation."

https://www.seti.org/drake-equation-index

We don't live in a Star Trek universe. I sure wish we did.

A universe full of life is a far more beautiful picture than one where it is perpetually waiting for it to happen.

According to the TV show Babylon 5, we are the end product of the universe, created so that the universe could figure itself out.

[marie999]

42. If there is 1 intelligent life form in each galaxy

and there at least 200 billion galaxies then there are 200 billion intelligent life forms in the universe. According to some scientists at the University of Nottingham, there are 2 trillion galaxies which would mean there are 2 trillion intelligent life forms in the universe.

[Emrys]

47. I've long entertained this concept.

Then I coupled those sorts of numbers with in effect infinite distances and an infinite timespan, and am veering to the conclusion that the prospects for contact between any populations of these lifeforms while each is extant may be vanishingly unlikely.

I'll leave it to an earthbound human genius of my generation to sum up:

[USALiberal]

45. You need to do way more research on this topic. Google anything!

[HAB911]

51. We are but chimpanzees with guns

and nukes

[Greybnk48]

52. Evolution, as people here have said, just is.

It doesn't rain to water the flowers. Rather, if it rains, then there will be flowers. If the environment is right, then there will be humans. If the environment is not conducive to human animals, or say mammals in general, then we will go extinct.

There is no correct way for the environment to be, so there cannot be mistakes.