Claim CB928.2:

Modern man is said to have evolved until about 100,000 years ago and then to have stopped evolving. Evolution since that time, it is claimed, has been "cultural and social evolution." Biological evolution is unknown among humans in historical times.

Source:

Ferrell, Vance, 2001. Evolution Cruncher, chap. 13: Ancient man. Altamont, TN: Evolution Facts, Inc. http://evolution-facts.org/Ev-Crunch/c13a.htm

Response:

  1. There is evidence that humans have evolved in the last several thousand years and continue to evolve.

    • Analysis of variation in the human genome indicates that genes associated with brain size have evolved over approximately the last 37,000 years and 5800 years (Evans et al. 2005; Mekel-Bobrov et al. 2005).
    • Sickle-cell resistance has evolved to be more prevalent in areas where malaria is more common.
    • Lactose tolerance has evolved in conjunction with cultural changes in dairy consumption (Durham 1992).
    • Some humans have recently acquired mutations which confer resistance to AIDS (Dean et al. 1996; Sullivan et al. 2001) and to heart disease (Long 1994; Weisgraber et al. 1983).

    Genome-wide sequencing shows evidence of much more positive selection as well (Sabeti et al. 2006). There is some evidence that human evolution has accellerated recently, since humans dispersed from Africa and developed agriculture (Hawks et al. 2007).

References:

  1. Dean, M. et al. 1996. Genetic restriction of HIV-1 infection and progression to AIDS by a deletion allele of the CKR5 structural gene. Science 273: 1856-1862.
  2. Durham, William H. 1992. Coevolution: Genes, Culture, and Human Diversity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
  3. Evans, Patrick D. et al. 2005. Microcephalin, a gene regulating brain size, continues to evolve adaptively in humans. Science 309: 1717-1720.
  4. Hawks, John et al. 2007. Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 104: 20753-20758.
  5. Long, Patricia. 1994. A town with a golden gene. Health 8(1) (Jan/Feb.): 60-66.
  6. Mekel-Bobrov, Nitzan et al. 2005. Ongoing adaptive evolution of ASPM, a brain size determinant in Homo sapiens. Science 309: 1720-1722.
  7. Sabeti, P. C. et al. 2006. Positive natural selection in the human lineage. Science 312: 1614-1620.
  8. Sullivan, Amy D., Janis Wigginton and Denise Kirschner. 2001. The coreceptor mutation CCR5-delta-32 influences the dynamics of HIV epidemics and is selected for by HIV. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 98: 10214-10219.
  9. Weisgraber K. H., S. C. Rall Jr., T. P. Bersot, R. W. Mahley, G. Franceschini, and C. R. Sirtori. 1983. Apolipoprotein A-I Milano. Detection of normal A-I in affected subjects and evidence for a cysteine for arginine substitution in the variant A-I. Journal of Biological Chemistry 258: 2508-2513.
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created 2005-10-3, modified 2007-12-16