I've always found it hard to swallow that a modern, sophisticated human could be genetically indistinct from a pre-civilization savannah dweller, and that the selective pressures of that environment could prepare a species for a modern lifestyle.
If the scientists are right about what I think they're saying (and not some sort of less impressive thing like "no, we just meant that 7% of the genes show SOME difference somewhere inside them"), then I'd bet that most of the genetic change is just adaptation to the radical changes in what diet, climate, and diseases we've been surviving. Living on bark and sloth-pemmican as you hike with a few dozen friends and family (and pets and parasites) around Ice Age Anatolia is a whole different gig than being a fieldslave on a millet farm in a cholera-struck village in 10,000BCE subtropical Mesopotamia.
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Date: 2005-12-20 02:11 am (UTC)Before and after science
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