Human evolution Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Human evolution - Essay Example Thus the lack of cultural knowledge made many individuals to perish in new habitats. Heinrich used the theory that capacity for knowing is an important adaptation to extract adaptive information from the environment, which is still relevant to the current human interactions. The research recognized that considering the cultures central to human life resulted in a formidable evolutionary theory in status psychology. However, considering that humans have to depend on information for survival, the huaman specks must have evolved in line with social status that occurs parallel to dominance, and is related to affective and cognitive processes (Heinrich, 2011). In such cases, where a species depends on learning from others to a large extent to improve some aspects of its behavior, such process will effectively alter the environment faced by the natural selection that impacts on the human genes. Therefore, as humans continuously use their cultural learning abilities, the abilities give rise to continued cultural evolution. Such continued cultural evolution leads to development of complex adaptive practices, techniques, tools and other bodies of knowledge related to human behavior, and edible plants in such habitats (Heinrich, 2011). This aspect is relatively new and explains how humans adapt and survive in extreme situations as studied under anthropology. Consequently, cultural adaptations continue to improve over many centuries, which mean that when humans are stripped off their cultural adaptation, they become hopeless species that can easily be wiped. Sturt (1) explains that human evolution has higher probabilities of being a continuous process and not according to the currently accepted model of distinct changes that characterize a shift from one species to the next. Therefore, species would be best described to be semi homogenous over time, which is a new shift from what is already known in evolution regarding the shift from one species to the other in distinctly defined times. According to Sturt, there is no smooth development in morphology; what is perceived to be skeletal change results from a small flaw in the long genome configuration. The stability in certain species as observed would be explained by stability between marked changes in such genome flaws. The fossils currently known to humans offer an exaggerated perception regarding evolution in that the fossils are widely spaced in time, implying the difference between such fossils represent a continuous evolution processes to differentiate one species from the rest. Sturt (2) explains there is no much difference between the current human species and the Neanderthal man since they are only separated by several hundreds of years. Similarly, the brain followed the same evolutionary process, and it is the physical part in which rational decisions can be coded and decoded to differentiate between man and ape. Since such physical factors have to be passed down the genetic tree, it would f ollow that if these features increased the survival of the individual possessing them, they are gradually enhanced till the whole population acquire them through natural selection. Evolution thus involved significant development and spread of brain features through a natural selection process explaining what turned the earlier animal behavior to human behavior enhanced by a life learning process and a favorable climate. Schaffner (2008) in an article Evolutionary