2012
[ News Blog of Survive2012 ]
 
 

Art via mutation


It is usually thought that we started making art because of “some kind of cultural or demographic change”. Now a scientist is thinking that mutations in the human genome 50,000 years ago could be the cause:

"Professor Klein said that a suite of language and creativity genes, perhaps as few as ten or as many as 10,000, developed as a result of random mutations, giving rise to a new pattern of human culture. "

Hmmm... many random mutations, providing useful changes to humans, occuring all of a sudden, all at once. Perhaps this also happened 12,000 years ago and 5,000 years ago...

Source: Times

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We weren't hunters


"For 40 years, anthropologists have leaned toward the notion that rich, nourishing meat - brought home by hunters and shared out - played a crucial role in human origins. This would explain why evolution selected for larger, smarter hunters with lighter jaws and teeth: precisely the changes seen as Homo erectus arose in eastern Africa. "

Well, now they think that we didn't hunt, and that our source of meat was scavenging - something still practised today by the Hadza people.

Source: New Scientist

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Human hiccups = aquatic apes?


Why do we hiccup?

"...there is one group of animals in which the peculiar combination of the contraction of these muscles and the closure of the glottis does serve a clear purpose: primitive air breathers that still possess gills, such as lungfish, gar and many amphibians. These animals push water across their gills by squeezing their mouth cavity while closing the glottis to stop water getting into the lungs."

Scientists believe it is a remnant from 370 million years ago, when as a species we crawled out of the ocean. We kept it, because it is similar to the action which prevents milk entering our lungs while suckling as babies.

It is a plausible idea, says Allan Pack, an expert in respiratory neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania. "But it's going to be very tough to prove."

Why doesn't anyone suggest that the reason why we have this similarity with amphibians, is because it was recently that we last emerged from the water - and not millions of years.

Source: New Scientist

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Wings


News today that will upset traditional evolutionists out there...

The past just keeps getting weirder - a dinosaur with 2 sets of wings:

"The 128-million-year-old animal -- called Microraptor gui... was about 2? feet long and had two sets of feathered wings, with one set on its forelimbs and the other on its hind legs."

Maybe in China April Fool's Day happens a few months earlier? Or perhaps this is a freak of evolution, that disappeared shortly afterwards, just like unicorns and dragons?

Source: Washington Post

A golden rule for orthodox evolution scientists is that once a species loses something, it cannot return - for example, humans will never grow monkey tails again (if we ever had them). A whale will never grow legs again. Evolution is a one-way journey. But now there is finally evidence that goes against this rule, and therefore supports sudden complex advantageous mutations.

"So it has been with great surprise that researchers have greeted a paper in the current Nature in which an international team of researchers reports evidence that wingless stick insects have re-evolved wings at least four times in the history of the group."

Source: NY Times

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More swimming mammals


A simplistic view of the Aquatic Ape theory - hairless mammals spent a long time living in the water, once upon a time. Elephants are amazing swimmers, and it surprises me that scientists are surprised to find that the ancestors of elephants could also swim:

"A prehistoric ancestor of the elephant may have roamed — and perhaps swum — farther than experts once imagined. "

The fossil of a 7 million year old Deinotherium Gigantisimum, 15 feet tall, found in Crete,

"suggest the mammal moved around larger areas of Europe than previously believed, possibly swimming long distances in search of food. "

They also believe that skulls of the animal, with a large hole for where the trunk connected, gave rise to the myth of Cyclops.

Source: ABC

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Novelty and the Wave Harmonic of History


Jonathan Bethel & Michael McDaniel

Scanning the Mayan 13 baktun cycle wave harmonic of history - the last 5,100 years - it becomes apparent that specific points along the timeline vibrate with increased innovation, change, and synchronicity. Terence Mckenna and his TimeWave Zero has definitively shown the resonant qualities of specific periods of increased novelty. This ingression of cosmic ingenuity is speeding up and moving toward the apogee of infinite complexity, the dawning of the Techno New Jerusalem, or Cyber-Zion. It cannot be overstated that this novel conscrescence, this omega point, will transform our species into something completely unimaginable. With the advent of nanotechnology and further advances in cyber tech, in addition to the acceleration in various other fields, the possibilities for our future existence now have no conceivable limit. The empire of pure information, unfettered by the inertia of the neophobic herd, will enable the primate human to transform into Homo Sapiens Cyberneticus, the divine man. This Techno-Ubermench was first glimpsed in the misty imagination of science fiction writers and the philosophical promulgations of the existentialists.

Full Story - - > Omega Point 2012


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The DNA of I Ching


This still amazes me and offers amazing evidence for those who believe that some ancients were highly advanced. Here's a snippet from an article worth reading:

"Bio-chemists, such as Dr. Martin Schonberger in his book The I Ching & the Genetic Code, have commented on the similarity of the primal linear order and the sequence of transfer RNA needed to develop living organisms from the DNA blueprint. Fu Hsi, the Embodied Wisdom, seems to have been telling us that the wisdom is also encoded within all of us. Indeed, the archaic pictogram for the oracle resembles nothing so much as a way to align the I, or cosmic center, with the unfolded spirals of DNA derived life."

Source: The I Ching As The Super-Computer Of Destiny

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95% the same as chimps, not 98.5%


"We are more unique than previously thought, according to new comparisons of human and chimpanzee DNA.

It has long been held that we share 98.5 per cent of our genetic material with our closest relatives. That now appears to be wrong. In fact, we share less than 95 per cent of our genetic material, a three-fold increase in the variation between us and chimps."

Source: New Scientist

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Did dogs evolve at the last cataclysm?


Swedish scientists now believe that "all modern dogs originate from a small number of female wolves living in East Asia some 15,000 years ago".

It is well known that the many different varieties of dog we have today is due to human intervention - deliberate breeding strategies because we love them as pets. But how did they change from wolves to dogs? Why? Where is the missing link?

I suggest: Some wolves mutated into a new species, dogs, during the last cataclysm. Cosmic rays caused the mutations.

Source: ABC

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Non-genetic influence on descendants


"Grandfathers who overeat might ruin their grandchildren's health, say Swedish researchers. The study suggests that diet, which does not change genes, can nevertheless influence future generations."

Supposedly non-genetic changes can not be inherited. The researchers believe that sperm can program themselves according to current conditions, and in effect program their children differently.

Source: Nature

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Mule has baby!


Mule baby!

"DNA tests have confirmed that a Moroccan mule did give birth to a foal. Veterinary experts say the foal's father was a donkey and its mother a true mule.'

Hybrids are a mix between two species, mules are a cross between a horse and a donkey. Hybrids have always been known to be sterile, unable to breed.

This is the equivalent of an ape and a human having a monkey child. I hope they check this out to the fullest and let us know what is going on. File under evolution temporarily!

Source: BBC

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Cosmic Rays - not cancer causing?


A 17 year study of more than 10,000 male Scandinavian airline pilots shows no greater incidence of cancer than non-pilot groups.

Scientists know that cosmic rays cause mutations, but if they don't cause cancer, what do the mutations do? Mutate in good ways? Evolution?

Source: BioMedNet

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India: Inherited DNA mutations


A team of scientists studied families in an area of India which receives 10 times more natural radiation than the global average. When they looked at:

"a non-coding region of the DNA where mutations have no effect on health or on any other visible features...

...The scientists identified 22 mutations in the mitochondrial DNA sequences of families living in the high-radiation area. By comparison, a control population living on white sand nearby only had one mutation."

[ Mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother and can be used to determine whether a mutation is passed on from the mother to her descendents. ]

The evidence for inherited mutations is mounting. How long before scientists make the link between evolution and mutation-causing comsic rays?

Sources: Genome News Network + National Academy of Sciences

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Evolution on demand


These are quotes from New Scientist, Sept 28, 2002 edition. The article is not available online. In essence it suggests that animals can store mutations for many generations, and then activate them at a time when evolution might be necessary (ie just after a catastrophe). Related animals would all evolve in the same manner.

  • By squirrelling away genetic mutations, the raw material of evolution, and releasing them all at once, species may be able to leap from peak to evolutionary peak without ever having to slog through the valleys between.

  • The lead actor in this iconoclastic drama is a so-called "chaperone" protein called hsp90 [a heat shock protein].

  • But when the researchers looked more closely at their abnormal flies...each set of parents tended to produce offspring with a distinctive set of abnormalities.

  • They suggested that the familial abnormalities were caused by "cryptic" genetic defects that had lain hidden for generations and showed up when hsp90 stopped doing its job.

  • The upshot of this is that species seem to have a mechanism fro delivering variation - the raw material of evolution - just at the time they need to adapt to a changing environment.


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Mars microbe or radiation evidence?


"A hardy microbe that can withstand huge doses of radiation could have evolved this ability on Mars.

That is the conclusion of Russian scientists who say it would take far longer than life has existed here for the bug to evolve that ability in Earth's clement conditions. They suggest the harsher environment of Mars makes it a more likely birthplace."

Earth is ruled out because based on current radiation levels, the microbe would not have had enough exposure to radiation. But if Earth had a past of many global catastrophes, with long periods of radiation, the bug could have evolved solely here on Earth.

Source: New Scientist

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Zecharia Sitchin's Errors


Zecharia Sitchin

The article is subititled "An Introductory Survey", suggesting that author (Michael S. Heiser, working on his PhD at the Dept. of Hebrew and Semitic Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is only scratching the surface.

It looks into some dubious ancient Sumerian translations of Sitchin's own making,

It's all beyond me, but Sitchin's lack of orthodox references in his books has always bothered me - along with the "we are descended from alien lizards" theme.

Source: The Facade

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Post cataclysm extinctions


This is new to me - many species that survive global catastrophes consequently become extinct. Scientists aren't sure why....

Perhaps it is mutations that didn't work out?

Source: National Science Foundation

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Naked Mole-Rat is all teeth...


Naked Mole Rat

The naked mole-rat is an odd beast. With its bare, pink skin and huge protruding incisors, this East African rodent is sometimes described as a hot dog with teeth.

It spends most of its time in dark tunnels, so its vision is limited, but it can navigate both forward and backward with ease, aided by sensory hairs at either end. Socially, it is strange, too: with a single breeding queen supported by scores of workers, a mole-rat colony is the mammalian equivalent of a beehive.

The mole-rat brain has been rewired to cope with living in the dark. One-third of the somatosensory cortex is devoted to the mole-rat's incisors, encompassing areas normally devoted to vision.

This is because the mole-rat uses its teeth to eat, dig, move objects and communicate.


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Inherited Mutations


Yet more evidence that children of those affected by radiation can also suffer:

Working at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria may have been harmful after all. Children of men who had been exposed to radiation while working at the plant have twice the normal risk of leukaemia and lymphoma, according to a major new study sponsored by the nuclear industry.
Source: New Scientist

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Darwinian hoax!



A leading example of evolution given in biology textbooks has come unglued, evoking jeers and jubilation in the camp of creationists, who have been trying for years to expel Darwin from the classroom.

The case is that of the peppered moth, which over the course of a few decades has changed its wing color from pale-peppered to black and back to peppered again in parallel with the rise and fall of industrial pollution.

People did not know that photos were actually of dead moths glued or pinned in place. And the moth actually doesn't like tree trunks!

Source: NY Times

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