From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sun Jul 25 1999 - 15:52:20 MDT
> phil osborn wrote: (I'm not sure whether humans tend to have more
> premees than other species, but I would suspect that to be the case.)...
Some theories suggest that a *normal* human birth *is* a premature
birth by primate standards, this being necessitated by the size of the
human infant cranium. My original post suggested evolution of humans
perhaps works like a row of dominoes:
1. straight knees show up, which
2. frees up the hands for manipulating objects, which
3. favors those mutations which tend toward the opposable thumb and
4. favors those feet which are better at distance walking on the savanna
5. and tends away from the opposable toe (damn it), but
6. the savanna walking lifestyle favors bigger brains, for hunting and battle,
which
7. is more easily accomplished assuming large headed infants, which
8. kills mama less often if born somewhat premature, which
9. leads to a species that more or less *always* born premature, which
10. need a lotta love and attention from mama, which
11. causes her to be less available for hunting and/or gathering, so
12. she could *really* use dad's help in getting food, and that
13. causes her to realize mr. brains might be a better bet or more reliable
than
14. mr. buns, which causes her to choose him more often, which
15. cycles back to step 7.
Add a few million years and you go from Lucy to...NANOGIRL. {8-] spike
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