Taking an Evolutionary View of Life

by Kevin L. Kuykendall

Bibliography
Footnotes

Our consciousness and unstoppable inventiveness for changing the world around us is not confined to tinkering with other organisms' genomes. We are now changing our own. We sometimes even think we know what we are doing (Samways, 1996: 1307).

Prehistory is not merely something that human beings passed through a long time ago: it is something which properly apprehended allows us to view our contemporary situation in a perspective more valid than that encouraged by the study of our own parochial histories (Clarke, 1969: 3).

The Museum of Creation has recently announced its opening in northern Kentucky in the United States . This museum features life-sized animatronic dinosaur models ‘living' alongside Adam and Eve, and other displays claiming that disease, famine, and natural disasters are the result of mankind's sin. It is a museum designed to present a literal interpretation of the Bible, and developed as ‘a long overdue offensive against the scientific establishment'^[1]. In a world where science and technology are so prominent in our daily lives (and paradoxically, without which, this museum could not have been built), this announcement seems like some kind of surrealistic fiction.

It is often stated that the value of scientific disciplines such as archaeology and palaeoanthropology is that in achieving an understanding of the human past, we provide an intellectual and philosophical framework in which to guide our society and ourselves in the present and the future. While I do agree with this notion, ample evidence exists (as noted above) to indicate that people in general are not really paying attention to important scientific discourse about our past, or to the valuable lessons that disciplines such as archaeology and palaeoanthropology provide. It may be that our subject matter is too esoteric to be viewed as relevant to current issues – after all, we live in the ‘modern world' and archaeologists and their kin have their heads rather literally buried in the past. Despite this, much of the knowledge that we produce is extremely enlightening about ‘the human condition', and thus is relevant to everyone who gives objective consideration to Our Place in the Great Scheme of Things.

Since I am a palaeoanthropologist, I have chosen an essay topic focusing on evolution, which for this essay I will define as the study of the biological, physical, and social changes of humanity from the past to the present. While I do not want to focus on the Creation-Evolution ‘debate', I do believe that it is relevant because prominent religious viewpoints openly reject evolutionary biology in explaining the natural terms of our existence in this world. My aim in this essay is to consider how the incorporation of evolutionary knowledge can provide an essential perspective in developing scientific solutions to problems in our global society today.

Why is the acceptance and understanding of evolution relevant in today's world? For starters, many recent and ongoing crises in the world demonstrate quite clearly that as a species, we are still subject to natural selection in the form of disease (e.g., HIV, malaria, bird flu), famine (e.g., in Ethiopia and Somalia), population pressure (global, but in any of the world's cities and countries where a poverty class struggles to survive) and the overwhelming forces of the natural environment (e.g., tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes). There are some, even in the scientific realm, that seem to think that humans have some how stopped evolving, and are no longer subject to natural selection because of our overwhelming technological control over our environment. This is nonsense.

These global problems are no doubt compounded by both historical and current political and economic practices, but efforts to develop new policies to resolve these same issues must incorporate evolutionary thinking. For example, biomedical research for successful treatment of disease such as malaria, HIV, and more recently, bird flu relies entirely on an understanding of the evolutionary processes that allow viruses to mutate at such a rapid pace that they gain new potential (like infecting humans), and essentially keep one step ahead of drug treatments. Because of this, travellers to different parts of the world are recommended to take different prophylactic treatments for malaria, and treatments used in the past may not be useful at all.

In a similar way, it is a well-recognised fact that the different strains of HIV require different treatments. In addition, available evidence suggests that different strains have evolved different levels of resistance to treatment, and recent studies document a higher proportion of HIV patients with resistance to drug treatment in Britain compared to other parts of the world^[2].

The point here is that evolutionary theory is the scientific basis for understanding this variation in response to drugs by different virus strains – this is a working example of mutation, natural selection, and adaptation. Thus, a long-lasting solution can only be produced if an evolutionary perspective is built-in to the research strategy. Biomedical researchers already understand this point, but it is imperative that government officials and policymakers do as well. It is equally important for the general population to understand the evolutionary basis of these issues – they are the ones who will be affected (i.e., who may die) when expensive but improper treatment programmes are established.

Scientific disciplines such as archaeology and palaeoanthropology – which both rely on evolutionary perspectives – have contributed greatly to our current understanding of ourselves as a species, and I would say, of our society and culture. Ironically, there are abundant polls and news stories reporting that more than 50% of adults in technologically developed countries such as the United States and Britain do not believe in evolution – which is of course, central to both disciplines. In addition, there is the continual challenge of poor financial support and the threat of government budget cuts to archaeology, heritage conservation, and museums – indicating quite clearly the value attributed to such institutions.

This point should cause great concern, because our ultimate success as a society, and as a species, is dependent on our ability to live within the environmental constraints that adaptation and natural selection (the two central principles of evolution) place upon all living organisms. Thus, while it seems that the public – at least in the developed world - is generally aware of the issue of global warming and climate change, survey data^[3] indicate that public understanding of the causes of global warming, or of the international attempts to deal with this problem are surprisingly low. People do not understand the connection between factors such as the domestic use of energy or driving cars, and climatic change or global warming. Governments do not fully accept the evidence for this connection either, given the resistance of highly industrial countries such as the US and Britain to meet proposed international limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The issue of climate change and global warming – and indeed, the acceptance that individual and collective human actions can have a damaging impact on the environment – takes on a profound significance when the full scope of evolutionary history is accepted.

The archaeological record can provide some enlightenment on this issue. The very fact that we can have a discipline such as archaeology is specifically because there have been past societies – our own existence is testimony to the fact that we do survive as a species, but cultures and societies come and go. In some general way we contemporary humans are descended from ancestral populations, but society in 2005 has little in common with, say, Medieval Europe, and even less with pre-colonial populations of Africa, Australia, or the Americas… and so on. It is this juxtaposition of our remoteness from the past, and the obvious continuity with it, that gives archaeology value in modern society – if we pay attention.

The modern Maya of Central America are descendants of a dominant ancient society that survived for over 1000 years. The spectacular ruins of the ancient Mayan sites are testimony to both the success, and the dramatic collapse of Classic Mayan civilisation after about A.D. 800 (Sabloff, 2005). Current interpretations from long-term archaeological study implicate a variety of social and environmental factors as causal – population growth, warfare, drought, and economic collapse. It is pertinent to note that each of these factors is a challenging issue in today's global society.

Even more striking are the archaeological suggestions that the ancient Mayan rulers appeared to be aware of the problems their society faced (who could not be?), but were unable to make the changes needed to stop the collapse. In fact, they may have inadvertently taken decisions that accelerated their society's demise. Does this not sound familiar? Is it really sound policy to ignore scientific warnings about global warming, climate change, and reliance on fossil fuels, and instead support policies that favour business and economic growth but exacerbate the problem?

Another example from archaeology is that of Easter Island in Polynesia , well known for its monumental and mysterious statues. This remarkable island and its surviving population were rediscovered in 1722 by Dutch explorers, who recorded their observations of a complex society that had disappeared centuries earlier. Extensive archaeological investigations have determined that the island society developed over a period of some 1000 years and then collapsed, apparently due to complete depletion of limited environmental resources on the island. It is quite impressive that such a complex and technologically advanced society was able to develop on an incredibly remote island – however, it is also a dire warning of the ultimate limitations of advanced technological exploitation and manipulation of the environment.

There are many other examples in archaeology, and they all somehow direct my attention to the current enthusiasm for biotechnology, which is apparently set to solve all of our problems. One can imagine an unfamiliar future full of genetically designed organisms, ourselves included. Everything could be managed and modified to suit human needs, or at least to sustain our continued existence and comfort. However, the costs would include deterioration of the natural environment, widespread extinction, and the rapid loss of the planet's biodiversity at both genetic and organismal levels – hardly measures of a successful strategy. Again, there is irony in this vision of the future – biotechnology research relies heavily on our knowledge of evolutionary processes, and of biology in general, in the development of new applications. But why are we as a society so willing to accept the science behind our technology, and yet so distrustful of the science producing clear warnings of the dire long term effects that our technology has on our natural environment?

Bibliography

Clarke, G.A. 1969. World Prehistory: A new outline, 2 nd edition, p. 3. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Sabloff, J.A. 2005. Think Tank, Discover vol. 26. (see also www.nmnh.si.edu/anthro/outreach/anthnote/fall01/anthnote.html [Last accessed 12/02/2005 ])

Samways, M.J. 1996:1307. The art of unintelligent tinkering. Conservation Biology 10:1307.

Footnotes

[1] Oliver Poole, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/03/10/wmus10.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/03/10/ixworld.html
[last accessed 21/11/2005 ]

[2] www.avert.org/ukaidsnews.htm [last accessed 02/12/2005 ]

[3] Norton, A., and Leaman, J. 2004. The Day After Tomorrow: Public Opinion on Climate Change. MORI Social Research Institute. Available at: www.mori.com/pubinfo/jl/the-day-after-tomorrow.pdf [Last accessed 02/12/2005 ]. Also see www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_111706.html Poll reveals ignorance over global warming causes. [Last accessed 02/12/2005 ]

 About the author

Kevin Kuykendall is a palaeoanthropologist, conducting fieldwork and excavations in the Makapansgat Valley in South Africa . He also researches the evolution of life history in early hominids through examination of CT reconstructions of early hominid craniodental fossil materials. He joined the lecturing staff at Sheffield in 2004 after teaching for 11 years in the School of Anatomical Sciences at the University of Witwatersrand , Johannesburg , South Africa .