Jonathan Leake, Science Editor of Rupert Murdoch’s Times Online begins a much discussed research from the University of Helsinki this way
FOR the female half of the population, it may bring a satisfied smile. Scientists have found that evolution is driving women to become ever more beautiful, while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors.
That would be a no then. If it were the case that selective pressure is driving the “evolution” of good lookin’ women it would necessarily imply that, rather “bring a satisfied smile,” women would experience selective pressure, a.k.a. stress, to be attractive. Which would make it anything but a laughing matter. If true.
Also, about men being as aesthetically unappealing as our caveman ancestors: that would imply that whenever she had a choice between two potential partners are identical in every other way their looks still won’t factor into that choice.
The article also quotes the researchers as saying
Historically this has meant rich men tend to have more wives and many children. So the pressure is on men to be successful.
To which I can only say Desmond Hatchett, a seemingly handsome minimum-wage-earning 29-year-old from my home town who’s had 21 children with eleven partners.
Submitted by 3095 (not verified) on Sat, 2009-08-01 12:19.
Yeah, right - men today are no more physically appealing than cavemen. What about all those women who allegedly like tall men? (Okay, I'll admit I'm one of 'em.) Are we left cold by the fact that men today are several inches taller than in Shakespeare's era, never mind the Cro Magnons? Or doesn't that count as evolution?
Maybe women are smiling because we're laughing our asses off at all this bad science.
[Also it sounds a lot more like bad reporting than bad science -- the author of the study has been pretty critical of the conclusions pop journalists have been drawing. Thanks, Sungold. --fl]
Submitted by 3095 (not verified) on Sat, 2009-08-01 16:37.
"Historically this has meant rich men tend to have more wives and many children. So the pressure is on men to be successful."
This is just fundamentally false anyway. Rich men usually had just enough kids to ensure a male heir. Poor families often had a lot of children, in part because it was hit-and-miss how many of them would survive to adulthood.
Also, given that family planning has been around for a few decades now, the same evolutionary pressures are not going to function the same way, since nowadays wealthier families are more likely to take a planned approach, whereas those from less affluent backgrounds have more pressure to be a) promiscuous and b) less chance to take careful planning (especially when it costs money to do).
As the song "Common People" has it:
"you dance and drink and screw/ cos there's nothing else to do".
So, arguably, the evolutionary pressures are quite different.
[Yup. Historically speaking affluent families have tended to have fewer rather than more children at least as often as they've had more. The history of the world may have been written for, and/or about, kings, chieftains, and sultans. It was not, however, entirely composed of them. Thanks, SE. --fl]
Submitted by 3095 (not verified) on Sat, 2009-08-01 20:07.
The evolutionary pressures on the upper and lower classes are quite different, even today. If nothing fundamentally changes in that regards for the next million years, we'll become two different species. Morlocks and Eloi, here we come! (A reference to "The Time Machine", which I have not personally read.)
[I'm not buying it. It takes thousands of generations to create a divide wide enough to rule out cross-fertilization. And humans are just too promiscuous to remain separate that long. Even in highly class/caste-based societies. There haven't been much more than 500 generations since the people first started building cities in the fertile crescent! And tell me standards of beauty haven't changed a bit since then? Thanks, Nightfall. --fl]
Submitted by 3095 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-08-02 08:10.
Sometimes I think that evolutionary psychologists need to meet fandom. Hundreds of thousands of women and girls gush about how incredibly hot Draco Malfoy/Dean Winchester/Pete Wentz/anime girly-looking guy du jour/Peter Petrelli/any Johnny Depp character ever (delete as appropriate) is. With nary a mention of their pocketbook size in sight!
[Nicely put, Ozymandias. Thanks. --fl]
Submitted by 3095 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-08-02 14:43.
What we need is a good study correlating perceived attractiveness, or wealth, or whatever the trait de jour is, with *offspring number*. Social success is not a good proxy for offspring number in humans; it's not even a good proxy in chimpanzees.
Until it is shown that the trait affects reproductive success, evolutionary speculation about wealth or beauty ought to be recognized for the fluff it is.
About the Eloi and Morlocks; for the two populations to diverge, you would need to lose social mobility. In general, it's hard for evolutionary divergence to occur if there are more than a few individuals moving between the populations each generation, though it can happen if the selection pressure is extremely strong. I don't think there has ever been a human society with that little social mobility, especially given the possibility of unrecognized extramarital offspring. And I find it extremely unlikely that the divergent selection pressure is strong. "Strong" here would be something like high-altitude adaptation in birds, where you'll die if you don't have the right hemoglobin variants, or malaria resistance in humans, ditto.
Submitted by 3095 (not verified) on Tue, 2009-08-04 20:04.
Okay, I should have put a smiley to indicate I was half-joking. Besides, a million years is roughly 50,000 generations. That's... quite a bit more than 500 generations.