How is it that there's only one type of bacteria that can survive without sunlight or food, and live off nothing but radioactive decay from uranium miles below the earth? I mean bacteria change their genetic makeup much faster than most other animals, so why just the one type?

Because when you rule all the accessible land with relatively little problem, there's a large support for the status quo.
Other people never developed because they couldn't do so without being called freaks by their neighbors. People have expanded across all continents, so anybody that has their legs fused together in what looks like initial stages of a dolphin tail gets surgery to fix that "error."

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jan 24 2009, 6:08 am by Rantent.

Which both look surprisingly human. Just normal ol' human. Homo floresiensis isn't even positively a different species yet even, by whatever criteria it takes for a sub species to be classified as such.

Bacteria are one cell. Where are they going to go?

That may be now, but that has very little to do with the past.

Just because a different human species is different, doesn't mean they shouldn't have survived. If nothing else, the fact that we dominate the world should mean no other species at all should be alive today, except bugs, plants, and microorganisms.

Each species fits a specific part of the food chain, and those that no longer have a place will die out, as did the dinosaurs and a myriad of other species. Some species didn't die out, like sharks, small herbivores, insects, etc. Namely, species that didn't require something that wasn't accessible. One property of humans is that they're conscious, which is an interesting phenomena in itself. Nobody knows when, where, or how this property was developed, and it seems interesting that humans are the only race to show evidence of the traits defined to make up consciousness (Namely, traits that can't be explained by Darwin's theory of evolution and the principle of survival of the fittest). That's largely why discoveries that may suggest that other similar races may have posessed these traits are as fascinating as they are dangerous, because many belief systems ride on humans being the only conscious entities, at least on earth. What if we found out that animals perceived the world in exactly the same way as we did?

Either way, isolatedpurity, your arguments are using quite a bit of flawed reasoning, and I'm not going to put in the effort of pointing out exactly where, but what it comes down to is that we can only attribute things to what exists now, and what records we have, so arguments along the lines of "would have been" are fairly moot points. Humans, in my opinion, dominate things because the human race is driven by some force to expand and control everything it can take, and the fact that there is only one conscious race can be attributed to a few things. First off, no other races have the capacity to reason properly, which can only be developed with certain specific nutrients and excessive amounts of proteins, that, so many years ago, were only available in excess through marrow-gnawing. Now days, we don't need as much, but evolution states that we don't develop a reliance on something unless we always have excesses of it. The current conjecture states that in ancient times humans would have developed in regions where carnivores killed large herbivores, leaving the bones open to be broken and chewed. Thus developed a race of bone breakers and chewers, that needed to travel long distances, break things, use thumbs, and act cleverly. Humans are actually the best suited animal to do this, with the ability to run longer marathons than any other animal, and to pick and prod at things better than any other animal, save monkeys, who albeit lack our marathon capabilities. By that regard, humans would have developed tools and the like, eventually surpassing other animals using mainly the raw intelligence developed by the excesses of brain-matter that could be taken by eating the bones of fallen giants, eventually reaching a point where tribal spreading of the race was inevitable. In any case, my final reasoning for the existence of only one human race is that the chances of reaching this point are slim to none, and that wars between races always have one winner. This is because one spot in the food chain was available, and that there were multiple contenders. Evidence of this is that the only other surviving humanoids existed on remote islands and other places, meaning that the only place for competitors was where there was no competition. The offshoots would have all died off due to natural disasters, as one such disaster can annihilate an entire race if it is unable to propagate itself, as were the offshoots of humanity.

So what do you want? It's a successful body plan.

Thus is evolution.

Absolute brain size isn't a good measurement of intelligence, but brain size relative to body size is, in which they destroyed us. They had larger brains and smaller bodies.

That's bullshit. Genes are genes. They don't alter to what you eat, so me eating healthy does not pass on better reasoning skills to my kids until the point my future generation somewhere down the line is significantly smarter or more logical. And consciousness has to come before shared experience or passing down knowledge.

Our food sources are pretty damn versatile. I see no reason why two human-like species could co-exist due to super abundance of supply.
Even more so, any second human-like creature that could live on vastly different food sources than we do now. Strictly plants / wood / whatever.
And again, the second human-like creature doesn't have to be human-like, more so just the consciousness you mentioned. The ability to communicate in an openly fashion, written down, spoke, etc. There are so many different types of monkeys, no?


And it is actually scary to think other animals have such a consciousness, not just because of religious reasons. If you think about it, to them, humans very well could appear to act on instinct. They do certain things like pee on the floor, and we react generally react the same way every time. If that was the case, shouldn't they be treated the same as humans with rights and such? If an alien dog landed on our planet, we wouldn't treat it like a dog, we would treat it as an equal, if not a superior, despite the fact it was still a dog.

They weren't before the advent of agriculture, and we only got to that point by outlasting the other human-like species. Each of those Monkey's fulfill a specific ecological niche. Some occupy the same niche because they are in completely different parts of the world, without access to each other. Perhaps, had humans been slower in migrating out of Africa, other species in other locals may have sprung up to fill our niche. For instance, neanderthal would have filled the human niche in Europe, but sapiens displaced them. We also migrated and filled every other part of the world before a suitable species could spring up there. A converse example might be the birds of New Zealand, or the Marsupials of Australia, who fill many of the ecological niches occupied by mammals in most other parts of the world, because the mammals didn't get there quickly enough. However, we still have things like the crocodilians and sharks, who did spread fast enough, and like humans, fill their niche everywhere.

But evolution is such a slow process. A world-wide creature would have a much harder time propagating mutations than a species confined to one area. If nothing else, the species would evolve different, mostly according to their habitat or food sources. And humans are so late game. So what gives?

Evolution's a slow process, just like you said. You'd be hard pressed to not say we're not one of the most advanced species, it just takes a long time for nature to make one.

There's only one kind of human, but there are several major races, each with its own distinctly defined subsets.. for example, white people, black people, Asians (in the Japanese, Chinese, Korean sense), Southasians (in the Indian, Pakistani, Bengali sense), Native Americans, Hispanic people (arguably) and Arabs (arguably) are all separate from each other in obvious visual ways. So a case could be made that there is indeed more than one type of human.

Nope. There's only one form of Homo Sapien.

Ya. Races aren't even close to being genetically distinct enough to break up the species.

Back on the subject of brains... Homo Sapiens are the most intelligent because they evolved in the middle of a desert, where if they were not resourceful to find water and food where it was extremely scarce, they would have died. Even though Neanderthals inhabited a cold region, it was many times more abundant in game, so their brains weren't forced to develop as much in the search for foodz.

Where's your proof/source for this information??