So you get points for being correct, but what’s your point?

My dear, that’s 32% of those polled approved of Bush.

Since agriculture has only been around for about 10,000 years or so, the relatively reduced incidence of type 2 diabetes in people descended from older agrarian societies shows that some evolution has taken place. Of course, even without the high genetic tendency, McDs is capable of causing diabetes in the increasingly obese population of the U.S.

I’d love to hear about more differences that can be explained by this relatively rapid evolution.

I’ve been puzzling for a couple days about how to respond to your comment. I’m certainly no expert on theories of evolution, and I don’t track research reports on the subject. So please don’t expect that I can or will follow up in answer to your desire for more info.

I’ll say this much more, though: the four mechanisms influencing evolution may be inadequate to explain influences felt in the modern era. When a fast food chain or an invention like the television is able to exert so much influence single handedly that our evolutionary path is altered (only truly discoverable in hindsight), those influences don’t fit too well within the classical theory. Because of our relatively high standard of living and the ability of even weak or compromised specimens to procreate, the sense that survival of the fittest drives natural selection may be misguided, at least in terms of human evolution. Further, the growing number of extirpated species resulting from human influence on the environment doesn’t strike me as a natural process but as a system wildly out of balance. Perhaps that’s really about how one defines one’s terms.

If we had larger brains (or more accurately were smarter), we might be smart enough not to get into all the trouble we do. If we had smaller brains, we wouldn’t be able to do so. More likely, we’re breeding stupider without the high rate of predation and other accidents that would happen in a hunter gatherer society. In modern society, even those who walk out in front of buses are normally spared by alert drivers.

With respect to the usefulness of this information to a general audience, it probably depends on the level of general. Most of the minority of the general public that actually believes evolution is real, still believes it to be either directional or worse, directed by god.

For the reasonably educated who know that evolution is neither directed toward greater complexity nor directed towards a particular goal by a deity, it is interesting information.

This can point to a reason for interesting facts such as high incidence of type 2 diabetes in hunter gatherer societies that have recently made the switch to agrarian sedentary lives. The gene for type 2 diabetes happens to provide greater ability to survive the binge-starve cycle of the hunter gatherer lifestyle, so is more common there.

Since agriculture has only been around for about 10,000 years or so, the relatively reduced incidence of type 2 diabetes in people descended from older agrarian societies shows that some evolution has taken place. Of course, even without the high genetic tendency, McDs is capable of causing diabetes in the increasingly obese population of the U.S.

I’d love to hear about more differences that can be explained by this relatively rapid evolution.

Perhaps, if we don’t kill ourselves off too quickly, we’ll evolve teeth that are more resilient to current diets. Pre-agrarian societies did not have tooth decay according to paleopathologists. (The source of that is probably The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond. I can try to find a web source if anyone doubts it. I realize it seems fairly incredible.)