Is This The Fastest Case of Human Evolution?

Anyone else here get hot under the collar at articles like written this one?

Condensed example:

Headline: "Did Squirrels Actually Build the Pyramids?"

Article body: Crazy man on street corner says yes. Rest of humanity says no, points out squirrel's tiny paws, small brains and that no squirrels ever existed in Egypt. Crazy man nods but remains unconvinced.

This article's headline should read "Goofball Scientists Make Foolish Claim, Ignored Glaring Evidence, Should Hush Now".

Just because no such skeletons have ever been found doesn't prove that Egypt wasn't once occupied by 5-foot tall, large-brained squirrels with opposable thumbs, who built the pyramids. So your entire argument fails.

Oh yeah? Where's the fossilized 4-foot diamter acorns then? Huh?

What...these Pyra-Squirrels ate at McDonald's?

My cousin's next-door neighbor said his uncle saw a hidden cave full of them when he visited Egypt about 20 years ago. Well, the uncle didn't actually see them himself, but he said the camel guide he was with said he saw them.

I know you...you think the wizzard did it.
You don't actually make any logical argument as to why the theory is incorrect.
How come a population which has migrated to a high altitude region now has significant differences from it's original population?
Anyhow the OP is stated as a question, and your answer sholuld read'
" I don't think so but I have no evidence to support my belief "
Please try to put some sort of logical argument forward, else go elsewhere.
Del

*gently removes Del's claws from neck*

Perhaps I explained myself badly and if so I apologize. What I meant to convey was that I dislike articles written with a teaser headline which then go on largely with the intent to disprove that headline. I just find it a poor journalistic practice. And I seem to find it more prevelant with science stories, making it somehow more irritating.

Had it perhaps been titled "Debate over Tibetian genetic changes" or some such, I might not have minded as much.

*gives Del a catnip toy to play with now*

FWIW, I understood your point; anyone who read the entire article would have seen that towards the end of it the author cited sources that contradicted the headline.
So, what was the point? Had to meet a deadline?

This is all just political propaganda to convince the world that Tibetans, who are actually related to Mongols and not to the PRC's majority Han Chinese, are just Han Chinese belonging to a different tribe and thus have no case for complaint against the colonization of Tibet and the economic and sociopolitical marginalization they have suffered under the Han Chinese. A far likelier explanation for a Tibetan's ability to tolerate the rarefied air is simply because having spent his/her entire life there, their bodies have compensated for the lower oxygen level by increasing the red blood cell count of their bodies. The same thing would happen to anyone, even those who live in valleys if they spent a few weeks up in such altitudes.

Any reasonably intelligent person would know that different races are all genetically slightly different. Even individuals of the same race are genetically slightly different; that's how DNA testing works. Why else would it be that only Caucasians have natural blond or red hair and blue eyes while all other races have black hair and brown eyes?

Well, the page crashed my browser so I didn't read the article, but I can tell you this, gene expression is one thing they don't talk about nearly enough, and it plays a huge role. When it comes to adapting to oxygen scarcity at altitude, not only gene expression changes on a few weeks exposure, but if your body develops at that altitude it also has effects afaict. I think it played a role in my own gene expression that I spent age 9 to 13 living at 8000 ft altitude - and also was involved in competitive swimming training there.

The native people of that area have an expanded ribcage - there's a characteristic body shape that seems adapted to that area and altitude for larger lung volume. I developed the same. I also seem to have a tendency to high hemoglobin - enough that it's regularly commented when I have a blood test. Maybe because of the exposure in formative years some qualities that were genetically latent emerged under the selection pressure and stayed with me for life. There are no mountain people in my (recent = 400 to 1000 years) background, but the latency of the genes to develop mountain traits is there anyway, or so it seems to me.

Hmm...makes me wonder.

In my 9th grade science class, the teacher (remembered only as Mr. D.) had a device that measures lung capacity. My lung size dwarfed everyone else in class, including the instructor. My High School was in central Florida, but I had moved all over the U.S. in my childhood. I spent a year in Colorado and two years in the Virgin Islands where I swam with my older brother and his friends mostly; they were bigger and faster than me, but I was more determined so I held my breath longer and swam farther underwater than anyone else could (my record was over two minutes underwater).

The effect I notice today is that I have a very thick chest and am well muscled despite less than moderate exercise. I also have always had borderline high blood pressure, but don't know about hemoglobin count.

Artsmith, what does your bloodpressure run? (if you don't mind my asking)

Drew

Deleted by Del

Wikipedia says this...(so it must be true) I like the Tibetans version (bottom of the article)
Del

One 2010 study, part of the 1000 Genomes Project and published in the journal Science,^[13] showed that modern Tibetans split off from the Han less than 3,000 years ago.^[14] However, archaeologists say they believe that the Tibetan plateau has been inhabited for at least 7,000 years and maybe for as long as 21,000 years. "The separation of Tibetans and Hans at 3,000 years ago is simply not tenable by anything we know from the historical, archaeological or linguistic record," said Mark Aldenderfer, a Tibetan expert at the University of California, Merced. Dr. Aldenderfer said that there had probably been many migrations onto the Tibetan plateau, and that there was indirect evidence that pastoralists had entered the plateau from the north-northeast around 6,000 years ago. Earlier genetic studies have found that Tibetans are more similar to northern Han than to those from southern China, and have some admixture of genes from Central Asia, he said. Geneticists have a more elastic view of dates than do archaeologists, and the estimate of a Han-Tibetan population split at 3,000 years ago could probably have been adjusted to 6,000 if the geneticists had taken any account of any other kind of evidence. |http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/science/02tibet.html?_r=1&hpw |

The distribution of Haplogroup D-M174 is found among nearly all the populations of Central Asia and Northeast Asia south of the Russian border, although generally at a low frequency of 2% or less. A dramatic spike in the frequency of D-M174 occurs as one approaches the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau of western China. D-M174 is also found at high frequencies in Japan but it fades into low frequencies in the Han populated mainland China between Japan and Tibet.

Stein observes:^[15]

Different racial types live side by side or coalesce. The predominant strain in most cases in Mongoloid, but many travellers have been struck by the prevalence of what they describe as a 'Red Indian' type (in Kongpo, among the Hor nomads, and in Tatsienlu). Others have noted a European, 'Hellenic' or Caucasian element which seems sometimes to be identical with the preceding type, and sometimes to denote a separate type altogether, especially in north-eastern Tibet. A dwarfish type occurs in Chala, a district of Kham. Though all these are but impressions, the fact that different groups exist is plain. According to travellers with no special claim to scientific knowledge, the brachycephalic type predominates in the farming communities of the Brahmaputra valley and in the south-east. In Ladakh, it would appear to have been superimposed on a dolichocephalic strain (no doubt Dards). Northerners, as in the Changthang lakes region—the Hor and Golok people—are themselves dolichocephalic , on the other hand. However, anthropologists merely distinguish two types: one distinctly Mongoloid and of slight build, typical of Kham. Blue-eyed 'blond' types have also been observed in the north-east.

The romantic claim that American Hopi and Tibetans are related has not found support in genetic studies. Some light has been shed on their origins, however, by one genetic study^[16] in which it was indicated that Tibetan Y-chromosomes had multiple origins, one from Central Asia while the other from East Asia.

[edit] Traditional explanation

Tibetans traditionally explain their own origins as rooted in the marriage of the monkey Pha Trelgen Changchup Sempa and rock ogress Ma Drag Sinmo.^[17] Tibetans who display compassion, moderation, intelligence, and wisdom are said to take after their fathers, while Tibetans who are "red-faced, fond of sinful pursuits, and very stubborn" are said to take after their mothers.

They are not proof of the fastest evolution in humans...have you seen some teenagers lately?

"They are not proof of the fastest evolution in humans...have you seen some teenagers lately?"

Er, wouldn't that qualify as devolution instead?

It's why many Tibetans are monks and meditate. During meditation the body gets by on less oxygen.