What does science tell us about our ancestor?

jll

some of us can trace our ancestor back many generations.
but where does it lead to?
what does science say about our earliest ancestor?
and how do scientists come to that conclusion?
i know most of us are not scientists, but what i am interested
in is what most of us know about science and what we believe
science has taught us.

vinlyn

I'm not really clear on what you're asking.

My college major was historical geology, and we studied ancestral man. A lot has changed in our knowledge about that area since I was in college in the 1970s.

jll

dear vin, who do you think is your earliest ancestor?
your answer as informed by science.

vinlyn said:

I'm not really clear on what you're asking.

My college major was historical geology, and we studied ancestral man. A lot has changed in our knowledge about that area since I was in college in the 1970s.

BhanteLucky

I think my earliest identifiable ancestor is Mitochondrial Eve... Something to do with genetically identical mitochondria...passed through the female line.
I haven't bothered to try to understand it very hard, but my girlfriend is a biologist and she assures me that's who our earliest identifiable shared ancestor is.

BhanteLucky

I think science has become too complex and big for any non-scientist to properly understand.
So we kinda have to just trust in people who have spent years studying these things. (or not) Hopefully they are people of integrity and good-will.
I'm lucky I have lots of PhD friends, they tell me all sorts of interesting things, and translate science news for me.

Citta

I think you are more likely to get a range of replies if you post your question on a science based website.

federica

Why does it matter, even?
It's not as if we can drop them a postcard.

Who are you today, and how will you ensure that your good deeds will be remembered and respected?

Cinorjer

Through the expanding knowledge of geological history, fossil evidence and the study of genetics, science now says the first proto-humans evolved in Africa millions of years ago, that we eventually migrated outward in several waves and with an amazing amount of sub-species of early human-like beings walking around. Eventually from 500,000 to 100,000 years ago, depending on the theories, modern humans had evolved while the subspecies had died off (and our own species almost died off at least once), and it's been one big population explosion from the last 50,000 years or so. Basically, we are the lucky survivors. Not better than other species, just in the right place at the right time with the right skills.

This certain knowledge, backed by scientific evidence, is either resisted or ignored by all world religions who continue to insist humanity is special and above the laws of nature. Yes, even Buddhism, which does at least insist all life and not just human life is sacred and special, but still operates under the assumption that an almost infinite universe is designed to benefit and promote humanity and the human mind in particular.

robot

I suppose there needs to be a point in the distant past prior to which we must say that we have no ancestors. Maybe there are too many missing links in the fossil record to make any certain connections to earlier mammals. Or perhaps those earlier beings are too distant to be considered ancestors.
Still, it is my understanding that the theory of evolution points to us sharing an ancestor with every other living thing on earth. Each one of us is a link in an unbroken chain of reproduction that goes back to the first life on the planet. Is this the correct way to look at it?
I have a pretty limited education in science.

Cinorjer

robot said:

I suppose there needs to be a point in the distant past prior to which we must say that we have no ancestors. Maybe there are too many missing links in the fossil record to make any certain connections to earlier mammals. Or perhaps those earlier beings are too distant to be considered ancestors.
Still, it is my understanding that the theory of evolution points to us sharing an ancestor with every other living thing on earth. Each one of us is a link in an unbroken chain of reproduction that goes back to the first life on the planet. Is this the correct way to look at it?
I have a pretty limited education in science.

This observation that all life evolved from one common little bit of life in the ancient seas that learned how to adapt and reproduce is the fact of evolution. Exactly how all species including our own evolved from a common ancestor is the "theory" of evolution and we're still discovering new details. But yes, even 3 or 4 million years ago, our proto-human ancestors had ancestors that go back to the first mammal-like species that looked like big rats. And those had ancestors all the way back to the primordial seas.

Where this first bit of life (something with DNA that could reproduce) came from is a different and fascinating field of study, with theories that include it came from asteroids or comets or the chemical soup of the early seas being hit by lightning, etc. We have theories, but so far no evidence because nothing has survived including rocks from that early in Earth's history to study.

David

Geez, we may have to go beyond the big bang for that ultimate answer.

Or at least find the first quasar.

vinlyn

I think some of you are getting way off the track of what Jll is asking. I don't think he's asking about primordial soup, but rather, something which can be identified as an earliest form of...well, what Jll?

Cinorjer

Well, it's interesting to think about how, because you are alive right now, thousands of generations of your human ancestors managed to survive long enough to have at least one child who also survived to adulthood and had a child, etc. Considering for almost all of our long history infant mortality and life expectancy made survival a crapshoot, that means whatever else you can say about modern humanity, we've gotten really, really good at making babies in a hostile world. Some people now say too many. So can we use our intelligent minds to reverse a million years of selection?

Takuan

Florian

It does not seem right to say that Buddhism "operates under the assumption that an almost infinite universe is designed to benefit and promote humanity and the human mind in particular." The proposal seems to be only that human beings are in a very good place to benefit from it. At any rate, there is never any suggestion that it was designed.

One of the most interesting questions is how to explain the fact, if it is a fact, that life only started once on this planet. This is a very strange idea. We would reject it as absurd were it not that the physical evidence seems to support it, since it is very difficult to imagine a cosmological or statistical mechanism that could cause life to begin on a planet exactly once.

If biological life did start only once, then this must be something to do with the evolution of our planet before the point we usually mark as the beginning of life, beyond the remit of evolutionary biology. It must have to do with the singularity of the planet. There is only one planet and only one life, and this cannot be a coincidence. If it is not a coincidence, then it is a way of explaining why life only started once.

If we are the single life of our single planet, then we could not have started twice, and never could on any planet, and will always start as soon as we can. So, perhaps all lives on all planets always have just one ancestor, and all the lives of all the planets would have just the one ancestor. Both evolutionary biology and physics would have their Big Bang.

Maybe I'm talking rubbish. All the same, it would explain the religion of the native Anericans, and the idea does not seem to be inconsistent with Buddhist cosmology, being just an evolutionary detail.

And, come to think of it, it would explain the many 'tree of life' visions that occur in non-everyday states of consciousness, where the entire vast and intricate structure of planetary life can be sensed or seen as a single unified phenomenon. Perhaps this is only possible because this is what it is, what we are, if we trace our biological ancestory all the way back.

But this is just thinking out loud.

Jeffrey

@Cinorjer, a lot of Buddhists are of the mind only school. This says that consciousness is the start of our search rather than the big bang. The universe from this context is emotional or at least it is inherent of the nature of a universe that there be beings and compassion. When I say universe I don't mean a universe empty of beings. That's what my teacher teaches.

There are four qualities:

-fluxional
-non-conceptual suchness is not an amorphous vague blob of non-conceptuality but
rather a precise structure of a mandala and more precise than conceptual.
-not just a dead universe but one that draws us towards awakening
-neither manifest nor non-manifest

The mahayana of all traditions does away with the existence of the universe right off the bat with the prajnaparamita sutras.

I don't know all the polemics for this,

but think about the problem of consciousness as an epiphenomena of the brain. There is no explanation for this. So 'material' and 'more important' are just projections. Consciousness is not 'more important' it just is. We say there is a precious human life and that seems true because we have the sensitivity to follow the truth.

Cinorjer

Jeffrey said:

@Cinorjer, a lot of Buddhists are of the mind only school. This says that consciousness is the start of our search rather than the big bang. The universe from this context is emotional or at least it is inherent of the nature of a universe that there be beings and compassion. When I say universe I don't mean a universe empty of beings. That's what my teacher teaches.

There are four qualities:

-fluxional
-non-conceptual suchness is not an amorphous vague blob of non-conceptuality but
rather a precise structure of a mandala and more precise than conceptual.
-not just a dead universe but one that draws us towards awakening
-neither manifest nor non-manifest

The mahayana of all traditions does away with the existence of the universe right off the bat with the prajnaparamita sutras.

I don't know all the polemics for this,

but think about the problem of consciousness as an epiphenomena of the brain. There is no explanation for this. So 'material' and 'more important' are just projections. Consciousness is not 'more important' it just is. We say there is a precious human life and that seems true because we have the sensitivity to follow the truth.

I agree that the miracle of consciousness is made even more amazing when contemplating the nature of the universe that gave us birth. That's why my practice and focus is on the here-and-now in front of me. No matter what the ultimate nature of the universe turns out to be, unknowable or not, we are here and we suffer now.

Dakini

Do you mean who were our earliest traceable ancestors via genealogy (you do realize we all have more than one ancestor, right? It takes two to tango... ), or who do we believe were our earliest ancestors by evolutionary theory? Science tells us we're all "out of Africa". FWIW

Jeffrey

Adam and Eve

jll

cinorjer, do you believe what the scientists say?
or do you have doubts?

actually, i am aware of the science. yet science
is always evolving.
i am just trying to see everyone's take on the subject.

i start by imagining my grandfather's father, his father
and his father and so on.

300,000 years up the family tree, i find an ape.

a few billion years and i find a single cell organism.

it just boggles my mind.

Cinorjer said:

Through the expanding knowledge of geological history, fossil evidence and the study of genetics, science now says the first proto-humans evolved in Africa millions of years ago, that we eventually migrated outward in several waves and with an amazing amount of sub-species of early human-like beings walking around. Eventually from 500,000 to 100,000 years ago, depending on the theories, modern humans had evolved while the subspecies had died off (and our own species almost died off at least once), and it's been one big population explosion from the last 50,000 years or so. Basically, we are the lucky survivors. Not better than other species, just in the right place at the right time with the right skills.

This certain knowledge, backed by scientific evidence, is either resisted or ignored by all world religions who continue to insist humanity is special and above the laws of nature. Yes, even Buddhism, which does at least insist all life and not just human life is sacred and special, but still operates under the assumption that an almost infinite universe is designed to benefit and promote humanity and the human mind in particular.

jll

now that is easy to accept.
2 perfect homo-sapiens.
but unfortunately the bible has past its use by date.

Jeffrey said:

Adam and Eve

vinlyn

jll said:

...

actually, i am aware of the science. yet science
is always evolving.
i am just trying to see everyone's take on the subject.

i start by imagining my grandfather's father, his father
and his father and so on.

300,000 years up the family tree, i find an ape.

a few billion years and i find a single cell organism.

it just boggles my mind.

Boggle just a bit less. Scientists do not say we descended from apes, rather than man and apes had a common ancestor.

Keep in mind that it isn't that "science" has been wrong about the evolution to man. It's more than it has been a huge jigsaw puzzle and that man keeps finding another piece to fit into the big picture...and slowly that picture becomes more clear.

Yes, there have been a few times when there have been hoaxes about evolution, but the study of fossils and artifacts can, temporarily, lead off in the wrong direction, but those journeys usually end quickly, create much debate, and often get people back on the right track.

And BTW, it's much the same in the study of invertebrate paleontological studies.

Jeffrey

The changes in organisms happen over an enormous amount of time.

vinlyn

Actually, one theory of how evolution works says that while the changes in organisms generally happen over the very long periods of time -- millions of years -- that there are also evolutionary bursts that happen to certain organisms. Still far longer than a man's life, but very short in comparison to how evolution generally works.

Jeffrey

Yes I had heard of that. My thought however was how it looks impossible to go from a one celled organism to a multi-celled complex organism. And of course there it took a long time to go from a one celled organism to a mammal.

I had heard of the bursts though. That's cool.

jll

its hard to argue against evolution.
all the available evidence points in that direction.
still, its hard for me to comprehend.

here we are merely talking about a few billion yrs.
from the buddhist perspective, we talk about world
cycles, which is like godzillion years.

i wonder do we have any connection at all with
those early creatures. other than a few strand of DNA.

still boggles my mind...

Jeffrey said:

Yes I had heard of that. My thought however was how it looks impossible to go from a one celled organism to a multi-celled complex organism. And of course there it took a long time to go from a one celled organism to a mammal.

I had heard of the bursts though. That's cool.

vinlyn

Jeffrey said:

Yes I had heard of that. My thought however was how it looks impossible to go from a one celled organism to a multi-celled complex organism. And of course there it took a long time to go from a one celled organism to a mammal.

...

Considering mitosis, the concept of going from a one-celled animal to a multi-celled animal doesn't seem that difficult to accept to me.

footiam

jll said:

some of us can trace our ancestor back many generations.
but where does it lead to?
what does science say about our earliest ancestor?
and how do scientists come to that conclusion?
i know most of us are not scientists, but what i am interested
in is what most of us know about science and what we believe
science has taught us.

Science is just an idea. It may not be right in some of the things and is right in some other things. It sometimes leads to confusion but most definitely does not lead to deathlessness.

Cinorjer

The universe should boggle our minds, including the history of our home world and ourselves. It's impossible to wrap our minds around a million years, leave alone a billion. Just think of how many generations it takes to reach back one million years to an upright walking, basic tool using humanoid. If a generation is on the average twenty years, do the math. Those are your ancestors.

Deepankar

So very sad that science says that your ancestor is other than a Goddamn Particle http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Particle:_If_the_Universe_Is_the_Answer,_What_Is_the_Question?