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Printable Handouts
Navigable Slide Index
- Introduction
- "Frightfully, and painfully, and disagreeably human"
- The grammar of biology
- Evolution vs. creationism
- Sir William Jones
- Related languages
- The grandfather of “father”
- The pedigree of European languages
- An almost impossible organ
- Variation in skin colour
- Cheddar man
- How to get Vitamin D
- Vitamin D synthesis in Caucasians
- Rickets
- Vitamin D deficiency in UK children
- England: Increase in rickets over 50 years
- Plasma vitamin D levels
- Breast cancer by latitude
- Multiple sclerosis
- Model organisms for skin tone genetics
- Distribution of two alleles at a skin colour locus
- Skin colour across the globe
- Big teeth, big muscles, lots of hair
- Mutation in "Forkhead Box" [Fox13] gene
- Chimps are incredibly strong
- Unique deletion in sarcomeric myosin gene
- Jaw muscles reduced in humans
- Big gut, small brain and vice-versa
- The joy of cooking
- The joy of chimpanzee sex
- Primate penile spines
- Primate evolutionary trees
- Brain mass in relation to body mass
- Numbers of cortical neurones (millions)
- Disruption of “language area” in verbal dyspraxia
- FOXP2 mutations – origin of language?
- Rickets treatment
- Rickets before and after UV treatment
- Thank you
Topics Covered
- The grammar of biology
- Evolution of language
- Skin adaptations
- Vitamin D and rickets
- Primate comparisons
- Human uniqueness
Talk Citation
Jones, S. (2020, September 30). A brief look at human evolution [Video file]. In The Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection, Henry Stewart Talks. Retrieved October 5, 2024, from https://doi.org/10.69645/ZOFR7125.Export Citation (RIS)
Publication History
Financial Disclosures
- There are no commercial/financial matters to disclose.
A selection of talks on Genetics & Epigenetics
Transcript
Please wait while the transcript is being prepared...
0:00
Hello, my name is Steve Jones.
I'm a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Genetics,
Evolution and Environment at University College London.
I'm going to be talking today about evolution,
specifically about human evolution.
0:16
Or, perhaps even worse,
to raise orangutans and chimps to become almost human?
Well, the Victorians were worried about Darwin and our resemblance to apes,
and the fact still worries millions of people today.
Their concern indeed, is that evolution shows humans to
be just an animal, loaning ourselves to the level of chimps perhaps.
Even today, there's another side to that coin,
a kind of what I think of as neo-creationism.
0:46
Jane Goodall, the famous primatologist
has claimed some form of human rights for primates,
based on the sharing of more than 90 percent of our DNA, particularly with chimpanzees.
She set up a system called The Great Ape Project,
and that's led to the prohibition of medical research on chimpanzees in many countries.
Well, it seems a very strange decision to me,
particularly as she specifically says,
that the amount of human rights that a chimpanzee should have,
should be about the same as the level applied to infants and the mentally ill.
Well, the argument has certainly persuaded plenty of countries and
they have banned laboratory experiments on chimps as a result.
It seems to me odd to use DNA as an alibi for an ethical decision.
After all, we share lots of DNA with bananas,
but nobody talks of giving them any form of rights as a result.
I once wrote a book called The Language of the Genes,
and that drew the rather obvious parallel between changes in the double helix in DNA,
and changes in language both over time and from place to place.
However, to understand that to speak a language,
you need more than just words. You need grammar.
The theory of evolution is the grammar of biology, the framework
which makes the science of life make sense.
Amazingly to me, vast numbers of people across the world do not believe in evolution.