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Comment on At somepoint in human history there was likely a day where not a single human died.

Unfortunately no it does not mean that. At least according to the current science of taphonomy.

Populations evolve, individuals do not. Individuals can have genetic mutations that improve their ability to reproduce which impacts evolution.

Parents of one species cannot give birth to a new species. Sure their offspring may look closer to what we associate with one species or another, but those genetics are held within the parents and greater population. You can have an individual born that appeared strikingly like a modern human, but if their population hasn’t genetically changed enough their offspring go right back to looking just like any other precursor to modern humans.

It’s messy and annoying. People love to have a definitive starting and ending point, but thr world juat doesn’t work that way. There’s are reason the start of a new species is given as an estimate that ranges tens of thousands to even sometimes hundreds of thousands years.

Although there are lots of ongoing arguments on where we draw these lines because it is arbitrary to a degree. However, there is absolutely no acceptance that parents of one species can give birth to another. That just isn’t evolution.

Now that’s the scientific answer. I think the more philosophical questions around what is human is much more interesting. Where should that line be drawn in our deep past? When is the psyche truly human?

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Aeao@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I disagree with science I guess then.

I consider like life and death. I can point at someone alive and I can point at someone dead but in between it gets tricky.

There’s is an exact line between life and death but it’s impossible to really say exactly where that is.

At a certain point you have to call an individual a human. Their parents would therefore not be “human”

We may not know exactly where that line is and that line is probably arbitrary and basically meaningless but there has to be a line where you say “okay that’s a human “

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- PyroVK@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Think of it like language, was there ever Latin speaking parents that gave birth to a French speaking child? No, it’s a gradual change. Or take a color gradient from blue to red there’s a definite change taking place but picking out one specific spot in the middle might be purple
  
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  - Aeao@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I see what you’re saying and I’m sure science wise it’s technically correct.
    
    Even with your language example… yes a a certain point you have do say “okay that’s French”
    
    Much like the color too. Yes the middle is purple but that doesn’t change the fact that at some point in the gradient it becomes blue.
    
    There the old saying “at what point do grains of rice become a pile of rice”
    
    It’s impossible to say sure, but there’s is a point in my opinion.
    
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NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Again. Nobody is saying there is a definitive starting point of “In the year 0 ICBA, the first homo sapien was born”. There fundamentally cannot be.

But… there was. Or, to be less precise, there were probably multiple definitive starting points before one took hold.

You can have an individual born that appeared strikingly like a modern human, but if their population hasn’t genetically changed enough their offspring go right back to looking just like any other precursor to modern humans.

Yes. The individual was, potentially, “evolved”. But the population “reverted” back. That doesn’t change the fact that there was an individual who had reached the next stage. Because… a mutation/defect is isolated until it isn’t.

But for the purposes of a thought experiment/“shower thought”? Yeah, there was very much a point where a single human existed. We just will never know beyond “it probably happened in this very large span of time”.

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- arrow74@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Unfortunately that’s still not quite right.
  
  The individual was, potentially, “evolved”. But the population “reverted” back.
  
  Individuals cannot evolve, but more importantly there is no “reverting back” evolution moves in one direction. It’s the slow slow change in the genetics genetics of an entire population.
  
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