Recent Human Evolution Detected
Posted on December 11, 2006
Filed Under America, evolution, fauna, history, interweb, newspapers, Outside Ireland, Rant, religion, review, Shout Out | Comments Off
Another gem from Danger over at tcal.net.
Recent Human Evolution Detected
A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found.The finding is a striking example of a cultural practice — the raising of dairy cattle — feeding back into the human genome. It also seems to be one of the first instances of convergent human evolution to be documented at the genetic level. Convergent evolution refers to two or more populations acquiring the same trait independently.
He found the story in The New York Times.
