If people evolved from birds instead of apes... what would we all look like, talk like, etc.

 

Birth would suddenly happen from an egg, so we would no longer have to watch disgusting vagina-birth videos in health class in 9th grade.

Also, since we have pedophiles in our culture, I think there would be entire groups of bird people attracted to eggs.

 

Would we be less likely to eat eggs of other species? Would apes be normal food and all bird related foods be taboo?

 

How else would culture be different?

 

These important questions should be answered. And feel free to ask any others.

 

 

So they'd probably look kinda like that.

 

I must admit that the first thing I thought of with the topic was not 9th grade health videos.

 

 

We are talking about bird people here. I'm not sure if we're even caring about the science of it. I'm just talking about how culture might be different.

 

 

 

And even though I'm 24 years old, I think of health class because we had these books called "TOTALLY AWESOME HEALTH" and they were just terrible terrible books. They were trying to get 15 year olds interested by using the phrase 'totally awesome' and they didnt just use it in the title.

 

 

Back to topic though- I feel like if we were Bird People, I'm not sure if we would have the technological advances we have today. Maybe possibly we would have developed opposible claws though? Would we have even invented cars or would we have went straight to inventing flying apparatuses that made our flying easier?

 

I'm not going to lie, I think I'm way too interested in this subject but its ok.

 

I wish we could talk about evolving from dinosaurs too but The Super Mario Bros Movie did that for us, and that MOVIE IS PERFECT.

Unless offcourse we were the kind of birds not able to fly,

If we came from Pingvins, we might have focused on land transport, like we do beeing primates, as we would be even more slow and clumpsy (is that correct eng. ?) on ground.

 

NB:

Taking part in this, makes me think i might be stoned, even though im clear as running water

 

 

Also, I think that the flying V would have a huge significance in our culture.

What kind of instruments would we have made?


Oh god I'm started to feel stoned as well, just thinking about this stuff.

I saw that thread earlier and now I'm going to have to go back and find out how on Earth it got related to bird people. 

btw, I like your gumption, Smurph.  You ask the hard questions that need to be asked.

 

Anyway,

Yup.

 

You showed Homo erectus in the post I responded to, who are thought to share a lineage with modern man (as Homo ergaster), so were not necessarily a separate offshoot from Australopithecus. Homo erectus died out 1.8 million years ago, long before Homo sapiens emerged as a separate species and Homo ergaster is a common ancestor of Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalenis, unfortunately the evidence is sparse so everything is informed speculation and supposition as to whether Homo erectus was Homo ergaster (with racial differences) or they were subspieces.

 

However, Homo neanderthalenis were an offshoot that did co-exist with homo sapiens (as Cro-magnon - a racial difference not a species difference) and may have interbred (ie were a subspecies)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwQuPCqA5AI&feature=related" rel="nofollow - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwQuPCqA5AI&feature=related

 

This is a metal band with an avian voclaist.

 

I don't believe in macro-evolution.  I accept micro-evolution (change within kinds) as a scientific fact, but don't think that one kind can change into another.  I'm a creationist, so I draw this opinion from Scripture and I am convinced that science supports it.

By my meaning, neither macro-evolution nor micro-evolution is not biblically revelationed  "Truth", but normal evolution is normal prosaic truth about reality.

 

 

Imagine this as a representation of the evolutionary timeline from fish to birds:

Each wavelength of light represents a creature on that timeline, the creature to the left is its parent, the creature to the right is its offspring so at any single point on the spectrum the creature is directly related to its neighbours - it is a different colour because of micro-evolution. No matter where you pick all the neighbours in the local neighbourhood are similar colours but each are different colour because of micro-evolution - the creature at 500nm is green, but all the creatures from 492 to 577 are green ... but the creature at 491.99999 is also greenish because its offspring at 492 is called green ... the two are the same species because one is the parent of the other. And the same is true at 577.00001, it is also greenish because its parent was green ... the two are the same species because one is the offspring of the other. However, the blue-green creature at 491.99999 is nothing like the green-yellow creature at 577.00001, the first could be an archosauria and the second an ornithosuchia - two distinctly different species of creature along the unbroken line from fish to birds.

 

People struggle with macro-evolution because of there is no step-function from one species to the next... we cannot observe speciation because everywhere we look all we can see is micro-evolution and every species that exists to day is the result of a divergence from a common ancestor way, way back along the evolutionary time line. Fish do not turn into birds, apes do not turn into humans - apes are apes and humans are humans - the common ancestor of apes and humans was not an ape or a human.

 

For example, birds are not related to crocodiles, yet the creature at 491.99999 is a common ancestor of birds and crocodiles - the "spectrum" example just doesn't show the branch that produced crocs and gators.

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: I'm a creationist, so I draw this opinion from Scripture and I am convinced that science supports it.

As you can gather, I'm not a creationist and cannot draw any opinion from scripture, however as someone who is interested in science (and, in passing, religion) I would be interested in how science supports scripture on this.

We can to see evolutionary mechanism on evolution of religious convictions. One partial sub-branch only is here (not survive branches are not depicted):
I see very well, that it is not the same mechanism like biological evolution, but some similarity exists

Historical Jesus interpreted after his die by his followers (apostle Paul with his theology for example) is random mutation from judaism into Christianity

Anyway, it's impossible to answer really, because most bird have very low-functioning brains, perhaps slightly more sophisticated than reptiles. Only corvids are comparably intelligent to, say, a dolphin or other mammal.

But really, all I'm thinking of it this surreal pterodactyl gangbang porn .gif I found on 4 chan a few years ago. That's all that this thread really brings to mind, if I'm being honest.

That's a good explanation of how macro and micro evolution could be related, but it doesn't prove that they are.  The theory of macro-evolution was essentially an extrapolation from micro-evolution, and a grossly invalid one by the law of extrapolation.  Going from observations concerning change within species and genus to an assumption that all life evolved from common ancestors is a huge, unwarranted leap.  Darwin's theory was an interesting one, but it was just that: a theory, and modern scientists have gone on to base all of their research on an unproven theory.  Modern science makes sense in the light of evolution because we've conducted modern science on the basis of evolution, but it really makes just as much sense when approached with a belief in intelligent design.  Evolution has yet to explain the Cambrian explosion, or the fact that the human body contains parts, such as ATP generators, that could not possibly have evolved according to Darwinian or neo-Darwinian theory because they would not in any way function unless all parts were present.

....therefore Jesus.

...Therefore an intelligent designer.  Science can't prove Christianity, or else there would be no need for faith (well, actually there would.  But that's another story).  I don't claim to prove my faith by attempting to disprove evolution, only to validate it.  Not even all intelligent design proponents are Christian.  The Discovery Institute, in particular, is very careful to stay away from speculation on who the designer might be, because they want to rely on the scientific method, not on religion.

 

Smurph wrote: This idea is taken from another thread about Ryan Seacrest. But I felt this could be a fun topic.   If people evolved from birds instead of apes... what would we all look like, talk like, etc.   How else would culture be different?   These important questions should be answered . And feel free to ask any others.

 

 

The only thing worth concluding from the whole debacle is that humans don't know everything about the universe. Fancy that. There's no good reason whatsoever to posit a designer for the universe.

Macro-evolution has been proven even on humanly comprehensible timescales by the domestication of animals and plants by humans. Modern rice, wheat, dogs or pigs are effectively different species than their original wild forms.

 

A scientifically plausible mechanism for the evolutionary development of AMP synthesis from ribose-5-phosphate (the apparently irreducibly complex step in the ATP synthesis) has been proposed in the theory of Quantum Evolution (see the book by the same title by Johnjoe McFadden). It invoques the power of quantum superpositions and it's speculative but at least it's plausible in principle, quantum superposition has been experimentally proven in other contexts.

 

Even without getting into such speculative ideas, it is very well possible that the apparent irreducible complexity of some metabolical pathways is simply result of our current ignorance. Several wich seemed irreducibly complex some time ago have been found to have plausible explanations even in classical evolutionary steps.

 

There are also plausible explanations for the Cambrian Explosion. A God of the Gaps has been proven to be a wrong motivation so many times before.

 

 

Macroevolution isn't extrapolated microevolution it is extended microevolution - macroevolution is microevolution over long time-spans, microevolution is macroevolution over short time intervals - they are the same thing and there is no boundary between them.

 

I would have called macroevolution interpolation of (discrete) microevolution (events) rather than extrapolation as interpolation is more reliable, easier to predict and harder to refute. Evolution did not extrapolate fish to birds, it interpolated fish to amphibians to reptiles to dinosaurs to birds and when it found new data, such as archosauria, ornithosuchia and archaeopteryx, it fitted within those interpolated points, confirming the interpolation rather than refuting it.

 

btw: What is the "law of extrapolation"?

 

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: Going from observations concerning change within species and genus to an assumption that all life evolved from common ancestors is a huge, unwarranted leap.  Darwin's theory was an interesting one, but it was just that: a theory, and modern scientists have gone on to base all of their research on an unproven theory.

Now you've lost me - scientific theories are not the same as philosophical theories, if you confuse the two by use of the phrase "just that: a theory" then you do not understand the significance of the distinction between them. No scientific theory can be proven conclusively - they stand because they haven't been disproven, the models work for all known data.

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: Modern science makes sense in the light of evolution because we've conducted modern science on the basis of evolution, but it really makes just as much sense when approached with a belief in intelligent design.

For thousands of years we conducted "science" on the basis of creationism and in the light of creationism none of it made sense. Substituting ID for creationism doesn't change anything and still fails the scientific method.

 

ID requires belief whereas evolution does not. If ID proposes data that fails the evolutionary model then the theory is disproven, but if scientific experts refute or explain that data using the theory of evolution (which to date they have done) then the theory is not disproven and ID becomes even less tenable as an alternative.

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: Evolution has yet to explain the Cambrian explosion,...]

Life was evolving during the Precambrian period, the fossil evidence is sparse because many Precambrian rock strata are metamorphic, a process of rock formation that destroys fossils, but those that have been found show that life was becoming more complex and multicellular during the later eras of this period - the Precambrian saw the evolution of the genetic toolkit that resulted in the Cambrian explosion. The Cambrian explosion did not occur over a short time span (explosion is a poetic misnomer) - it was 80 million years, a longer time interval than between us and the dinosaurs (the time interval where all birds and mammals evolved to where we are today), and enough time for all the phyla groups that appeared during the Cambrian period to have evolved. The explanation given is called punctuated equilibrium - periods of rapid changed caused by dramatic environmental change followed by long periods of stability- what we do know is the oxygen levels in the atmosphere where significantly higher than at any other time in earth's history, a condition that results in higher metabolic rates, larger body sizes and shorter reproductive intervals, the super-continent Pannotia was breaking up, resulting in warm shallow seas where life could propagate and the oxygen in the atmosphere could be absorbed into the water - ideal conditions for life (as anyone with a garden pond can tell you) - the land at that time was barren and could not support life, all life that emerged during this period was aquatic. From an evolutionary perspective what is interesting about the Cambrian period is the of number lifeforms that did not survive - the evolutionary dead-ends that failed to be part of the continuing tree of life. For me the defining difference between evolution and creationism is extinction.