"Idiocracy" Turns Out to be History

Idiocracy of course is the 2006 movie which presumes a military experiment that sends a modern human into the future via hibernation finds himself the smartest person in world through the "downward" evolution of humans by selective breeding:



It turns out to have been the history of mankind since the development of agriculture.  I was going to blog this myself, however, today I'm going to turn it over to "The Daily Smug", whose author wrote my a nice e-mail, telling me he was putting me on his blogroll (I have reciprocated, as you can see at the right). I have, however, added a few "cave girls" and guys to illustrate the decline of the human race.

Scientists Discover Proof That Humanity Is Getting Dumber, Smaller And Weaker

Scientists have found that our bodies and our minds have both deteriorated significantly compared to our ancestors. In fact, just this week a very prominent professor at Cambridge University said that “our most highly trained athletes pale in comparison to these ancestors of ours”. The biggest reason for this, of course, is the degradation of the human genome. Groundbreaking research by Dr. John Sanford of Cornell University and others has shown that our genes contain tens of thousands of mistakes (mutations), and with each passing generation even more errors are added and passed on. So it should be no surprise that our ancestors were bigger, stronger, faster and smarter. The truth is that they had better genes.

Hence, the "cave girls" are better than modern girls, too.  Probably not as clean, though.

This kind of information comes as a shock to many people. It is widely assumed by the general public that humanity is “progressing” and that we are better both physically and mentally than our predecessors were. But that is not the case at all. In fact, research conducted at Cambridge University shows that we are “weaker than we used to be” and that the most highly trained athletes of today “pale in comparison” to those that lived thousands of years ago…

‘Even our most highly trained athletes pale in comparison to these ancestors of ours,’ Dr Colin Shaw told Outside Magazine. ‘We’re certainly weaker than we used to be.’
The study looked at skeletons dating back to around 5,300 BC with the most recent to 850 AD – a time span of 6,150 years.
It then compared the bones to that of Cambridge University students, and found the leg bones of male farmers 5,300 BC were just as good as those of highly-trained cross-country runners.

Of course, some of this is just development too. Life 7000 years ago was damn tough, and the people who survived to adulthood had to work hard to get there.

In addition, earlier research at Cambridge University showed that our bodies are “significantly smaller” than they were thousands of years ago and that our brains are also smaller…

An earlier study by Cambridge University found that mankind is shrinking in size significantly.
Experts say humans are past their peak and that modern-day people are 10 percent smaller and shorterthan their hunter-gatherer ancestors.
And if that’s not depressing enough, our brains are also smaller.
The findings reverse perceived wisdom that humans have grown taller and larger, a belief which has grown from data on more recent physical development.
The decline, said scientists, has happened over the past 10,000 years. They blame agriculture, with restricted diets and urbanisation compromising health and leading to the spread of disease.

Add caption

Yep, agriculture allowed more people to survive their youth, and pass on their slightly lesser genes. Probably good for you and I, too, the descendents of those survivors.

Wow.

Most movies and television shows portray our ancestors as short, stupid, hunched-over people that could barely survive in a cold, cruel world.

But the hard science is revealing a very different picture to us.  .  .

Yes, evolution really does work, and human being are not immune.  Other interesting things the have evolved relatively recently in human beings:

Fair Skin Lactose tolerance Blue eyes Starch metabolism