Comments on: It should stop evolving

By: Mike in Boston

Mike in Boston — Thu, 19 May 2016 20:09:30 +0000

Man for man, the neolithic farmers were physically inferior to the paleolithic hunter-gatherers, but they outnumbered the HG and displaced them everywhere. If we're talking about a tribe that's inferior in many ways adapting to particular circumstances and displacing a tribe that's in many ways superior, Fred Reed told that story best.

By: Hammerbach

Hammerbach — Thu, 19 May 2016 13:50:29 +0000

They understood it just fine — the characters in it didn’t. The rest of the book makes your point.

By: Bob Sykes

Bob Sykes — Thu, 19 May 2016 10:40:12 +0000

Niven, Pournelle, and Land simply do not understand evolution. Civilization merely constructs a new environment with new selective pressures, and new genomes evolve. Evolution never stops. Also, it has no direction. Adaptation is always to the present situation.

Go read Harry Harpending (RIP) and Gregory Cochrane’s The 10,000 Year Explosion, Basic Books, 2009.

Man for man, the neolithic farmers were physically inferior to the paleolithic hunter-gatherers, but they outnumbered the HG and displaced them everywhere.