Afortunadamente, El libro de Urantia también ofrece extensas explicaciones e ideas para ayudarnos a aprender a manejar los hechos y a mantener una conversación sobre los hechos desde una perspectiva significativamente más "evolucionada". Por favor, lean el documento Eugenesia, raza y El libro de Urantia para una revisión exhaustiva de este tema. Si vamos a dejar de temer el descubrimiento de los hechos y aprender a utilizarlos con fines colectivos y altruistas, tenemos que abordar las preocupaciones que dan lugar a esos temores de una manera nueva. El Libro de Urantia proporciona una perspectiva que no sólo es fresca y oportuna, sino también excepcionalmente creíble y cada vez más creíble durante más de cincuenta años.
Naturalmente, aquellos de nosotros que participamos en el desarrollo del proyecto UBtheNEWS nos sentimos seguros, basados en la tendencia general hacia la corroboración de la información histórica y científica de El libro de Urantia, de que seguiremos documentando descubrimientos que implican otros cambios genéticos que generalmente corresponden al período de tiempo y a los patrones de migración asociados con la historia de El libro de Urantia sobre Adán y Eva y sus descendientes. Este es un campo que se está desarrollando muy rápidamente; los estudios a los que se hace referencia en este informe comenzaron a publicarse en 2004. La primera vez que se redactó este informe en 2007, no contenía ninguna información sobre el cromosoma Y o el lenguaje tonal. La investigación sobre si otros estudios han producido resultados con paralelismos similares a El libro de Urantia se encuentra en una fase temprana de desarrollo.
Referencias:
Fuente del Estudio: https://web.archive.org/web/20171103205512/http://www.ubthenews.com/topics/Adam_and_Eve.htm
Más profundo y más amplio:
Political Issues
The Barossa, South Australia: Strong evidence for Race related IQ gene discovered
The moment the anti-racists and egalitarians have dreaded has now arrived.
In September, University of Chicago geneticists published data in the prestigious journal Science that links two sets of genetic variations (alleles) to brain size, race, and spurts in human evolution. In particular, these genetic variations-arguably responsible for greater intelligence-were relatively common in Europe and Asia, but markedly less common in sub-Saharan Africa. Previously, the same researchers had shown these variations to be much more frequent in man than in other mammals, though our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, showed levels that suggest some evolution in the direction of humans. This excellent new Chicago work has been carried out under the direction of a young Chinese, Dr. Bruce Lahn. His team had studied the prevalence of variants of two genes that are disabled or damaged in human cases of severe microcephaly, in which the brain develops to only 30 percent its normal size. The fact that they are damaged in microcephalics suggests they are necessary for normal brain growth.
Royal Society Publishing, april 22, 2007:
No evidence that polymorphisms of brain regulator genes Microcephalin and ASPM are associated with general mental ability, head circumference or altruism
Abstract: We test the hypothesis that polymorphisms of the brain regulator genes MCPH1 and ASPM contribute to variations in human brain size and its correlates. We measured general mental ability, head circumference and social intelligence in 644 Canadian adults (496 Caucasians, 36 Orientals, 84 Mixed Race/Other and 28 Blacks; 257 men and 387 women). The gene polymorphisms were assessed from buccal DNA; mental ability by Wonderlic Personnel Test and Multidimensional Aptitude Battery; head circumference by stretchless tape; and social intelligence by prosocial attitude questionnaires. Although all measures were construct valid and the allele frequencies showed expected population differences, no relationship was found between the genes and any of the criteria. Among Caucasian 18–25 year olds, for example, the two mental ability tests correlated with each other (r=0.78, N=476, p<0.001), with head circumference (r=0.17, N=182, p<0.05) and with prosocial attitudes (r=0.23, N=182, p<0.001).
Gene Expression quoting a Wall Street Journal article, June 16, 2006
Coverage of the controversy: "Last September, Bruce Lahn, a professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, stood before a packed lecture hall and reported the results of a new DNA analysis: He had found signs of recent evolution in the brains of some people, but not of others. It was a triumphant moment for the young scientist. He was up for tenure and his research was being featured in back-to-back articles in the country's most prestigious science journal. Yet today, Dr. Lahn says he is moving away from the research. "It's getting too controversial," he says. Dr. Lahn had touched a raw nerve in science: race and intelligence. What Dr. Lahn told his audience was that genetic changes over the past several thousand years might be linked to brain size and intelligence.
Tonal Languages
A Replicated Typo, January 24, 2009: ASPM, Microcephalin and Tone
Disclaimer: I know this post is on a paper released over a year ago; however, I’m still going to write about it for three reasons: 1) I did a presentation about it earlier this week (20/01/08); 2) I think it relates to a recent buzz around gene-culture co-evolution; and, 3) It’s a bloody awesome paper.
PLoS Biol, July 2008:
Across the Curious Parallel of Language and Species Evolution
Recently, genetics has joined the list of possible influences on how languages change. Last year, Dan Dediu and Robert Ladd, two linguists working at the University of Edinburgh, published a paper showing that the geographical distribution of variant forms of two genes active during brain development, called ASPM and Microcephalin, correlates with the distribution of tonal languages, where the inflection of a word changes its meaning . In places where the ancestral form of the genes is commonest, such as in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the languages, such as Chinese and Yoruba, tend to be tonal. Where the derived form predominates, such as in Europe, West Asia, and North Africa, the languages, such as Spanish and German, are nontonal. “Cultural change and biological change share the same fundamental properties of variation, selection and inheritance.”
PNAS, June 26, 2007: Linguistic tone is related to the population frequency of the adaptive haplogroups of two brain size genes, ASPM and Microcephalin
Abstract: The correlations between interpopulation genetic and linguistic diversities are mostly noncausal (spurious), being due to historical processes and geographical factors that shape them in similar ways. Studies of such correlations usually consider allele frequencies and linguistic groupings (dialects, languages, linguistic families or phyla), sometimes controlling for geographic, topographic, or ecological factors. Here, we consider the relation between allele frequencies and linguistic typological features. Specifically, we focus on the derived haplogroups of the brain growth and development-related genes ASPM and Microcephalin, which show signs of natural selection and a marked geographic structure, and on linguistic tone, the use of voice pitch to convey lexical or grammatical distinctions. We hypothesize that there is a relationship between the population frequency of these two alleles and the presence of linguistic tone and test this hypothesis relative to a large database (983 alleles and 26 linguistic features in 49 populations), showing that it is not due to the usual explanatory factors represented by geography and history. The relationship between genetic and linguistic diversity in this case may be causal: certain alleles can bias language acquisition or processing and thereby influence the trajectory of language change through iterated cultural transmission.
Anthropology.net, May 29, 2007:
Role of ASPM and Microcephalin on Linguistic Tone
I want to share with you news about some yet to be released research on the role of two genes, ASPM & Microcephalin, in language tone, which has just hit the press releases. ASPM & Microcephalin are known to play a role in brain development of primates. The role of these two genes in language tone has not been investigated until now.
Language tone has direct tangents to both human evolution and linguistic anthropology. Now that I think of it even cultural anthropology has a lot to do with language tone.
The Telegraph, April 30, 2007:
Learning Chinese languages makes you musical, claim scientists
Learning to speak Mandarin and Vietnamese as a child helps make you more musical, claims a study that suggests being fluent in the languages helps you have perfect pitch.
Additional Information
Pie Charts of Y Haplogroups and Mitocondrial DNA
Note that genetic diversity is highest in the area where The Urantia Book says that humanity's major changes occured.
Wikipedia: Microcephalin
Good source of general information and reference links.
Wikipedia: Haplogroup F on the Y chromosome
Wikipedia maintains a database for the devlepment of genetics research. Haplogroup F on the Y chromosome, in particular, plays a key role in the parallels with The Urantia Book's discussion about Adam and Eve.
Science, July 2006: Response to Comment on "Ongoing Adaptive Evolution of ASPM, a Brain Size Determinant in Homo sapiens" and "Microcephalin, a Gene Regulating Brain Size, Continues to Evolve Adaptively in Humans"
Abstract: Currat et al. present computer simulations to argue that the haplotype structure found at the microcephalin and ASPM genes can be better explained by demographic history rather than by selection. The demographic models they adopt, however, strongly contradict a decade of empirical research on human demographic history and do not account for the critical features of the data on which our argument for selection was based.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5784/172b
University of Chicago Chronicle, September 22, 2005:
Lahn’s analysis of genes indicates human brain continues to evolve
Human evolution—in what has become our most important organ, the brain—is still under way, University researchers report in two related papers published in the Friday, Sept. 9 issue of Science. The studies show two genes linked to brain size are rapidly evolving in humans.
“Our studies indicate that the trend that is the defining characteristic of human evolution—the growth of brain size and complexity—is likely still going on,” said lead researcher for both papers Bruce Lahn, Assistant Professor in Human Genetics and an investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Science News, September 9, 2005:
University Of Chicago Researchers Find Human Brain Still Evolving
Human evolution, University of Chicago researchers report, is still under way in what has become our most important organ: the brain. In two related papers, published in the September 9, 2005, issue of Science, they show that two genes linked to brain size are rapidly evolving in humans.
Oxford Journal, February 24, 2004: Reconstructing the evolutionary history of microcephalin, a gene controlling human brain size
Abstract: The defining process in the evolution of primates and particularly humans is the dramatic expansion of the brain. While many types of genes could potentially contribute to this process, genes that specifically regulate brain size during development may be especially relevant. Here, we examine the evolution of the microcephalin gene, whose null mutation in humans causes primary microcephaly, a congenital defect characterized by severe reductions in brain size without other gross abnormalities. We show that the evolution of microcephalin's protein sequence is highly accelerated throughout the lineage from simian ancestors to humans and chimpanzees, with the most pronounced acceleration seen in the early periods of this lineage. We further demonstrate that this accelerated evolution is coupled with signatures of positive selection. Statistical analysis suggests that about 45 advantageous amino acid changes in microcephalin might have fixed during the 25–30 million years of evolution from early simian progenitors to modern humans. These observations support the notion that the molecular evolution of microcephalin may have contributed to brain expansion in the simian lineage leading to humans. We have recently shown that ASPM, another gene linked to primary microcephaly, experienced strong positive selection in the ape lineage leading to humans. We therefore propose that genes regulating brain size during development may have the general propensity to contribute to brain evolution in primates and particularly humans.
