STEPHEN J GOULD WAS WRONG: EVOLUTION INCREASED DRAMATICALLY IN THE PAST 50,000 Y

STEPHEN J GOULD WAS WRONG: EVOLUTION INCREASED DRAMATICALLY IN THE PAST 50,000 YEARS

“Can the human genome respond to new selection pressures in, say, thirty generations (six hundred years)? Or would it take more than five hundred generations (ten thousand years) for a new selection pressure to produce any genetic adaptation?

The actual speed of genetic evolution is a question that can be answered with data, and thanks to the Human Genome Project, we now have that data. Several teams have sequenced the genomes of thousands of people from every continent. Genes mutate and drift through populations, but it is possible to distinguish such random drift from cases in which genes are being “pulled” by natural selection.

The results are astonishing, and they are exactly the opposite of Gould’s claim: genetic evolution greatly accelerated during the last 50,000 years. The rate at which genes changed in response to selection pressures began rising around 40,000 years ago, and the curve got steeper and steeper after 20,000 years ago. Genetic change reached a crescendo during the Holocene era, in Africa as well as in Eurasia.” — The Righteous Mind – Haidt, Jonathan