Evolutionary origin of human traits

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Question

Why and how did humans become so different from other apes?

Answer

Rationale

There are conflicting hypotheses to explain why the traits that so clearly distinguish humans from other primates originally evolved. One idea is that the ancestors of humans came to live in a different kind of environment than the ancestors of chimpanzees and gorillas, and hence experienced different selection pressures and obtained a suite of unique traits as adaptations to the new environment. What that new environment was and which selection pressures were most important has been debated, however, and a number of hypotheses based on ideas other than environmental adaptation have also been proposed. To date, general discussion on the topic seems mostly to have focused on finding merit or flaws in one hypothesis at a time. The purpose of this page is to provide a structured forum for the general evaluation and comparison of the different hypotheses on human origins.

The answerers' opinions should be used as continuous [0,1] variables in such a way that each answer is transformed into its quantile of all answers to that question. Then neural networks, Bayesian belief network analyzers (such as B-source), or other statistical tools can be applied.

For single answer analyses, multinomial regression models should be applied.

Calculations

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  • Data version 1: raw data in Excel from Webropol: free text columns removed [1]
  • Data version 2: cleaned with this code [2].

number of X column (1-25):

number of fill column (empty = all):

Encryption key:

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See also

Human evolution hypotheses described in Wikipedia:

Keywords

References


Related files

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