Michio Kaku is an amazing teacher! Explains hard things in a simple way.
Michio Kaku (Transcript):
We have today jet travel. We have today the fact that almost anyone can have children. We have the situation today - because of prosperity and because of industrial revolution, because of international travel - that there’s mixing of the genes, which means that the gross evolution of the entire species itself has probably slowed down. But does that mean that evolution has stopped? No. People still prefer other people who are healthy. This means that we are evolving toward becoming healthier and healthier people.
There’s a reason why we are attracted to certain people of the opposite sex. According to evolutionary psychology, what we want is healthy mates. Beauty, for example, is a way in which we have of judging the health of another person. The theory says, for example, that if you are at a bar on Friday night and you want to “pick up” somebody rapidly, you can’t do a blood test. You can’t do a physical examination to find out how healthy that person is, so you need markers. According to evolutionary psychology, the markers are for estrogen and testosterone - shown in the body by beauty and physical health. For example, estrogen has estrogen markers: large eyes, small chin and thick lips. Same thing with testosterone: testosterone makes large necks and strong jaws and a lower voice. That also means the person is fit; the person is healthy. These are markers that we use.
So the point I’m raising is that evolution on a one-to-one basis is constantly taking place because we constantly prefer people who have a better immune system, people who are physically fit - masquerading as what we call "handsome" and "pretty."
I read and Christopher Ryan's book last year, and recommend it: Sex at Dawn
Christopher Ryan (Transcript):
To understand how closely related we are to Chimps and Bonobos; we’re more closely related to them than an Indian elephant is to an African elephant. It’s extremely close, whether you look at it in terms of DNA or how long it’s been since the lines, the evolutionary lines diverged. And it’s important to know that we’re equidistant from Chimps and Bonobos. So any time you read that Chimps are the closest non-human primate to us or conversely that Bonobos are the closest, they’re both false. Chimps and Bonobos are equidistant from humans. As close as your left hand and your right hand are to your head. They’re exactly the same distance. So it’s very important to understand that.
Now, on one side you’ve got Chimps, who are very aggressive, there’s evidence of warfare between groups. Murder is relatively common, rape is common, infanticide. All sorts of aggressive behavior is rampant in Chimp societies. But on the other side, you have Bonobo’s, who are very highly sexualized, and in which over 40 years that they’ve been observed in the wild and in captivity, not a single case of murder or infanticide or rape or lethal combat between groups has ever been observed. Not in zoos, not in the wild. So they’re sort of the light and the dark side of human nature, we could say. And it’s important not to fall for this line that we’re closer to Chimps and therefore the nasty, aggressive, dark side of man, as one book puts it, is more deeply embedded in us than the other side.
What we all share, the three of us, the Chimps, the common Chimps, the Bonobo, and humans is an exaggerated sexuality where the vast majority of the sexual behavior that we experience has nothing at all to do with reproduction. Over 99 percent of our sex acts don’t result in conception. That’s very unusual in the animal world. Most animals, including most primates, other than the three of us, the Chimps, Bonobos and humans, might have sex a few times a year. Gorillas, for example, probably have sex 10 to 15 times for each baby gorilla that’s born.
Now you think about how many times an average human being has sex over a lifetime. And I’m not only talking about intercourse, think of all the types of sex we have that can’t possibly result in conception. It's a very small percentage of our sexual behavior that really has anything to do at all with reproduction. We share this trait with Chimps and Bonobos. We split from them about seven million years ago. So according to conventional thinking and evolutionary theory, if a trait is shared between these three species that separated six to seven million years ago, it’s very likely that that trait was shared also by the last common ancestor.
So we can look back to six to seven million years and say, that has been six to seven million years of human primate promiscuity, pretty much uninterrupted until we get to 10,000 years ago with agriculture and the advent of monogamy. So that gives you a sense of why it’s so difficult for most people. We’ve been, you know, going down this same path for so long and then suddenly we’re told, no, no, that’s not the way we behave anymore. And in fact, that’s not natural. So if you behave that way or you want to behave that way or you fanaticize about behaving that way or you get off on watching other people behave that way, there’s something wrong with you. You’re sick. There’s something wrong with your relationship if you think about someone other than your husband or wife every time you have sex. There’s something wrong with you or something wrong with him or her. That’s all wrong. That’s not only wrong, but it creates untold suffering in people because they feel shame about something there’s no reason they should feel shame about.
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