The Family that Walks on All Fours

[orcgod]

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"The Family that Walks on All Fours" - YouTube

Gripping film about a family of human "quadrupeds", who were touted by a Turkish scientist as evidence of "backwards evolution". Presented by Nicholas Humphrey, directed by Jemima Harrison. 2006. This is the full-length BBC version, preceding the edited NOVA version.

[gareb]

i find it funny, and at the same time sad, that there are people in the academe that would even consider the term "backwards evolution" or "devolution", which gives a very sad hint of a complete misunderstanding of what evolution is.

evolution is long-range adaptation to environmental stimuli expressed in and individual or group's genetics and morphology. it goes wherever the environmental conditions allow it. perchance that there be mutations that that would not allow individuals to adapt to the environment they are in, not being able to survive allows the group to lose those mutations. evolution cannot go "backwards" because if it does, the cost for an entire species is extinction.

the Turkish doctor's claims of a "backward evolution" stems from an anthrocentric view of the world, wherein man is center and bipedalism exhibited by humans is supreme to quadrupedalism exhibited by other animals that are deemed by this anthrocentric view as "lower beings", discounting simple facts as locomotion, speed, and balance as areas where us bipeds cannot match quadrupeds.

it is a grave insult to this family to be labelled as evidences of human "backwards evolution", the same way that the handicapped are labelled as "sub-human" because they do not have the full faculties of able bodied human beings.

we do not call the blind, the deaf, and the cripple as "devolving" humans, or "sub-humans". why should we call this family as such?

[SunYang]

kuyawa ani gud....