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The Corroboree

☯_☯

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Posts posted by ☯_☯

  1. Posted

    Wow you guys are coming to some big conclusions/confusing things without even having a basic understanding of this theory..

    "Even if there is only a 1% chance our neural system is seriously retarded/compromised the only sane response would be to rigorously investigate the evidence as an urgent priority. Unfortunately if the condition is real then the response will reflect its severity."

    Perhaps this recent interview with the author can clarify some things

  2. Posted

    i don't have time to reply in full at the moment..But i think its worth noting again that virtually all of the points made in this thread stem from not having looked in depth at the material, which is understandable, given the subject matter

    Again i invite you to just take an open minded look at the free .pdf of the entire book..check it out and decide for yourself- but keep in mind how the functionality of our comprehension kit may be compromised, and so recognizing it would inherently be tricky for some: http://leftinthedark.org.uk/sites/default/files/Left%20in%20the%20Dark%20free%20edition.pdf

  3. Posted · Edited by ☯_☯

    "The article is talking about the development of the specifically human brain, which dramatically reduces the frame of time that we're discussing. As Javez pointed out, if fruit is an "engineering cocktail" then why didn't it engineer chimp or bonobo brains in the same way as human brains?"

    Look if you want to understand the time frame just read the book that i linked already. Its all explained very clearly in there on how this symbiosis seemed to have progressed and initated a feedback loop with our pinea/endocrine system.

    And last i check primates like chimps and bonobos were actually very intelligent. They're largely regarded as the second most intelligent beings on the planet. Just an example:

    There is a clear connection between fruit-eating species and intelligence. Just look at apes, fruit bats, parrots, etc.

    But of course as the rainforests progressively dried they would have gone through the same bottleneck as us, not to mention our physiology seems to indicate (as the book goes into) that we are even more adapted to fruit-eating than them. So in us the symbiosis became even more pronounced

    "Why is this different from any other food or environmental factor? Why haven't people who lived for longer periods in the forests or savannahs of the EEA developed higher executive faculties/more intelligence as a result of a lengthier period of this diet?"

    Its massively different than any other environmental factors. Fruit has unimaginably complex biochemistry, which does many things including reading dna- which means its involved in building cellular structures on a very basic level. The book explains all of this and your other questions. Instead of just trying to punch holes in it why not read the book and come up with your own conclusions instead of dismissing it outright without really even understandint he general idea, much less the details?

    "I think you misunderstood me, I'm talking about the way the article suggests that fruit alters our brain in some directly heritable way. Am I incorrect in thinking that changes due to environmental factors (including diet) would be epigenetic changes, and therefore only heritable when modulated as a selective pressure?"

    They are epigenetic changes, meaning that they are a change in how the DNA is read and expressed, not the dna itself...but these can be carried down into the offspring. The mechanism for how this complex jungle biochemistry hijacked our own hormone system is very well evidenced and clearly indicated that this would have real-time affects not only during life but most importantly in the womb when the brain and nervous system are at their most sensitive and important developmental stages. These chemicals would have flooded that system because the mothers blood is the fetus's as well, and on into the breastfeeding stage, and then on into life. They heavily modulate how the endocrine system develops as well and so each generation would have a progressively modulated system. His site explains this better than i can.

    Heres links showing how diet can affect the offspring: http://www.medicalda...ritish-hear.htm

    http://www.independe...na-2269557.html (it doesn't alter dna like the title says, it alters how the dna is read and expressed- which is even more important)

    "I don't think I'm confusing myself on this point. Damage to a single human brain, and de-evolution (misnomer in itself) is not the same thing at all. Even if it were true that "junk food does damage to the brain" (I have no idea whether it is true or not, but if you point me to some peer reviewed studies I'll read them) that doesn't mean the "brain damage" will be passed on to the next generation."

    See my links above..bad diet choices do indeed influence the offspring. Its pretty obvious that the chemicals you flood the developing child with in the womb will affect how it develops.

    just examples:

    http://www.dailymail...arm-memory.html

    http://www.huffingto..._n_1173487.html

    http://theweek.com/a...se-brain-damage

    http://dlglawfirm.co...o-brain-injury/

  4. Posted · Edited by ☯_☯

    This whole theory makes no sense. Firstly, there is no evidence what so ever to indicate our brains have began to shrink. Also, from all known evidence, large brained Bipedal hominoids evolved after we left the fruit rich forest and started hunting meat as a staple source of food.

    If a fruit rich diet was what was responsible for our large brains and complex emotional thought pattern. Then why have our ancestors (the chimpanzees) who remained in the fruit rich rain forests of Africa not developed these traits?

    Our bipedal ancestors have been using fire for millions of years. Something did happen around 200,000 thousand years ago, which caused us to become a separate species and gave us a evolutionary advantage over other hominoids that had all ready left Africa and populated the rest of the world. But considering we left Africa for the purpose of following the herds, which was obviously our main source of food, I very much doubt a diet high in fruit had much to do with it.

     

    This guy has been researching this in depth for 20 years and has been in touch with some of the sharpest neuroscientists, ethnopharmacologists, biologists, and anthropologists in the field, who agree with his theory...So do you really think these points haven't been considered?

    I suggest taking a closer look at the information with a more open mind before discounting it so flimsily. I mean the first point just makes no sense..primates already have a massive brain/body ratio compared to other mammels, and they are mainly centered in the tropical forests. We're nearly identical to them, so to think there were 2 separate causes for this explosion in brain size in this part of the mammalian tree is just ridiculous and baseless once you really look at the evidence.

    Just take a look at the book, or even just the FAQ section of his site for the answer to many of these sort of questions..http://beyond-belief.org.uk/node/9

    "Isn’t there evidence for our ancestors living in non-forest environments and hunting, eating meat and cooking their food?

    Yes there is significant evidence going back millions of years for our ancestors and our existing relatives inhabiting various types of forest and non-forest/non-fruit habitats and adapting their behaviour to survive. The evidence for non-forest habitation is cited as part of the long-standing presumption that such environments were essential to explain key traits during our recent evolution, particularly in regard to our large ‘structurally advanced’ brain and related intelligence. This presumption ignores the much more substantial and extant evidence that large intelligent brains were and still are the product of symbiotic evolution in the relatively benign tropical forests.

    There is also the related and equally flawed presumption that finding evidence for some of our ancestors inhabiting non-forest environments accounts for the whole of our ancestral lineage. It’s as if one day all the members of any given ancestral lineage got together in the benign and bio-chemically rich forest and agreed to move en-mass to a much more hostile and bio-chemically impoverished habitat.

    Evidence for non-forest habitation by some of our relatives tells us nothing at all of any ongoing forest habitation by others. For example the Olive Babooncan be seen today inhabiting a wide range of environments from semi-arid desert like environments through savannah and woodland to wet tropical forest. Now or in the future, evidence for their existence will be more easily preserved and discovered in arid climates with little chance of finding any evidence for their relative abundance in the wet tropics.

    There seems little doubt that individuals and large groups of our ancestors did find themselves in such hostile environments for any number of reasons and using their forest evolved brain and related intelligence survived for significant periods even adapting and speciating. It does seem a bit odd that in the environments that supposedly built and honed our ancestor’s large intelligent brain did not prove to be such a great place to survive. A number of relatively large brained apes still inhabit the forests, yet only one of the many examples found in non-forest habitats still survives and even in its current guise it can still inhabit the forest.

    So as the continued evolution and function of our advanced neural system was entirely dependent on a highly specialised symbiotic relationship with plant developmental environments (fruit) any breakdown in that relationship would result in the stall in expansion and erosion of advanced neural architecture. Adaptation would be possible but at the expense of the continued evolution of those highly unique symbiotic traits. Even switching to a greater % leaves and surviving arboreally in the seasonal tropics let alone surviving by hunting and fire use on the savannah would result in regression. The advanced traits emerged and depended on continued and high % fruit specialisation (only possible in non-seasonal lowland tropics). If this is broken the feedback mechanism will stall regardless of returning to same ecology."

  5. Posted

    I suggest taking a look at the book before coming to such quick and shakey conclusions. It seems you guys don't understand even the basic and heavily evidenced biology behind this and the mechanisms/points of the theory which are very well supported even by orthodox data and are just rejecting it outright instead of searching for the truth- no offence. For example the history outlined in the beginning is actually in alignment with evolutionary theory that accepts the idea that we spent the majority of the past 70 MILLION years in the tropical forests.

    Around 200,000 years ago there was also a major drying of that area and so its expected that groups would periodically, as the contraction of the forest continued, have to look elsewhere for food. This is all outlined on the authors site and in his book here in great detail. If the general theory that our perception is compromised is even remotely correct then we need to be very careful because that means the instrument we're using to look at the data is distorting everything coming in...

    free .pdf from the author of the entire book (reviews and links to website included):

    http://leftinthedark.org.uk/sites/default/files/Left%20in%20the%20Dark%20free%20edition.pdf

    "by incorporating more and more of these DNA-reading plant chemicals into our diet we basically shifted from a typical mammalian developmental environment to more of a plant developmental environment."

    What does this mean? Is he suggesting that hormones are able to be produced in every cell of the human body?

     

    ? No..He's merely pointing out how what we call "fruit" (which is incredibly unique and not just another food) is actually the womb (aka developmental environment) and reproductive organ of angiosperms (flowering plants, which actually have a genome that is WAY more complex than our own). There is often over 10,000 different kinds of phytochemicals in a single fruit alone, and all of these flavonoids (which are also MAOI, by the way) affect DNA transcription, which is the process where DNA-blueprint is read and expressed. Changing the elements of the reading mechanism changes everything, especially since these chemicals would have been flooding out system from 24/7 for evolutionary time scales- even before birth, when the most important developmental period of the brain takes place..which is why he says we started to shift from These alter how every cell is built on the most basic level of biology

    The flavonoids in fruit also dramatically alter the activity of our own major hormones such as testosterone, which is explained in the article. This alone has a massive impact. They are also neuro-active, and heavily modulate the activity of our own endocrine system

    The flavonoids in fruit also stimulate the pineal gland to produce chemicals like pinoline (another MAOI) and melatonin; both of which mimic the things the fruit chemicals do but are much more powerful.

    This may sound strange but all of this biochemical data is very well evidenced. We just haven't been looking at it this way before in an evolutionary context until recently. Read the book and fact check for yourself if you don't believe me.

    Calling fruit an 'engineering cocktail' is a bit far fetched, and purposely loaded to suggest that fruit permanently alters our brain chemistry over the course of a single lifespan. The suggestion that by eating fruit we modify our brain chemistry, then pass along those changes to the next generation misunderstands evolutionary processes and seems to be ignorant of epigenetics.

     

    Well first off the article isn't intended to present the bulk of the theory. Read the book for that.

    Secondly, did you even read the article? This comment of yours makes absolutely 0 sense. Calling it an engineering cocktail is entirely accurate, given that it ALTERS HOW CELLULAR STRUCTURES ARE BUILT ON THE MOST BASIC LEVEL OF DNA TRANSCRIPTION AND HORMONE ACTIVITY..as i already outlined.. in my response above..

    The molecules in our food are directly involved in building and fueling the brain on the most basic level. And when you get to plants like fruit the biochemical complexity of it is off the fucking charts. If you change the build materials and fuel of a car, you can dramatically change how that car runs (or whether it runs at all)..even a 5% change could have a massive impact..

    This logic when applied to our technologies, which are totally dwarfed by the complexity of the brain, makes perfect sense. Why do we assume the same doesn't go for the brain!? The things you build and run the most chemically sensitive and complex tissue in the known universe will OBVIOUSLY have a massive impact on its overall structure and functioning. Katherine Milton found that we've lost 95% of the chemicals that went into building and fueling the brain for evolutionary time scales since leaving the tropical forests.

    This is a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution which frames the process as a quasi-religious, teleological process. This is not the widely accepted process of natural selection that Darwin proposed.

     

    So you're suggesting that the biochemistry of junkfood (which is what that quote was referring to) is just as relevant to our evolution as the chemicals that went into building and fueling the most complex organ in the known universe for millions of years? I think you need to educate yourself about simple biochemistry a bit before dismissing things so absolutely...

    This suggests that the brain shrinkage implied as the reason for our degeneration into civilisation has occurred over the last century or so, and has somehow made our brains less complex, which is simply not the case. It does not in any way explain how junk food supposedly reverses the effect fruit has on our brains, but rather plays on our suspicion of highly processed, 'unnatural' foods.

     

    You are totally twisting things around here and confusing yourself. Its not saying that junkfood alone caused the degeneration, just that it has quickened it. Look into the links and do some research. Junk food does damage to the brain. This is very well established.

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