It's a nice analogy verbal kint, but it ignores a difference between humans and most other species.

The slow progress of evolution explains why introducing a non-native species can be so traumatic.

The non-native species spends millenia developing beneficial attributes, and right along side them, other species spend those millenia developing to take advantage of them.

Then you move the first species into a new environment, and under the right circumstances (if the evolutionary advantages of the non-native species are applicable to the circumstances, but sufficiently different from native species that no predator exists which can exploit that species) then only the biotic potential of the food chain checks the new species, and it will take a very long time for evolution to provide a suitable balance.


With humans though, there is an alternative reason why evolution has not provided a suitable check on us. Human's are no longer solely reliant on biological evolution for adaptivity. Because humans developed a cerebral cortex and a high degree of dexterity, humans became able to evolve technologically to meet challenges. Technological evolution has been geometric rather than arithmatic. So the advantages of humans are evolving faster than the advantages of species that provide a check on us. Because technological evolution is too fast for biology to respond to effectively, humans do not have to be non-native to Earth in order to explain why nothing is able to put a check on us.


This can be proven by the fact that humans are able to dominate new ecosystems where there biological evolution is not advantageous.

When you introduce a new species to an environment where its biological evolutionary advantages are not applicable, it will be destroyed. We can perform an experiment to demonstrate this if one of our Aussie friends will help. Go catch a rabbit, then go throw it into the ocean. If Rabbits overrun the Great Barrier Reef, then I am wrong and I will shut up. But they won't.

Humans on the other hand can rapidly develop technologically to thrive in environments where they have no biological advantage. In the water, a shark should have the upper hand on a human. And it would, if the human had no equipment. Give the human a fishing boat though, and he'll be selling shark fin soup to the Japanese.


The fact that human dominance is based on technological rather than biological evolution is also evident in the dominance of certain groups of humans over others. We're all the same species, so the advantage of one group of humans over another should be quite limited. If you randomly select 100 people from two different places and throw them in the same environment, they should perform similarly, biologically speaking.

But what if you select the first 100 from the French Foreign Legion and you select the second 100 from Walmart, and put them in a jungle?
One group is familiar with the techniques and technologies necessary for that situation and the other is not. The legionaires would immediately assume dominance over the walmart employees.


Also observe the difference between how the populations of exotic species work versus how human populations work.
An exotic species increases its population until the food it is developed to exploit is used up, then the population crashes until the food supply can recouperate.
Humans don't do that. Humans use up everything they are developed to use, then they develop to use something else and keep on growing. This is another manifestation of our techological rather than biological evolution.


One more thing:
We've been here for a long time. We have A LOT in common with almost everything else on this planet.
The basic chemistry of our metabolism goes back almost to the dawn of life on Earth.
Many of our mammalian features, including elements of our bone structure, brain structure, reproductive system, etc go back over 100 million years, and made continuous progress from there.
The fossil record of species sharing 98.4% of our genes goes back nearly 10 million years. Much closer relatives were around 2 million years ago.
Our species has been around for 200,000 years.

This not only demonstrates that we probably evolved on Earth, but it shows that Earth was well prepared for something just like us even if we did show up from somewhere else. That is reflected in the fact that we did not become dominant until the advent of civilization.

We have a civilized history of 12,000 years since agriculture and 6,000+ years since the development of proto-nations. That is when we started to exponentially out-evolve nature, and even then nature still got the best of us from time to time. Insects remained capable of out-competing us and significantly reducing the carrying capacity of our land for humans until we developed pesticides. The longer we have to develop technologically though, the more dominant we become. You have acknowledged this yourself in discussing how many of the restraining factors on humanity, such as war and poverty, could be eliminated technologically.

So, in so many words, you can explain the success of humans without us being from elsewhere.

There are many theories on this. One of my favorites is the biological clock.

An Earth day lasts 24 hours, a Martian day lasts 25 hours.

Take a human being, place them in a room where they don't know the time or hour or whether it's day or night, Their bioclock will reset itself to a 25 hour day.

Scientist have no idea why that happens.

I'm not saying we come from Mars. I'm just saying that I too believe Earth had a long and glorious history and then one day we arrived. There is no missing link. We were put here, by someone, for some reason.

I'm betting we were all telemarketers in a previous life

wupy

[edit on 30-9-2007 by mrwupy]

There is no missing link

Actually we have plenty of examples of transitional species.

Regarding the reset of ones biological clock, you simplified it quite a bit. It doesn't happen instantly. It takes quite alot of time.

Take daylight savings time for example.

You are not planted here from somewhere else.You are from earth!!!!

You have 2 eyes you breath oxygen you have male and female like all species.

This issue is ridicolous.

yes aliens been here for 13k yrs in recorded history if you go by the stones.

I am open to aliens but to say im not from earth is ludicrus.

ive done much research myself and you are correct in regards to 99% of freemasons-however at the very highest levels there is definitely evil involved.that is also a fact

wow, it's a fact? That's pretty scarey if it is. Please prove your statement with evidence.

What I understand is that Africa used to be tropical with lots of tall trees. Then millions of years ago, the area dried up and all the tall trees disappeared, this meant that our ancestors left the trees and started walking on all fours. Because of all the tall grass, our ancestors then started standing on two legs so that they could see further ahead. They also had to walk greater distances which favoured walking on two legs. This freed up their arms and hands, with which they could now use tools. Constantly using tools helped to develop our intelligence.

Neanderthals and Humans share the same ancestor, Homo Erectus, one of the first apes to walk on two legs. Humans also share a common ancestor with Chimpanzees.

Originally posted by verbal kint

Mother nature ain't no woosie! Her being the intrinsic structure of the life/eco-system itself. In fact I believe that in the long run, even the foreign species will be tamed and assymalated into the balanced structure, their inital dominance checked by some new system element and balance will be restored.

Now, take this axiom and appy it to the human story.

Well, arguably, we have been checked by Mother Nature, numerous times. HIV, The Black Plague, Cancer, food shortages, and even homosexuality (as a supposed birth trait, but that's another thread entirely) can be looked at as Mother Nature's way of weeding out humanity and lowering our numbers. Fortunately (or unfortunately), as a previous poster indicated, we have developed sufficient brain capacity to allow us to overcome these various roadblocks in our way to total world domination (queue evil laugh).

-Warlo

Originally posted by verbal kint

It does indeed. The part i found interesting is how at any given time, there are generally 3-5 human relatives in existence in various parts of the world. Well except when Homo Sapiens arrive suddenly all other species are wiped out. Including erectus which was supposedly a stronger, more well adapted lineage. Also, touching on my main point, all of the preceeding species did NOT overrun the entire planet like an unchecked disease.

If you read The Vagabond's post, he has already pointed out the obvious reason for us spreading out and adapting to every environment possible -- we've got a large cerebral cortex and agile, manipulative fingers.

Another thing he hasn't pointed out though, is that we love to fight and go to war. There's also the theory that humans specialized when it comes to hunting; only the males went hunting. Neanderthals be it male or female went hunting. Humankind's specialization in this context ensured that the species survives even when the males get killed.

Eventually it resulted in males being physically stronger than females; only the stronger males survived hunting or prehistoric war.

Originally posted by Beachcoma

If you read The Vagabond's post, he has already pointed out the obvious reason for us spreading out and adapting to every environment possible -- we've got a large cerebral cortex and agile, manipulative fingers.

Another thing he hasn't pointed out though, is that we love to fight and go to war. There's also the theory that humans specialized when it comes to hunting; only the males went hunting. Neanderthals be it male or female went hunting. Humankind's specialization in this context ensured that the species survives even when the males get killed.

Eventually it resulted in males being physically stronger than females; only the stronger males survived hunting or prehistoric war.

So if Homo sapiens' dominance is/was the result of developing a large cerebral cortex and dexterous fingers where's the development period? As species evolve, there's an overlap period while the new, evolutionarily superior trait takes hold and spreads, while eventually the old trait carriers die out. As I pointed out earlier, strangely, when the firs homo sapiens appear, everyone else disappears. That's fine that hunting specialization and aggressiveness would have given the upper foot to homo sapiens, but it takes time for the traits to spread. That "spreading, overlap period" is missing in regards to homosapiens and what supposedly are his ancestrial kin. That's one big reason I say it's, "PLOP! Honey! I'm home!"

Originally posted by jfj123
I think one problem here is that you are assuming "mother nature" is some how a sentient being able to logically and methodically make changes necessary to create a balance.

Did you catch this portion of the OP:

Her being the intrinsic structure of the life/eco-system itself.

See? Not a sentient being, reasoning out the necessary changes AT ALL. The intrinsic structure of the system. kinda like physics.