Evolution

Thursday

William Moore

Labour’s growing pains, survival of the hottest & murder most fascinating

43 min listen

This week: why is economic growth eluding Labour? ‘Growing pains’ declares The Spectator’s cover image this week, as our political editor Katy Balls, our new economics editor Michael Simmons, and George Osborne’s former chief of staff Rupert Harrison analyse the fiscal problems facing the Chancellor. ‘Dominic Cummings may have left Whitehall,’ write Katy and Michael, ‘but his spirit lives on.’ ‘We are all Dom now,’ according to one government figure. Keir Starmer’s chief aide Morgan McSweeney has never met Cummings, but the pair share a diagnosis of Britain’s failing economy. Identifying a problem is not, however, the same as solving it. As Rachel Reeves prepares her Spring Statement, ministers are

Matt Ridley

Survival of the hottest: evolution’s fun side has been long overlooked

The theory of evolution is dominated by the utilitarian logic of natural selection: adapt or die, survival of the fittest. But consider that ‘fit’ has two meanings these days: ‘healthy’ but also ‘hot’. There is another evolutionary mechanism that scientists have taken a longer time to appreciate – seduction by the hottest, rather than survival of the fittest. It generates very different and much stranger outcomes. Perhaps even the big brains of human beings evolved as seduction devices more than survival aids. When an animal selects a mate, it can shape the future of its species just like breeders of dogs shape different breeds. Sexual selection through mate choice is

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

The Natural History Museum’s new Evolution Garden is inspired

The Natural History Museum is one of the most beautiful buildings in London, but its gardens have long been a bit boring – just a pavement on the way in to Alfred Waterhouse’s ornate ‘cathedral to nature’. Most people noticed them solely when the ice rink appeared at Christmas. There was a wildlife garden in one corner that only real enthusiasts (like me) bothered to visit. Where else in London could you walk three billion years along pavements this good? With this enormous overhaul of the site, that’s all changed. The scale of the Evolution Garden, designed by landscape architects J&L Gibbons and architects Feilden Fowles, is enormous, both in

Wednesday

Oren Harman

Was there ever a time of equality in human society?

Origin stories have always helped humans gain a moral compass. Locked in a tight embrace, the Maori deities Rangi and Papa are separated by their enveloped children, creating the distant father sky and nurturing Mother Earth, bringing light to the world. Mayan gods fashion man from maize after destroying earlier clay and wood versions, who are seen to have no soul. Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Life but illicitly also from the Tree of Knowledge. One of the more touted modern human origin stories, ostensibly based on evolutionary science, speaks of a natural inequality between violent and promiscuous men and caring and faithful women. Having evolved to

Thursday

John Maier

Our need to get drunk in company may be innate

It was once a favourite theory of optimistic drunkards that a suitably ‘moderate’ level of alcohol consumption provided covert health benefits. The mechanism was always a little obscure. But it was a fairly sure thing that reds — or was it all booze? — by virtue of some enzyme or vitamin or whatever, and judiciously drunk in something between homeopathic and industrial quantities, protected against heart attack — or was it ischaemic stroke… or memory loss? This, at any rate, was the glass-half-full defence of moderate drinking. Then a paper published in the Lancet in 2018 pulled the rug out from underneath the moderate drinker (not something, needless to say,

Thursday

Hugh Thomson

How Neanderthal are you?

My brother recently decided to get a DNA test. He discovered that our family were all descended from a mix of the usual British suspects — a bit of Viking, Anglo-Saxon and Celt — and were predisposed to standard diseases and health risks. But there was one surprise. My siblings and I had double the normal amount of Neanderthal in our genes. Reactions were mixed. My girlfriend declared she had suspected something of the sort for some time. My mother announced that it must come from my father’s side of the family. And it took us a while to digest. It’s now well established that all humans have a small