Except that our medieval ancestors weren't "lot different-looking than us."

Hi, um... that's natural selection among an INCREDIBLY small population. Seriously, it was like... 5 pairs of lizards wasn't it?

Among a very large group, I think significant genetic changes (not just skin and eye colour) would take huge amounts of time to happen.

@joemono: As far as I can tell from medevial larpers, they were all obese.

Wait. I'm a big BSG fan I'm I'm struggling to see what this has to do with the show? I remember the original had the Cylons being created by a third lizard race, but did they say in this version that they were descended from Lizards.

Huh? Am I just missing something big? Or was putting a Starbuck pic in this header just a way to get me to click on it.

@joemono: Sure they were! Look at medieval paintings, where everybody's all two-dimensional, lanky and crucified.

Get real. If this is actually true, why do I like fucking gorillas so much?

Well, we would assume that colonies would be formed on planets that were very Earth like. And also that the colonists would bring agriculture there, which would mean the diet stays the same, except for wild game. As we don't use our bodies to capture game, we instead use tools, which really have no impact on us evolutionary, except that the guy who invents the bigger stick w/ a nail in it wins, so it would be intelligence mostly.

I think this study is flawed when you extrapolate it to humans. Besides, IIRC physical appearence is one factor of breeding, so the hot girls would be the ones who re-produce more. I mean come on, who would you mate with? Starbuck or madame President?

@Pope John Peeps II: Sometimes changes propagate surprisingly quickly. Isn't there some research out now that shows that the genes for blue eyes got passed around in, what, 6,000 years?

I'd think that in drastically dissimilar environments, or with substantial differences in diet, traits could propagate even faster.

@Git Em SteveDave: But Earth-like isn't the same as Earth. The proportion of livable biospheres may be different--maybe on one planet, the colonists are living in mostly cold northern areas, where an another planet they're living in more temperate climates.

And bringing agriculture with you is good, but, again, if the biospheres are different, you're going to have different crops thrive, and so different diets for each population.

Interestingly: not real different from how things happened on Earth. Like how, you know, people from Java don't look like people from Siberia.

Well if women developed and extra set of bizarre muscles in their vaginas perhaps they would be attractive despite being hideous. Besides, in many species the women are ordinary and dull. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

@Git Em SteveDave: If we are talking about bedding Mary McDonnell in her prime against Katee Sackhoff(who is in her prime now). Mary McDonnell hands down. Ms. Sackhoff looks like she was hit in the face with a frying pan.

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: Its saying that when the lizards were split from its original habitat and placed on some new island, the ones on the new island were fucked up.

The parallel is that once the 12 colonies all landed on weird ass planets and if we add some super speed evolution, the study supposedly would say that the humans that evolved would be fugly.

Alcohol seems to have a profound effect on evolutionary change.

I think it would have to be drastically dissimilar environments, as braak mentioned.

Largely because we do have a human example. After Australian aborigines migrated to Tasmania, the sea levels rose and isolated the Tasmanian aboriginal peoples from the mainland populations, for 10,000 years!

While there has been plenty of controversial, controverted, and recontroverted study on the socio-cultural differences that occurred during the interim, from everything I remember the physical differences were minimal and largely, if not exclusively, at a genetic level only.

PNAS

Hee hee hee. PNAS *snerk*

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: Yes, it was just a ploy ...
Seriously dude, try to keep up.
I think the point of the article, and several other recent studies of evolutionary processes, is that evolution is not a gradual process; it happens in spurts (like other biological processes that come to mind) and can race forward to significant variations from the progenitor organism in a comparitively short time. Environmental pressures dictate the pace and general nature of the problem, but not the solutions that will result from evolution.
Say you had a brilliantly-colored bird. It does just fine on an island with no predators and even benefits from being easy for potential mates to locate. But take that same species and put a predator on the island, and in short order, the birds with bright plumage will become kibble and the sports with dull plumage will be the parents of the next generations, who will inherit their parents survival-friendly color scheme.
Yes, in larger populations, with slower-breeding animals, with lower environmental pressure, and so forth, the process will progress more slowly. After all, when your species' idiots, cripples and defectives can survive and reproduce, there ain't much incentive to rewrite the code, doncha know?
In the BSG scenario, not only would Capricans and Taurons and such LOOK wierd to each other (think funhouse mirror people), they would smell and act wierd, too.
Oh, and BTW, I think this theme was handled on the show once: remember the original series had the Fremen and their laser-bolos?

@moff:
I know with all this talk I have the strange urge to do it with a lizard...
(which would be pretty par for the course on any given night)

@GiltProto: Which eye?

@Miranda Kali: Ba-dum-bum, ching!

So I guess I've been watching the real life Battlestar Galactica...

What are they trying to say? Lee Adama should be played by Corky from "Life Goes On"?

Oh lord here we go.

The guys who decided that this study applied to humans need to have their biology licenses revoked.

Natural Selection acts on genetic adaptations that allow an organism to survive.

Culture all but nullifies the effects of natural selection.

Ever since we stopped letting the infirm die, ever since we stopped using only our bodies to find food, ever since we created modes of transportation, evolution has been affecting us less and less because someone who can wrestle a tiger with his bare hands no longer necessarily survives better than someone with a rifle.

Being at the top of the food chain makes evolution much less effective, if it's even still happening to us at all.

And since we can assume that since all the colonists came from Kobol, they likely had the same technology, the same seeds for food, etc. And widespread trading would nullify the habitat effects even further. Just because Japan can'[t really grow beef, doesn't mean they can't eat steak.

So to argue they'd look different from Earth humans? Sure! Different tech. Different food, etc.

But look different from each other? Go back and take an introduction to human evolution class for god's sake because you clearly slept through it the first time around.

PS - If they had the same standards of beauty that we do, they'd be MORE attractive, as that helps them produce offspring, and therefore pass on that trait to their children.

Good god these people knew nothing.

PS - If they had the same standards of beauty that we do, they'd actually look just as, if not MORE attractive, because attractiveness helps you find a mate, and produce offspring, passing on those genes to your children.

Someone get these hacks out of here.

@Cin: Maybe you should take an Introduction to Not Sounding Pompous class, buddy!

Sorry, thought the post didn't go through the first time, I'll stop now >_<

@Cin: Embarrassing. [Shakes head ]

@SavannahJack: But why would Starbuck look like a Ferengi? If Humans went to different planets wouldn't they go to planets that were similar to the one they came from? So how would evolution change them that much that they looked like flippin lizards! I would think that humans would probably die off before they changed to adapt to an environment that was different enough to illicit an evolutionary shift. Arrgghhh I'm so confused!

Quick someone talk about a Dystopia or show me concept art for a spaceship!!

@moff: RE: Eye Tyrants...
The center one, with the anti-magic cone. That's the one where beauty is.

Now if we could just find a way to extract it, profit would be ours!

@Git Em SteveDave: "Besides, IIRC physical appearence is one factor of breeding, so the hot girls would be the ones who re-produce more."

That works on the implication that only hot girls (or guys)breed. However, with the invention of beer goggles, humanity has given evolution a wedgie. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

@Cin: i prefer your first version of the "PS": leaner, meaner, etc.

yeah right-- "evolution." whatever, you science-ists. everybody knows that humans came from a the death-throws of a gigantic, many-headed space cow.

@Rev-E: True that, my friend.

Beer: Helping Ugly People Get Laid Since The Dawn of Civilization.

@moff: People can sound pompous if they're responding to an article written by a pop-science devouring loony who has no educational grounding in the topic on which he is writing.

@themidnighter: Wow. You're right. They sure can.

@themidnighter: Well, I can sound pompous even if I'm responding to a well-researched article written by someone eminently qualified in the field in question. So what about that?

@92BuickLeSabre: Ha!

Here's my impression of this study:
If A equals B, and B equals C; then R must equal X.

@Miranda Kali: "Alcohol seems to have a profound effect on evolutionary change."

Brilliant! I've always wondered why we haven't evolved into a race of just good looking people. I wonder this every time I go to Walmart.

The problem with this thesis is that you ignore the constant interaction between the 12 different populations of the BG continuity. Because of the fact that the members of the 12 colonies were interbreeding during that entire time, none of their populations possessed the genetic isolation necessary for major evolutionary changes to take place.

More than this, you ignore the effect of technology upon these societies. All 12 tribes possessed the same, highly advanced, technological inheritance. This means that the different population groups would be by-and-large protected from the unique and different environmental effects of their separate planets as they likely used this technology to make those habitats (or where they lived in them) as much like Kobol as possible. In other words, their advanced medical, agricultural, industrial, and weapons technology would protect them from selective pressures much as it does human populations on Earth today (as would their desire to protect every single infant to adulthood and every adult to senility, which the series has provided us no reason to think the colonists do not share with us). Think about it; are Australians, living in a much dryer, sparser environment than the England they came from, different from Englishmen and women in any genetic or physical way? Or what about North American Anglo-celts, who live in an equally alien environment and interact sexual within a much broader and diverse pool than the English?

For that matter, there are less genetic and phenotypic difference between a Tanzanian who's ancestors have been living on the banks of Lake Victoria for the last 50,000 years and a Sioux than there are between those two versions of Podarcis Sicula(despite the changes, speciation has yet to occur). Our unique way of living, the societies we create and the focus they place on heterogeneous breeding, insulate us to a large degree from the process of evolutionary differentiation, and have lead to a long period of genetic stability within human populations.

@DSTRYA: Goat ... that's "Giant Space Goat", at least that's what the people in Golgafrincham Space Ark C told me.

They wouldn't look that radically different (like Ferenghi), unless genetic manipulation was invovled. They'd look about as different as Asians do from Africans or Europeans... which is how the colonials do look.

Now, in my re imaging of Star Trek, the speciacian is due to genetic modification, bioforming along with terraforming of alien planets. But that's a different post entirely.

Starbuck is ugly as sin already. No matter how much magazines try to pretty her up she is always going to look like a guy.

@Rev-E: Well, since you can't be drunk all the time, beer goggles are good for one night stands, but I think they produce less offspring than "steady" relationships do. So while the uglies get some loving every now and then, the hotties get it more, so more offspring. OK, that statement sounded totally pompous.

@Seth L: Thank god I wasn't the only one who went there ;-)

@RAHfanboy:
Oh, but we have!
Just drink enough, and everybody looks amazing! I know I look damn, hot after I've had several shots.

@braak: I agree, but the people who inhabit each colony would do so as a preference, so they would choose one closest to their "normal" environment. So they would almost already be adapted to the environment, which would keep them looking the same.

One factor not mentioned that I saw is the amount of radiation they would be exposed to on the new planet. Less radiation leads to less mutation. Except for weather, there would be no other "real" pressures on them to evolve or change then, so their mutations would be even lower, IMHO.

@Git Em SteveDave:
Have you seen Idiocracy?
I wish it were less fiction than they make it out to be..

@Priam: I think she looks pretty good myself. I think she has nice child bearing hips(which I just found out from a female co-worker and verified by one of my ex's could be considered an insult, whereas I always thought it was a compliment) also. Add in the angry frakkin, and I'm happy.

This sort of "science" is not. It's simply looking at the past as saying that things changed for some unknown reason. Flash Evolution happens, but know one knows how. Maybe God knows.

@Miranda Kali: Actually, now that I googled it, I have seen pieces of this movie. I don't think we'll ALL get that dumb. Only the percentage who don't visit Gawker sites will eventually become that dumb b/c they aren't blessed with the insight and amazing journalism that Gawker and it's affiliated sites provide us.

@Rev-E: I'd argue that, overall, human beings are more attractive as a whole now than they were, say, 1000 years ago, if only marginally. And I go as far as to say that no matter how attractive we become, we will still perceive certain people as ugly -- the gradation just becomes more refined.

@Git Em SteveDave: Well that's probably true. Although, historically, people have moved to different places for different reasons. There are all kinds of pressures that can be brought to bear on who goes to which planet.

Plus, I've lived in a whole bunch of different places in my life, and I still don't know what kind I'd prefer.

I would think generations of different gravities would change the overall look of a person, regardless of culture or technology. Someone living under higher gravity would have to have more muscle mass then someone from lower gravity. Of course it could be that all 12 colony planets had gravity within a reasonable range so as not to cause any major changes.

@ElijahDProphet: Although, that begs the question as to how much effect gravity has.

Like, would generations growing up on a 1.1 gravity have a noticeable dissimilarity from a 1? From a .98?

I'd think that a relatively small lifetime difference could pretty easily have an apparent effect.

@Git Em SteveDave:
I, for one, welcome our Gawker-reading overlords...Kool-Aid anyone? ..or perhaps some Brawndo..(it's got what plants crave!)

@joemono: Well, that's because the environment wasn't all that different. We still eat roughly the same kinds of food, same kinds of climate. It would take a massive change for us to really start looking different from our ancestors.

I'm thinking