Evolution of humans outside the genome.
Complete sequencing of the whole genome of humans has revealed a surprisingly small difference between the genomes of humans and higher primates. I here propose that evolution has occurred in living organisms in two steps, first within the genome and then outside the genome. The first step of evolution is based on creation of new information in the genome (DNA), followed by selection after its vertical transmission to individuals of the next generation through reproduction. The second step includes accumulation of a huge amount of information translated into a "linguistic" code by memory and a natural process of computation that creates new patterns of information through thinking in the brain. The created patterns are selected positively or negatively by applying some criteria as to the usefulness for adaptation of humans to nature. When positively selected, the patterns are horizontally transmitted to other brains of a number of individuals, within and also beyond the generation recursively by the use of linguistic codes. This second step of evolution, in conjunction with the evolution of human language itself, has enabled the homo sapiens to attain an enormously high level of cognitive faculty for adaptation of the thought processes to needs in nature at an extraordinarily high speed.
Nakashima
Izumi
I
Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan. inakashi@isc.chubu.ac.jp
D005075:Biological Evolution; D015894:Genome, Human; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language