anthrosciguy

As I pointed out in my post, we actually have a lot of quite good abilities and senses, instead of a very excellent ones and a bunch of crappy ones, as so many other animals have. That seems a pretty good package to me. And I don't think we can really say we're particularly frail as animals go -- certainly more so than some in some ways, but overall? No. As for tiring easily, let's not look at modern office workers, now -- make a list of animals that can make 20-30 mile journeys day after day if need be, as humans can. The list will be very small.

BTW, the same point about our senses can be made -- don't use modern city dwellers as examples of how good a human's hearing or sense of smell is, for instance. As for defense (ignoring more "modern technology" such as fire) we could do pretty well doing what chimps do, creating displays of howling groups of primates armed with rocks and sticks. Few predators want to face that sort of thing. How many animals are there that can harm another animal at a distance? Our earliest ancestors could, just as chimps can (our ancestors may even have been better at it, if we were used to carrying things as we walked bipedally). Think how a wolf feels about that -- as a wolf, you're facing a creature at a safe distance, a distance such that no animal you know of can touch you (say, 20-30 feet)-- suddenly, you're pelted with missiles -- rocks, sticks. It's awful, and that's before those pesky varmints called hominids came up with sharp-edged projectiles.

That was, and is, our strength -- ready for almost anything, highly adaptable, because we're not tied to conditions that can become hugely restricted.

Jet Black

but the thing is, weapons aside, wolves and any other large canids are really easy to kill with your bare hands (I won't tell you how) and humans can learn this simple technique. It is this ability to rapidly copy and learn that gives us the added advantage.

Hyndis

True, which is why I put up the 50/50 odds. One unarmed and naked human vs one adult male wolf. With rabies or something, so that its aggressive and attacks.

I mean, I'm pretty sure the eye gouging thing would get a lot of mileage. But on the other hand, you've got some very large teeth ripping apart an arm or something.


I like to think of it that we're actually a type of shapeshifter in that we can create a tool for any job with amazing ease, and these huge advantages can be made within hours or years, not millenia as required by regular evolution.

Evolution by proxy taking place over the course of hours?

Hawkings said it best in his book The Universe in a Nutshell, where the rate of information created every year in books is staggering. Sure, most of that information is pure garbage but if even only a miniscule percentage of the books written every year are helpful that means that we're advancing ourselves at speeds millions of times quicker than conventional evolution. And we're even getting close to the point where we can alter our own DNA at will. At that point we'll be able to guide our own evolution to whatever goals we set, and I wouldn't be surprised if an actually different and unique race of homo sapiens existed in different environments, genetically engineered to flourish in zero gravity, or the low gravity or Mars. Or maybe harsh UV light on another world in another star system. Or heavy gravity.

Graculus

That the figure should be higher. Estimates vary from a few thousands to around 15,000.