Into the Jungle Essay

The infamous event of the Piltdown hoax is one that continues to draw speculative attention over a century after the initial announcement of the paleoanthropological findings. Although many scientists, especially those involved in the field of paleoanthropology, would like to forget the incident entirely, the Piltdown man—taxonomically referred to as Eoanthropus dawsoni—is perhaps the greatest hoax in anthropological history. By 1912, British archaeologists and paleontologists were desperate for a significant paleoanthropological finding that would provide the missing link between humans and apes in hominin evolution (Prosser, 2009). The Piltdown man was originally a famous finding that straddled the human-animal boundary, dichotomously

Over the past few centuries, humans have been questioning and debating over what makes evolution true. In Jerry Coyne’s work, Why Evolution is True, he noted two kinds of evidence from Darwin’s theory of evolution. The first evidence includes the six testable predictions of evolution: evolution, gradualism, speciation, common-ancestry, natural selection, and nonselective mechanisms of evolutionary change. The second evidence that Coyne noted in his work is the retrodiction. In Coyne’s work, Why Evolution is True, a retrodiction is the facts and data that are not necessarily predicted by the theory of evolution but it makes sense only in the light of the theory of evolution. Retrodiction uses present theories to explain events that happens in the past. Since evolution is a slow process, theories could not be tested. Therefore, we explain the existence of vestigial structures and how humans share a common ancestor with fish through the theory of evolution. Throughout the text, examples of retrodiction are the imperfect adaptation of a panda’s thumb and gill slits in the beginning stages of a human embryo. Common ancestry is proven by the existence of fossils and these evidences proves that evolution is true.

Throughout Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, the inhumane and disgusting treatment the working men and women was shown to the eyes of the American people. Although what the book is most recognized for is creating the Pure Food and Drug Act, an act that gave consumers protection from dangerous and impure foods, the many various horrors the lower working class had to go through was something that deserved more recognition. Upton Sinclair’s novel, The Jungle, gives an insight on how it was nearly impossible for someone of lower class to work and survive in the various big cities in America.

From outside appearance chimpanzees and humans seem to have differing physical appearances. Chimpanzees are covered in a substantial layer of fur, have protruding ears and large canine teeth, whereas humans have a variety of hair colors, small sloped noses and long lean limbs. Chimpanzees and humans appear incredibly different externally, but internally chimpanzees and humans are very similar. One of the most common similarities between chimps and humans is DNA. As peculiar as it seems “humans and chimps share a surprising 98.8 percent of their DNA.”2 Human and chimp DNA is nearly identical when you compare the bands on chromosomes and the bundles of DNA inside nearly every cell. Scientific research has proven that “Human and chimp X chromosomes both contain about 1,100 different genes, or sets of instructions. Each gene affects a particular trait in the body.”3 To prove the

It’s an alligator! It’s a crocodile! It’s a lizard! It’s.. a fish? All educated guesses even preschoolers can notice. The discovery of Tiktaalik has given many scientists something to think about. The first being that humans may after all be closely related to fish. When first hearing this theory, for anyone it is hard to believe. Humans have fingers and fishes have fins! They have gills and we have lungs! Many things point towards the fact that humans have nothing in common with fish until one looks at the bone structure of each and how exceptionally similar they are. The reason for the similarity is because both species share a common ancestor.

. A. Upton Sinclair wrote, “The Jungle”, to expose the appalling working conditions in the meatpacking industry.

What happens once “happily ever after” is over and done with? No one knows if the fairy tale dream continues or if it is over and the reality of the world begins to set in. In the play “Into the Woods”, we see a plethora of literature's favorite fairy tales woven together to teach a lesson on responsibility and getting what you wish for. This production has two separate acts to it, both distinctly different. The first act serves as a continuation of the fairy tale world that we have all come to know, this serves the purpose of immediately connecting the audience to the story being told. In the second act, the entire mood changes and turns very dark and somber. This transition of mood and overall feel of the play is primed

Discoveries relating to the human lineage are extremely exciting and often baffling. This is the case with the recent discovery of what seems to be the oldest member of the human family. A skull found in northern Chad in 2001, has been deemed the earliest relative to the human ever found. Nicknamed Toumai, and discovered by Michel Brunet and his paleontology team, this new category of human has been given the scientific name, Sahelanthropus tchaensis. What makes this skull so definitive is the fact that it dates back approximately 6-7 million years in the earth’s history (Whitfield 2002). Since the discovery there have been anthropologists and paleontologists that have

How did employment mistreat the workers during the 1900s? Industrial America was known as the rapid growth of industries, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, gives graphic details on the everyday lives of working families during this era. Workers would be Americans, but also a lot of immigrants. The book is centered around is a Lithuanian family, whose set out for a better life; Jurgis and Ona. Sinclair focuses on explaining how the workers were exploited, not only in the workplace, but also the housing. Employees were expected to work long hours, with no overtime pay, terrible working conditions, including poor sanitation, and no safety regulations.

“All four Neanderthals yielded the mtDNA sequences similar to those previously determined from Neanderthal individuals, whereas none of the five early modern humans contained such mtDNA sequences. In combination with current mtDNA data, this excludes any large genetic contribution by Neanderthals to early modern humans, but does not rule out the possibility of a smaller contribution” (Serre, 16 March 2004).

The book Your Inner Fish is an evolutionary narrative with information taken over more than 3.5 billion years. The book is divided into chapters by body parts and their refinements through evolution. Each body part is then examined extensively and shown how it relates back to what the book claims to be the common ancestor of humans; the fish. Readers will be able to learn about evolution in an easy to understand format and in a way that will make the reader rethink evolution.

In, Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into The 3.5-Billion-Year History Of The Human Body, Neil Shubin shares the story of evolution through his knowledge and personal experiences. Shubin is an American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist. On the first page of the first chapter, Neil wrote, “... I find ancient fish bones. That may not sound like buried treasure to most people, but to me it is more valuable than gold.” This sentence proving his dedication and clear love for what he does.

Evolution is the process of change of living organisms over a long period of time due to difference of environment or circumstances that was not prevalent before. These evolutionary mutations occur due to things such as a change of environment where what may have been shallow water has gradually gotten deeper and thus the organisms that inhabited that land had to change in order to remain living in that area without risk. This also relates to things such as storms that may alter the habitat of the previous land where what something may have eaten has changed and the organism was altered to match that environment. This then has an affect on the history of human evolution, humans and apes relate to a similar origin and were very similar many years ago and this is known as primate phylogeny. This Extended research task will go in depth with the origins of man and the relation between man and apes through primate

Darwin once hypothesized that humans evolved from an ape like ancestor and that those ancestors most likely originated in Africa since the majority of the great apes lived there. Unfortunately, Darwin’s hypothesis was ignored for reasons such as people (e.g. Europeans) not liking of having African ancestors—not to mention the lack of evidence did not help in supporting such hypothesis. Thus, finding the missing link between apes and humans was of great important—it still is. Thankfully, through extensive research many scientists have been able to determine a clade called Hominin [7]. This clade contains humans as well as their most closely related relatives.

At the beginning of his book “Your Inner Fish” Neil Shubin asks this question: “How can we visualize events that happened millions, and, in many cases, billions of years ago?” There were no eyewitnesses, Shubin says, no humans were around. The percentage of organisms that have been fossilized is very small and only certain species will ever be fossilized because of where they were located. However, this information did not intimidate Shubin on his hunt for his precious fish bones. Neil ties in the theory of evolution to explain how although life on Earth is widely diverse, all species have common ancestors. With the fish bones, he aimed to show how evolution caused one of the great transitions life has ever made- the transition from the ocean to land. Shubin, after six years, finds what he was looking for with the discovery of the fossil named Tiktaalik. This particular fossil is an intermediate between fish and primitive land-living animal.1