I have trouble with the variance theory. Sure, anomalies pop up -- like two headed snakes or other less distinguishable traits.
Now, that's a bit more extreme. A two-headed snake is probably a bit
unfit, actually. Smaller changes would probably be a bit more effective.
But how fast can primates, without intentional genetic influence, become different to the extent that humans are to other primates, past or present. All of a sudden, everyone started exhibiting that trait?
No - a few did, and might thereby have had a small advantage than others in their species who didn't -
or, had a lower fitness: we don't get to hear about them, since they bit the evolutionary bullet; the rest of the species stays the course, of course, and so they maintain the 'typic' form. A monkey still looks like a monkey, and so forth. The variant types, however, were just a little more successful: maybe they were indeed able to use some communicative grunts and thereby gain an advantage, or maybe they were stronger, or so forth. Or maybe their increased communicativeness helped the
other monkeys, because mutant monkey A could point at a tiger and screech like a banshee. Lot of ways it might work.
The primate undergoing evolution one day developed a system of verbal language? Who else would even understand him/her? What would quickly and in large dispersal trigger traits permitting vocabulary?
The others would need a comprehension of point and association. "Monkey points and screams while shitting self" probably would mean "tiger". But this is something many animals can do, especially primates, which is the specific example here.
Don't get me wrong; I do understand evolution. But what I've noticed in the recent literature is the lack of any clear genetic or archeological continuity which can trace present homo sapiens to others. There are leaps and gaps that apparently show dramatic changes (if we hold firmly to evolution) which account for more than just climatological and geographic ideosyncracies prompting evolutionary change.
Well, few evolutionary trees are complete. Horses are basically all there; fish to amphib isn't bad either. Not all are well finished, obviously: but primates are actually not very different form each other, frankly. Cranium, jaw, rough structure is all really very similar. One can look a monkey and see a very humanoid form. I think the ruckus over the 'lack' of intermediaries is very overdramatic. Primates look very much like primates, of almost any form.
