fiona was here
wishing she had a clever tagline

I was reading a book about Neandertals and the theoretical reasons for thier seeming extinction and came across the following sentence: "Students of [archeologist Francois] Bordes in France have shown that there do indeed appear to be cultural traditions persisting through time in geographically defined areas..."It goes on to theorize that Neandertal tribes managed to remain "culturally distinct for thousands of years, with nothing between them but, say, an easily fordable stretch of the Dordogne River." Conversely, the Cro-Magnon sites show more diversity of form and style, which seems to correlate with the fact that evidence indicates they were more mobile.

As we all know, the Neandertals are now extinct and the Cro-Magnons evolved. When people stop exchanging ideas and new ways of doing things, stagnation occurs and evolution stops. What does this mean? Nothing really, although it's interesting to note how often George W. Bush has been compared to a chimp. Perhaps some members of the human race aren't evolving as fast as the rest of us and refusing to share ideas and knowledge and points of view won't facilitate evolution and those who refuse to do so (like, um, the crazy Christian right) will render themselves extinct with thier refusal to grow. That's what I'm telling myself anyway. It's the new Social Darwinism.