In a discussion about the misshapen skulls of Peru, Dave Mowers writes:
It stands to reason that if humans do something long enough that modifies their bodies then their bodies will be affected by natural evolution and form new traits.
Perhaps the Peruvian skulls suggest a ten, twenty or forty thousand year ritual? In which case the heads would become deformed.
There is no way this could possibly occur, right folks? This is Lamarkian genetics. Acquired traits are not passed on. Lamark was a Soviet scientist who believed in such things as that giraffes grew long necks because each new generation of giraffe stretched its neck higher and higher to get higher up into the trees to eat leaves and whatnot. As they stretched their necks, their necks grew longer. Then they had baby giraffes, and the giraffes who had stretched their necks longer passed on this trait, acquired in their lifetimes, to their giraffe kids.
This man was in charge of Soviet genetic research under Stalin and his research was in line with Communist ideology so it was promoted. All Soviet science had to adopt Lamarkianism. This is probably what happens whenever you put the politicians in charge of the science.
In general, science rejects this and the maxim is, “Acquired traits are not passed on genetically.”
However we in the West do this all the time, and both the Right and the Left are guilty are guilty of promoting false scientific hypotheses because the facts are coming out wrong and the conclusions look bad for either Right or Left ideology and when the results of a study conflict with your politics, obviously that means that the facts are wrong and we need to go back and fix up the facts and make up some new facts that are more politically palatable.
