Matters of discussion

Right so I can see I'm going to be a bit addicted to this blogging for the first little while. Usually I only write when I'm extremely frustrated and angry and that's for my own personal record, not to just write for the sake of writing. Anyways, point being... Sometimes I have these discussions with my friends and we get going off on these odd little tangents. I wonder if we're quite sane or insane, at times.

So I was talking to ... I'll call him J cuz it suits him. He's this on again/off again long-term non-commited but I want more relationship that I've had for the past almost 2 years. He lives in another city but we still talk on a regular basis. Anyways, we were talking and I'd brought up what I'd read in the news the day before. RE: the monkey/evolution thing I mentioned in my first post. The story is that the evolution theory has now been not quite de-bunked but had a wrench (or rather a skull) thrown into the mix. Said skull is found to have lived side by side one of the species we were believed to have "evolved" from instead of being one of the species they evolved from. If that makes sense to you anyways. Scientists have long been trying to prove this whole evolution theory and make all these links to make Darwin correct. They seemingly can never find it and haven't yet been able to prove we evolved from monkeys. I don't believe it, personally. Why do the same monkeys exist now as they did millions of years ago with very little change? We exist in basically the same ways, save for our own technological advances and environmental factors. I find it hard to believe we had tails and fur and just transformed slowly into what we are today. I think we adapted but not evolved. I've yet to see fossils that show a progession of one kind of animal into another. Fossils either show animals that died out and don't exist anymore or show animals that still exist to this day in exactly the same way as before.

So! We were discussing this theory of mine, the article, etc. and somehow the discussion turned to how teenagers hit puberty based on region. I wasn't expecting this nor had I given it any thought. J thinks that in North America, we all hit puberty early and by about 14 years of age, are basically completed the growth process. I tend to disagree that it's finished by 14 years of age but I do see many teenagers that are small adults, fully developed by 14 years of age. I, myself, was pretty much there at 14. Not mentally speaking but physically. His experience (he grew up in Africa) is that at 14 back home, teenagers are nowhere near that stage in puberty, on average. He says the same is in India, Pakistan and China, based on his knowledge. Granting I am not giving him God-like status, I can't say yes or no to his theory.

BUT given this opinion, I asked him if he thought he knows why. Personally, I'd say it may be something to do with the environment over a period of time. Here in North America, teenagers are given an adult freedom to roam around in packs, have jobs, have virtually endless dispensable income and have boyfriends/girlfriends and having been doing this now for 2 generations, let's say? I'd venture to say that possibly our environment has created the ability to grow up faster and so, the bodies have started to develop faster. Given this is a very off to top of my head guess with no scientific basis, who knows but I had to see if I could come up with an explanation. J's explanation is it is in the food we eat. At first, I was shocked and curious as to what he meant. He says that we have so much processed and altered food in our diet that it has affected our growth hormones somehow. I had to consider this, truly, you know? We do have many genetically altered vegetables, fruits and specifically bred animals to be the biggest, most productive food products. In turn, is it not possible that this may get passed down to our children and they hit puberty sooner? I can't say but it's a theory.

I did do some googling on it and puberty does seem to have not only a genetic link but a dietary link. That a group of people in europe, regardless of race, tend to hit puberty, on average at the same time and from region to region, it tends to be the same. The one universal is diet. There was a study saying that zinc may have a factor. Another saying that rich cultures with lots of foods leads to early onset of puberty. Yet another linked obesity in children to early onset of puberty. One wonders if obese children, rich diets, rich culture is the link but I didn't look too deeply. I just found it an interesting thought to ponder.