Operational Management Lesson 3 exercise

OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT LESSON 3 EXERCISE

In the OM lesson 3 exercise I will take a closer look into process of Creation of Human Species by Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) Most of us are maybe more familiar with his famous colleague Charles Darwin's Origin of Species theory. 

His process of evolutionary theory is mainly in line with Darwin's but it differs in one important regard. Haeckel believed that the "inheritance of acquired traits"which is a hypothesis about a mechanism of heredity by which changes in physiology acquired during an organism's lifetime will affect the future generations of that organism. This means that for example in a process of training and enlarging muscles or singing thoughout one's lifetime, we transfer these characterisics on to the next generations. Oversimplyfied, this may explain why children of actors become actors themselves, or two brothers end up as Formula 1 drivers.

Until very recently, we have not been able to understand the functioning of human genome ( and still do not to a great degree)and the process how we inherit certain characteristics from our ancestors. Using terms from the Process Analysis we may say that Haeckel redesigned the existing Origin of Species theory described by Darwin. He rejected Darwin's "Selection of Species" as the only point of reference in which species transfer their characteristics to following generations.

In Haeckel's process flow, such developments are just as much the sum of experiences, practices and acquisition of characteristics that change an organism during its lifespan. These changes will then be transfered to a next generation. Studies in the 1920-ies and later prove him to a great extent right, although his arguments may be deemed as oversimplifyed today and to a certain degree wrong.

Haeckel was one of the pioneers in this field and is among other things father of term "ecology". In this exercise I will try to describe the process flow that ended up with creation of the modern Man (Homo Sapiens) from the early primitive mammalians (Promammalia). I will for the sake of space limit this process to mammals and omit the amphibians, fish, bacteria aso.

Modern Man (Homo Sapiens) traces its origin from Primitive mammals that were contemporary with dinosaurs. Through adjustments to the environment the mammals have become more specialised and have to a greater extent taken over the Earth from reptilians. 

This is when early Semi Apes come to scene. They are forefathers to later apes and ultimately to humans. Through the process of natural selection and adjustment to nature, semi-apes evolve to Apes as we know them today. Some of them are becoming flexible to changing weather conditions and adjust their food habits to meat as well as plants and nuts. Improvements made in quality and variety of food that was easier to find and has higher nutritional value leads to increasing of need to start using tools.

Ape Men have many of the same characteristics as modern humans do. By this point in the evolutional process simple tools are being used and we are starting to see elements of a rudimentary society with division of labour. Dependability on each other is high. So is speed by which they manage to gather food or find shelter. All these new winnings come at a lower cost then ever before. Our closest relatives chimpanzees and gorillas share more than 90% of our DNA.

The final step in the process of creation of Modern Man is however still not revealed. If we use the "process mapping" there is unquestionably a "missing link" there.There has been many errors on the way too, one may argue as a result of poor detail design, ending in extintion of several species of early humanoids such as Pithecantropus or Neanderthals.

Below:

Pedigree Of Man - by Ernst Haeckel

: 22 Feb 2009 15:49 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem