There is evidence of evolution occurring just 3,000 years ago. Suck on that Falwell!

A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found.

The finding is a striking example of a cultural practice — the raising of dairy cattle — feeding back into the human genome. It also seems to be one of the first instances of convergent human evolution to be documented at the genetic level. Convergent evolution refers to two or more populations acquiring the same trait independently.

Throughout most of human history, the ability to digest lactose, the principal sugar of milk, has been switched off after weaning because there is no further need for the lactase enzyme that breaks the sugar apart. But when cattle were first domesticated 9,000 years ago and people later started to consume their milk as well as their meat, natural selection would have favored anyone with a mutation that kept the lactase gene switched on.

And this is why thinking consumers choose evolution over creationism. Because creationism is old and moldy and evolution is ever changing and, oh what's the word for it? Oh yeah, evolving.

It is like rubbing your clothes against river rocks to get them clean or tossing your tye dye t-shirts into a front loading washer with the newest possible detergent. It just makes more sense.