4 ms·

Moonlight for some hours of the month, never exceeding a rather low intensity, a minuscule intensity compared to a single led streetlight. The night time light

Moonlight for some hours of the month, never exceeding a rather low intensity, a minuscule intensity compared to a single led streetlight. The night time lighting humans(and our non-human co-inhabitants of earth) have evolved with and known for a very longtime comes from fires of various types, flames with a much warmer color temperature.

Godel_unicode 6y ago
Humans have had fire at night on a regular basis for a pretty short time, evolutionarily speaking. And that goes double for what animals might have seen; actual fire is so resource intensive that until a few hundred years ago the vast majority of the night was lit only by the moon and stars. Also, intensity is orthogonal to color temperature.
- samatman 6y ago
  Use of fire predates anatomically modern humans by some hundreds of thousands of years. Consider the spread of lactose tolerance, a recent (no more than 10,000 years and perhaps less) mutation which has spread to 35% of humanity in that time. We have had plenty of time to co-evolve with fire, and doubtless, we have done so.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Well, we certainly didnt co-evolve to be fireproof in all this time, so what adaptation to fire do you suggest we did evolve? Its probably to do with cooked food, not vision - which is already co-evolved with the Sun, for when we are active/hunting/etc.
    - samatman 6y ago
      For one thing, we find a controlled fire soothing and attractive. Wild animals very much do not. It's likely that our mucus membranes have also adjusted to the presence of more smoke: this doesn't prevent cancer, which is a post-reproductive problem for the most part, but it does keep smoke inhalation from being immediately debilitating. Does it mean that fire doesn't fool our circadian rhythm into thinking it's still daytime? Sure, why wouldn't it? We've had a very long time to adjust, and getting appropriate amounts of sleep increases fitness in an obvious way. We haven't had more than a hundred years of adjusting to bright blue-wavelength light after dark, however. So it could affect our circadian rhythm, and as studies show, it does.

Godel_unicode 6y ago

Humans have had fire at night on a regular basis for a pretty short time, evolutionarily speaking. And that goes double for what animals might have seen; actual fire is so resource intensive that until a few hundred years ago the vast majority of the night was lit only by the moon and stars. Also, intensity is orthogonal to color temperature.

samatman 6y ago
Use of fire predates anatomically modern humans by some hundreds of thousands of years. Consider the spread of lactose tolerance, a recent (no more than 10,000 years and perhaps less) mutation which has spread to 35% of humanity in that time. We have had plenty of time to co-evolve with fire, and doubtless, we have done so.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Well, we certainly didnt co-evolve to be fireproof in all this time, so what adaptation to fire do you suggest we did evolve? Its probably to do with cooked food, not vision - which is already co-evolved with the Sun, for when we are active/hunting/etc.
  - samatman 6y ago
    For one thing, we find a controlled fire soothing and attractive. Wild animals very much do not. It's likely that our mucus membranes have also adjusted to the presence of more smoke: this doesn't prevent cancer, which is a post-reproductive problem for the most part, but it does keep smoke inhalation from being immediately debilitating. Does it mean that fire doesn't fool our circadian rhythm into thinking it's still daytime? Sure, why wouldn't it? We've had a very long time to adjust, and getting appropriate amounts of sleep increases fitness in an obvious way. We haven't had more than a hundred years of adjusting to bright blue-wavelength light after dark, however. So it could affect our circadian rhythm, and as studies show, it does.