# Did Humans Evolve on Mars? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 6, 2006, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318 "2006-11-06T17:21:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/21 "2006-11-07T01:05:17Z")
[QUOTE=Marley23] David Bowie did. [/QUOTE] That was not [Ziggy](http://www.gocomics.com/ziggy/home/), it was the [Spiders](http://www.uark.edu/~dksander/spiders.html)\*. Although I believe that the [Family Circus](http://www.familycircus.com/) are from Pluto and [Berke Breathed](http://www.berkeleybreathed.com/pages/About.asp) is from [Encino](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104187/), fwiw. \*I have no idea about Weird and Gilly. ---
**Author:** ![ParentalAdvisory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/22 "2006-11-07T03:22:55Z")
[QUOTE=Tapioca Dextrin] The chances of anyone coming from Mars are a million to one. [/QUOTE] 0.000001% is still a chance. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/23 "2006-11-07T03:45:05Z")
Personally, I’m curious why the OP would talk about “The human circadian period”, and to one-minute precision. Different people have different circadian periods. While I personally think I would be a better fit to the Martian day, my sister is perhaps a bit short for Earth. Edison is said to have slept in two-hour segments between four-hour segments of activity, and I’ve heard tell second-hand of some folks who keep to a schedule of 18 hours of sleep followed by 36 of wakefulness. With that kind of variability, I think it’s a marvel of biology if the average is truly within an hour of the astronomical value. And while we’re at it, Mars’ day is actually more like [24h39m35s](http://cseligman.com/text/sky/rotationvsday.htm), not such an “almost exact” fit to 24h53m. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/24 "2006-11-07T03:49:00Z")
Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. I read that someplace on the web so it must be true. ---
**Author:** ![Khampelf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Khampelf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khampelf)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/25 "2006-11-07T04:01:23Z")
[QUOTE=Tapioca Dextrin] The chances of anyone coming from Mars are a million to one. [/QUOTE] Wow. That means, statistically, in the U.S. alone, there are 300 Martians. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Yumblie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/76d3ee/32.png) [@Yumblie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yumblie)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/26 "2006-11-07T05:32:36Z")
[QUOTE=Tapioca Dextrin] The chances of anyone coming from Mars are a million to one. [/QUOTE] But still, they come… ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/27 "2006-11-07T05:32:37Z")
[QUOTE=Duckster] Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. I read that someplace on the web so it must be true. [/QUOTE] Possibly in post #4 of this thread? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/28 "2006-11-07T06:48:49Z")
[QUOTE=rocksolid] And does anyone else feel their body clock is like really far off 24hrs? I always feel like i prefer sleeping for about 10-12hrs then being awake for about 20 or so. Am i weird? If i ever have long periods of time without any regulating activity (like, you know, going to work) this is the cycle i seem to get into. [/QUOTE] Maybe _you’re_ from Mars. It seems like the simplest explanation. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/29 "2006-11-07T07:38:55Z")
Two things, one of which I don’t think has been explicitly addressed, and one of which is a nitpick: 1. The 24-hour period of rotation is a temporary thing (a combination of when MAn started defining hours and Babylonian love of base 12), we’re moving from faster to slower via the Moon’s tidal effects, so really, we Humans are just ahead of our time in being pre-adapted for the coming 25HR day 🙂 2. Mars is not “a desert under vacuum” - it’s a desert under an admittedly-thin mostly CO[sub]2[/sub] atmosphere. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/30 "2006-11-07T08:13:51Z")
[QUOTE=Chronos] . . . my sister is perhaps a bit short for Earth. [/QUOTE] Her legs fail to reach the ground? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/31 "2006-11-07T08:26:58Z")
[QUOTE=Tapioca Dextrin] The chances of anyone coming from Mars are a million to one. [/QUOTE] As anyone who watches popular entertainment or reads Terry Pratchett knows, if something has million to one odds against it happening, it always happens. Therefore, we came from Mars ! The logic is flawless. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/32 "2006-11-07T08:36:37Z")
IIRC, when humans are put in an environment with no time cues (i.e., no windows, no clocks, no television, etc.) our sleep time increases until it is in the range of chimpanzees, more like 9 hours. I can no longer type the word “chimpanzee” without hearing _I hate every ape I see/From chimpan-A to chimpan-Z._ That is all. ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/33 "2006-11-07T12:08:01Z")
[QUOTE=Tapioca Dextrin] The chances of anyone coming from Mars are a million to one. [/QUOTE] Yeah, but million to one chances come out right, nine times out of ten Si ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/34 "2006-11-07T12:18:23Z")
[QUOTE=ralph124c] The earth’s rotation 9day0 is 24 hours, but the circadian rhythm 9which is the internal clock that humans run on) is about 24 hours, 53 minutes-almost excatly the length of a martian “day”. So is it possible that humans actually evolved on mars , and came to the earth in the distant past? Do non-human primates share the human circadian period? [/QUOTE] I am a bit nervous about using a precise measurement of human activity cycles with the throwaway phrases ‘evolved on Mars’ and ‘came to Earth’. What happened to the other life-forms on Mars? How did primitive men travel millions of miles through space? If two things share a numerical relationship, it doesn’t mean they are related. If we compare say the frequency of eruptions in Yellowstone with the number of shark attacks in Australia and they ‘match’ it doesn’t mean that geysers are affecting sharks (nor that sharks are affecting geysers!). ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/35 "2006-11-07T13:17:15Z")
[QUOTE=Marley23] David Bowie did. [/QUOTE] so did Gary Sinise ---
**Author:** ![aerodave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f08c70/32.png) [@aerodave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aerodave)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/36 "2006-11-07T13:21:38Z")
If human circadian rhythms are indeed in sync with Mars’ rotational period, how does the OP explain that the human menstrual cycle is in sync with the orbital period of Earth’s moon? You can’t have it both ways, man. Or would the OP go so far as to say that while men are from Mars, women are, in fact, from Earth? (And yes, I know the lunar cycle thing is a [coincidence](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a990924.html). I’m being silly.) ---
**Author:** ![SpaceDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spacedog/32/9932_2.png) [@SpaceDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpaceDog)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/37 "2006-11-07T14:08:42Z")
[QUOTE=rocksolid] So perhaps i’ll need to start a whole new thread to get any serious answers here, but does anyone know why our body clocks don’t run on 24hr cycles? [/QUOTE] Warning. Uninformed rambling follows. As others have mentioned, they probably did in the past but then there used to be plenty of cues to tell us when to sleep, eat, hunt, etc. These cues are now absent or ignorable, things like artificial light, better nutrition and a less active life might all enable longer waking periods. This in turns leads to longer periods of sleeping until it balances out into a longer cycle. I think it’s more human adaptability coming into play rather than any mysterious significance of the odd cycle-lengths. SD ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/38 "2006-11-07T15:01:08Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] Her legs fail to reach the ground? [/QUOTE] Ooh, that’d save tons of money on shoes… ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/39 "2006-11-07T15:10:43Z")
[QUOTE=Tapioca Dextrin] The chances of anyone coming from Mars are a million to one. [/QUOTE] For or against? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-humans-evolve-on-mars/379318/40 "2006-11-07T15:19:22Z")
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