What are Some Theories of Evolution?
Evolutionary theory has come a long way since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. Prior to its publication, and in direct competition, Jean-Bapiste Lamarck was promulgating a well-known incorrect variant of evolutionary theory: Lamarckism or Lamarckian evolution. Lamarck thought that changes to the body over the course of a lifetime could be passed down to ancestors as long as they were common to both sexes of the species. For instance, his explanation for why a giraffe has a long neck is because the giraffe had a history of predecessors that tried harder and harder to reach tall leaves on a tree, and accordingly the offspring were born with larger necks. This theory of evolution has been demonstrated to be false – the genetic difference between parents and offspring can be explained entirely by their genes, and requires no reference to the daily lives of the parents. The most important theory of evolution is known as the modern synthesis or neo-Darwinian synthes
