How much further can humans evolve?

[Dominic Burchnall]

This is just a thought which came to me the other day. I was looking out the window of the bus and realised how far humanity has come since the early days. Scientific and technological advancements have compensated for nearly all our shortcomings. Cars, heavy machinery, computers, medical achievements, have allowed us to become lords of the planet.
Then a thought struck me; have we taken ourselves outside of evolution? Wild animals have predation, harsh weather conditions, foraging or hunting for food, sickness, and a myriad other worries, but for humans, dangerous animals can be repelled or destroyed, houses (and in extreme cases, bunkers) protect us from the weather, or food is easier to access than ever, and we have a greater understanding of diseases and inherent frailties and how to compensate for them than ever before. So I wonder, do humans have ANY remaining evolutionary pressures, in the First World climate at least, and if so what traits would they select for?

 

[skeliton112]

We could evolve a predisposition against cancer and other deseases. A predisposition to be better at buisness. A predisposition to be promiscuous. There are always more ways to evolve.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

apparently we are getting taller. Thats evolution right?

 

[MGlBlaze]

Genetically we might not change much any more, but human society and technology still has much room for exploration and improvement. It may or may not be slow, but we will continue to evolve as a culture.

 

[wooty]

Humans have.....evolved? Not from what I've just seen in the crowd lurking outside of McDonalds.

 

[Zipa]

We are still evolving, faster even than most species. We are becoming taller overall and our digits are lengthening overall. Go back to a old castle and look at the doorways they are almost all too low for a human adult male to walk through without stooping somewhat. Usually these kinds of changes take hundreds of thousands or millions of years.

The other obvious one is that our bodies can tolerate gluten, only about 1% of us can't any more. Go back far enough to pre farming of the cereals , back then more peoples bodies were gluten intolerant, so we have changed and adapted in about 9000 years or so.
Oh and a small percentage of people are starting to show a limited resistance to the AIDS virus in Africa, something that is very recent in terms of evolution.

 

[BeerTent]

To do so little as to imagine that evolution could ever possibly end is... Mind boggling.

Both, human technology and evolution (Ninja'd on both! Aagh!) is skyrocketing in speed. Faster than ever before, and it will continue to go faster and faster.

 

[Zipa]

we are getting taller, smarter (by 3% every decade), the dominant digit on the hand has changed in just the last 20 years (from forefinger to thumb, because of the "tools" we use) blonds are likely to go extinct and i suppose eventually someone will be born without an appendix.

its not standing still

in fact recent developments have shown that changes are happening far faster than they previously though possible (the dominant finger thing really shocked evolutionary scientists)

Blondes or any other hair colour for that matter will never go extinct, there may come a time where there is a generation or two without so many of the hair colours but the genes are always present in at least someones genome from having blonde ansestors in the past. They will eventually resurface again.

 

[DEAD34345]

Well, we've probably slowed down or halted many forms of evolution by countering problems with technology, but I doubt we'll ever stop evolving completely. Besides, we're almost at the point where we mess with our own genetics instead of leaving it up to natural selection, so that's sure to shake things up a bit.

 

[Sonicron]

The human evolution is done, I think, at least the significant parts of it. Evolution (as I understand it) happens out of need (and can, as such, not be a selective process), and since we've firmly established ourselves at the very top of the food chain and developed technology to help us overcome our inbuilt limitations, the need has ceased, and therefore so has the evolutionary process.
Who knows, maybe in a few thousand years our bodies will wise up and ditch unnecessary components like the little toe or the appendix, but other than that, yeah, no more change.

That said, if we could select the direction of further (hypothetical) evolutionary process, I'd opt for an extra set of arms and the ability to levitate. (Too bad it wouldn't do me any good, since the fruits of evolution are only yielded to subsequent generations.)

 

[TimeLord]

Apes probably thought that their form was the furthest that they would ever go. Now look at them.

We could evolve to grow wings, have 4 legs, develop psychic powers. We will always keep evolving.

 

[Gluzzbung]

I hate it when scientists and others alike say thing like "humans can't evolve." They don't look at the bigger picture, humans have evolved from neanderthals (is that how you spell it?) over millions of years and the CAN evolve, just not while natural selection has gone out the window with handicapped people and those with less desirable natural traits can roam around breeding. Personally I'd like the old meat and two veg to be refined a bit more, it always looks a bit of an after thought.

 

[Harlief]

The human race will keep on evolving until we all become sterile.

 

[Zipa]

I hate it when scientists and others alike say thing like "humans can't evolve." They don't look at the bigger picture, humans have evolved from neanderthals (is that how you spell it?) over millions of years and the CAN evolve, just not while natural selection has gone out the window with handicapped people and those with less desirable natural traits can roam around breeding. Personally I'd like the old meat and two veg to be refined a bit more, it always looks a bit of an after thought.

We didn't evolve from neanderthals, they were a completely different species that died out though certain characteristics of the neanderthals did outlive the species due to in breeding with homo sapiens (us)

 

[Zipa]

well extinct was maybe a bit strong

however not every hair color is caused for the same reason

redhaeds for example are due to a regressive gene which may be due to an advantageous mutation in low sun light enviroments and as such they can pop up anywhere if the gene flips. that's not the case with bloods where its passed on directly and the simple fact is most of the world has black hair (asians, south americans, africans)

Red and blonde are both a double recessive gene, in other words it needs to be present in the genome of both of your parents. Same for blonde and generally applies to the lighter eye colours to. (not blue though, that is a genetic defect )

 

[TheDist]

We are and always will continue to evolve.

Keep in mind it is a slow thing, but it will always continue to march ever onward. As long as there is variation of allelic frequency or inherited traits if you like (granted I am very much over simplifying) within the population over time, then we are evolving, biologicaly speaking.

 

[Vivi22]

We are still evolving, faster even than most species. We are becoming taller overall and our digits are lengthening overall. Go back to a old castle and look at the doorways they are almost all too low for a human adult male to walk through without stooping somewhat. Usually these kinds of changes take hundreds of thousands or millions of years.

I find it far more likely that people were shorter due to poor diet/lack of good nutrition for long stretches of the year, rather than we are actually getting much taller. Our pre-historic ancestors were actually taller than us if I'm not mistaken.

Genetically we might not change much any more

Removing ourselves from many of the usual evolutionary pressures which cause adaptation isn't going to stop genetic mutation. I won't claim to be an expert on evolution, but intuitively I would think the level of genetic diversity would increase over time through random mutation, rather than somehow decrease or stop completely. We'll end up with a lot mutations which will neither really benefit or detract from survival in the modern world and simply carry on where they may not have 100,000 years ago.

But there are still evolutionary pressures out there in terms of disease, natural disasters, etc. And pandemic's like the Spanish flu which kill in the millions have happened before, and could happen again, particularly in countries not equipped to deal with them.

EDIT:

and the CAN evolve, just not while natural selection has gone out the window with handicapped people and those with less desirable natural traits can roam around breeding.

Your assumptions that evolution stops when evolutionary pressures are removed, or that evolution always means improvement (at least improvement by conventional societal standards) is incorrect.