I think we are constantly evolving but, I doubt we will see any noticeable changes any time soon, as really I don't thing there is any need to evolve further. We have no natural predators or anything to adapt to.
How much further can humans evolve?
- Thread starter Dominic Burchnall
- Start date
How we evolve is dependent entirely on the trials we face as a species in the distant future. So it is unlikely that what we worry about now (finances, cancer, nuclear war, etc) will have much of an impact. The management of finances, for example, has only been an issue in general human society for about two-hundred years, which is an unfathomably tiny period on the scale of evolution.
It is therefore necessarily impossible to forecast what direction evolution will take humanity as a whole in, based simply on what we experience now. We are currently at a blip in our existence, where technology and society are progressing at a massively accelerated rate compared with the rest of human history, this is because of things like the discovery of electricity, or the splitting of the atom. It is unreasonable to expect this rate of progression to happen for a period of more than about 500 years, so what follows this rapid advancement will have more of an effect on human evolution than the foreseeable future.
A good place to look at for this sort of thing is somewhere like Africa which, because of the harsh climate and constantly shifting balance of power, naturally progresses at a very slow rate. So people in the third world will probably develop slower and more sophisticated metabolisms to cope with long periods of famine, they will become better at storing water in their bodies, become resistant to some common diseases and the such-like. Evolution will be quite pronounced in these societies because of the dire situations they're in. As long as the west remains dominant, affluent and comfortable, we won't evolve much at all.
Like I say, this is wild speculation and my inexpert opinion is, in all likelihood, horribly incorrect.
It is therefore necessarily impossible to forecast what direction evolution will take humanity as a whole in, based simply on what we experience now. We are currently at a blip in our existence, where technology and society are progressing at a massively accelerated rate compared with the rest of human history, this is because of things like the discovery of electricity, or the splitting of the atom. It is unreasonable to expect this rate of progression to happen for a period of more than about 500 years, so what follows this rapid advancement will have more of an effect on human evolution than the foreseeable future.
A good place to look at for this sort of thing is somewhere like Africa which, because of the harsh climate and constantly shifting balance of power, naturally progresses at a very slow rate. So people in the third world will probably develop slower and more sophisticated metabolisms to cope with long periods of famine, they will become better at storing water in their bodies, become resistant to some common diseases and the such-like. Evolution will be quite pronounced in these societies because of the dire situations they're in. As long as the west remains dominant, affluent and comfortable, we won't evolve much at all.
Like I say, this is wild speculation and my inexpert opinion is, in all likelihood, horribly incorrect.
I think the biggest mistake most people make when considering humans and evolution is to see humans and evolution as separate; to see humans as somehow outside of evolutionary processes. Yes we made houses and access food easily but how is that any different from a bird's nest, or a bird's ability to fly to various food sources across the world? It's slightly more complex, that's all.Dominic Burchnall said:
We are not beyond evolution. Everything we do is part of evolution, yet somehow we continually seem to see ourselves as somehow above it and master of our fate. What we do is complex and impressive - to ourselves - but of course it seems that way, we're using human brains to comprehend it.
I applaud anyone who questions human evolution, but I urge you not to see ourselves as above or separated from it. If we were masters of our own fate then there would be a billion things that would be different in the world today. Make no mistake, we are in a constant struggle for survival. Whether we are aware of it or not. And not just against the environment, against each other as well.
Think of it in terms of the millions of years evolution can take place over. What you do for a living versus that person up the road who works harder, tries harder to find a mate, raises their children differently. A thousand years from now their family tree could outnumber yours 1000 to 1. Or maybe your family line will be extinct altogether? What traits are being selected? Those that survive and flourish.
if your talking about evolving genetically then yeah we still have plenty to look at, no more sickness, height & strength, and yeah either develop a use for or lose the appendix.
Personally i'd love to see humans become like the creature from Splice, everyone would be much more interesting.
Personally i'd love to see humans become like the creature from Splice, everyone would be much more interesting.
In this thread:
A lot of people who mistakenly think evolution is about becoming faster, stronger, smarter, taller, or any number of specific traits that have nothing to do with Darwinism... with zero posts talking about the ONE thing evolution is about:
Adaptation.
Are humans becoming better adapted to their environment? Constantly, though both mate selection, as well as through other factors.
Humans will continue to evolve so long as humans have differences and exist in an environment. To claim otherwise is to fail at knowing what evolution is, and thus, have zero stake in the discussion.
A lot of people who mistakenly think evolution is about becoming faster, stronger, smarter, taller, or any number of specific traits that have nothing to do with Darwinism... with zero posts talking about the ONE thing evolution is about:
Adaptation.
Are humans becoming better adapted to their environment? Constantly, though both mate selection, as well as through other factors.
Humans will continue to evolve so long as humans have differences and exist in an environment. To claim otherwise is to fail at knowing what evolution is, and thus, have zero stake in the discussion.
That just means that evolution will be less drastic and less focused. Doesn't mean it will stop. You can never stop genetic mutations. There will be mutations, and they will be passed on regardless of whether we need them to survive as a species or not.Kopikatsu said:
Humans are still evolving, right now. It's just slow enough that you won't notice it.
There's still sexual selection if nothing else, people too ugly/stupid/assholish to find a mate will not pass on their genes.
There's still sexual selection if nothing else, people too ugly/stupid/assholish to find a mate will not pass on their genes.
True, but it also means it will be detrimental to the species, so I can't call it evolution.gigastrike said:
As was mentioned above, people with genetic illnesses are living longer to the point where they can have children and pass those defective genes down. In a few hundred years, the global rate for those diseases will most likely increase significantly.
Except that's where you are wrong. Adaptation isn't the cause of evolution at all. We don't adapt to our surroundings. Our genome changes through mutations and those with the favourable mutations live on in their niche and the others die off. We don't adapt to our niches, instead those who are lucky to get the best genes for survival live while the others die off. That's what natural selection is.DracoSuave said:
We hardly won't.
Evolution is very simple, those fit to survive end up surviving and pass on their genes, those who don't perish before doing so.
Theres no big guiding hand choosing which genes would be most fit for passing on, and which are not usefull anymore, hence we won't loose our pinky toe, or our appendix, unless having those stops us from pro-creating.
The only thing that we can evolve past, is things stopping us from pro-creating, mainly sterility, and only the kinds of sterility serious enough, that they can't be helped medically.
On the other hand, you could argue that we're actually devolving, since people who would've not survived to pass on their genes years ago, can survive and pass on their genes today, due to science.
If controlled breeding was enforced, we could evolve more, or if science finds some way to controll which genes are beeing passed down to the child of 2 given people.
But yeah, science is taking over for evolution, providing the solutions to our problems, evolution would've otherwise provided in a much crueler way.
Evolution is very simple, those fit to survive end up surviving and pass on their genes, those who don't perish before doing so.
Theres no big guiding hand choosing which genes would be most fit for passing on, and which are not usefull anymore, hence we won't loose our pinky toe, or our appendix, unless having those stops us from pro-creating.
The only thing that we can evolve past, is things stopping us from pro-creating, mainly sterility, and only the kinds of sterility serious enough, that they can't be helped medically.
On the other hand, you could argue that we're actually devolving, since people who would've not survived to pass on their genes years ago, can survive and pass on their genes today, due to science.
If controlled breeding was enforced, we could evolve more, or if science finds some way to controll which genes are beeing passed down to the child of 2 given people.
But yeah, science is taking over for evolution, providing the solutions to our problems, evolution would've otherwise provided in a much crueler way.
To be fair, Moore's Law sort of ran out because of physical limitation. So even some aspects of technology have hit a wall (one could argue that pharma tech is on a pendulum trajectory at this point, doing good and bad at the same time) and has been on said wall for the last four or five years. Technology is the quick change in human society, evolution is what keeps us alive on the long run... or kills us. Our own technology has created super viruses, people that cannot live without society, and so on. As the saying goes, mother nature always bats last.BeerTent said:
I wouldn't be surprised if some near future event forced evolution's hand on a global scale.
Then there's the whole of space, humans aren't even remotely adequately evolved to survive in it, certainly not in multiple different systems. We have to go through all those steps too... we need to figure out how to survive outside of our planet's/sun's magnetosphere (as both our bodies and any conceivable technology will be under the whims of cosmic radiation, so super robot bodies don't really work). Evolution has a lot of work to do... if it can even overcome said problem at all.
There are claims that the Mongols and other such tribes of people were on average 2 meters tall, however the peoples that they tended to conqueror were usually smaller and weaker. So, breed them together and you get people that would be around what is today's average height. Then we have to take into account all the growth hormones in food... Oy.ash-brewster said:
A thing that needs to be taken into account with height/size is temperature. As the planet heats up overall, people might start getting smaller. From a purely physics point of view (as I am no biologist), the ratio of surface area to volume is an important factor for how your body "keeps it cool". For instance, the stereotypical big Russian was perfectly designed for the stereotypical cold weather in Northern Russia. A larger body has a lower surface area to volume ration, meaning they retain heat better.
So, while saying that I'm wrong about species adaptation, you go on and describe the process of species adaptation.ZiggyE said:
Just sayin'.
Um, no. That can't happen without some serious (and I mean SERIOUS) genetic tinkering. We would never naturally evolve to grow wings or any additional pair of limbs alongside our existing limbs on account of us being tetrapods (four-limbed vertebrates descended from late Devonian lobe-finned fish such as Eusthenopteron) for a start, not to mention the sheer redundancy of such features. Human, and indeed any tetrapod, would be ill-suited to even be artificially engineered to be a hexapod (six-limbed animals, none of which are vertebrates) as their anatomies are poorly suited to accommodate an extra pair of limbs.TimeLord said:
When our descendants become so different to us that they become truly new species, we'll most likely end up with a number of different species diverging from their basal form, modern Homo Sapiens. For example, in more technologically dependent populations, we will see more of a shift towards greater intellectual capacities and with it, the gradual atrophy of our bodies, for example smaller muscles, bones and organs in order to make up for the greater amounts of energy consumed by the increasing brain size.
Evolution is a slow process, so any divergence probably won't be apparent until hundreds of thousands of years down the line. By that time, if our species isn't wiped out before then, our descendants will probably have at least a few other planets to call home, which will cause further divisions as they adapt to their new environments.
ash-brewster said:Freak!winter2 said:Heh I'm perfectly happy with my green eyes tbh.ash-brewster said:SWEET! I'm a blue eyed, blonde mutant!! Cue X-Men theme. (Also, I wonder if there is some blonde/blue eye hatred/fear/envy in this thread.TheDist said:)
(Oh.. and I wasn't thinking about your post when I was half jokingly mentioning the blonde/blue eye thing)