Evoloution and Humans: Does it stop?

I don't think enough time has passed since Homo Sapiens Sapiens appeared for it to have evolved much no matter how much we've been affecting the outcome.

Ya, your right. Evolution happens so slowly not much has really changed geneticly but you have to admit our bodies are adapting to our life style. It would probably take a lot for humans to adapt back to life in the forest.


Where do you think human evolution is going?
Are we eventually going to loose our bodies considering how little we use them every day?
Or maybe were heading towards our own extinction. What do you think

Our bodies are adapting, but not our genetics, there simply hasn't been enough time for that yet.



I don't think so. Feral children have survived with only animals as surrogate parents, and thats gotta be much harder than being born into a primitive cave culture. It may not be obvious because we shave and brush our teeth, but we are still virtually identical in every way to people who walked the earth 50,000 years ago.



I think that manual manipulation of genetics will outstrip any natural genetic evolution for the rest of human evolution (unless technocological civilization is abandoned or destroyed).



We won't lose them through lack of use, but we may lose them through mere choice one day.



I think that the definition of what it is to be a human will have to change by a thousand years from now. I doubt we will still be bound by our biophysical structure by that time. If in a thousand years, the human thought process can be copied and moved to a machine which would live forever, how many will not choose that path, in the face of certain death due to old age.

If humans are so intelligent and evolved, why are we destroying our own planet, why do we have brutal wars where thousands dye. If we were some advanced civilized society don't you think we would have the wisdom to protect our home and find harmony. I think our knowledge and technology has grown faster than our wisdom and that could be our downfall.

As to your statement about feral children I wasn't meaning physically, more mentally. Think about it if the modern world were destroyed and all technology was destroyed, how well do you think humans would cope. Would they move on and forget the modern world, or would they cling to it and try desperately to create that world again?

I think it's a mistake to look at cultural constructions (i.e., society), as though there is a clear line demarkating a border between civilization and nature, or to think of the development of human societies as a linear progression. Every society is a patchwork of influences, some very ancient and "primitive" and some very modern and "advanced." Go to any city where universities stand next to churches, where genomes are being sequenced within a stone's throw of a confessional.

If, for some reason, we lose some tools (like high-tech scientific inquiry, for instance), there's no reason to think we'll abandon all of the other tools (agriculture, baking, healing, art, music, etc.) that we've accumulated over the year. There is no end point, and so there are no such things as setbacks. Civilizations have risen and fallen over the millennia, and people just keep doing their thing. There is a certain chauvinism in thinking that all the stuff we have and do today is somehow the most advanced state of human civilization, as though there was some ruler with which to gauge these things.


Or, short answer...


I think "people," as a whole, would cope quite well. Many people on the planet live without the benefits of advanced technology, anyway.

But how long will that last, will we be able to hold on to those things that make us human, music art, love or could it all be swallowed up eventually by scientific advancement. It is a popular theme for many sci-fi movies.

Just a suggestion of a good book about anthropology and human evolution, somewhat short but a good read is "Tribes" by arthur slade.

We wont be getting any smarter unless we figure out how to activate unused portions of the brain. The female pelvic structure would have to widen drastically to accomodate any significant increase in head size during birth. Culturaly we will evolve, but phisically we are pretty much done.

You may be right, in order for a species to evolve there needs to be evolutionary pressures. Since no individuals are prevented procreating and no certain genes are being passed on I bet that the only way our genetics will change is with genetic engineering. That raises the question are we actually evolving? It is impossible to tell since it happens so slowly but the factors that cause a species to evolve are no longer present in our society so how can we continue evolving?

We are changing (evolving) but we have moved the context from the natural environment to the cultural environment. That has been so successful that we now are in a position to control the very stuff that controls our biological being, our DNA. What is fascinating about us as a species is that we have changed the rule of natural selection, for us. It does not mean however that we are not subject to them.

Acquink, I disagree.

I do not think there is any selective pressure from the cultural environment.

Our population has grown so large an diverse, that even the ugliest and most undesireable people are able to have children.

Even people who are grotesquely obese do not seem to have any problems finding people to reproduce with.

Watch Jerry Springer. I'm serious, there doesn't seem to be any selective pressure, not for skill, not for physical prowess, not for attractiveness, and not for personality or society.

And without selective pressure, a species will continue to diversify...and yes, traits of that species CAN be lost.

I think your points seem to coincide with Acquiunk's. Gotesque people mating is changing the rules. Also, technology has outweighed the effects of biological evolution. Natural gene mutations no longer matter, considering their vast inferiority and inefficiency when compared to the progressions in technology. Take a ten year sample of technology vs 10,000 years of evolution. We defy natural selection because it is no longer relevant.

If you take any pre-adapted adult creature and yank it out of its world, it's not going to fare very well in comparison to the same creature who grew up in the new world.

The culture of humanity has changed a lot over the recent years and our knowledge has grown, but our physical form and our basic intellect haven't changed much at all. I thought we were talking about evolution here, not enculturation.

how do you post a picture with your name?

I have a question. What did austrolapithecus aferensis evolve from, what was the form of human ancestors before we took on the generic ape form, or do we even know.

I disagree with the statement that evolution has essentially stopped in the human animal.

May I point out that due to the evolution of societies (and the development of large scale killing machines) WMDs if you would, that we are living in an unusually benign environment for the current model of Homo sapiens.

Due to bubonic plague and its effect on European society western society became wealthy enough to project its ideas over a great part of the world. The killing of the resident populations of the americas, The killing of great numbers of slavs, and germanic peoples through the actions of Napolean, Stalin, and Hitler, and Asians through the offices of the Japanese and British Empires and JFK and LBJ allowed the survivors and the surviving society to become wealthy ( buy lots of guns).

If we again become populated to the point where access to calories means survival then simpler evolutionary pressures again will predominate. However at this point in our history evolutionary success is dependent upon which set of ideas kill the most (other) humans. A possibly temporary "societal" evolution if you will.

Consequently I suspect that evolutionary pressures today are selecting for " big brain cases and big female behinds". This is apparent in the physique of the actors and actresses in our cinemas, both Eastern and Western. The intelligence of the male leads and the voluptiousness of the females tend to bear me out.

Jennifer Lopez would be an indication of the way that I think that we are heading. Our intelligence has made bosoms less important so now many of them in our most admired (emulated) persons are silicone. But we currently need brains. They WILL be selected for, despite some evidence to the contrary.

Has any one heard about the skeleton scientists discovered called Homo florensis. It is believed to be a new species of human. A so called "dwarf species" only a meter tall. It is a female believed to be about 18000 years old, it has changed the belief that we were the only humans on the earth for tens of thousands of years.

Sort of related - and since this seems to be the current evolution thread - I ran across this article in Science Magazine:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY:
80 Years of Watching the Evolutionary Scenery
Ernst Mayr*


Having reached the rare age of 100 years, I find myself in a unique position: I'm the last survivor of the golden age of the Evolutionary Synthesis. That status encourages me to present a personal account of what I experienced in the years (1920s to the 1950s) that were so crucial in the history of evolutionary biology.

Evolutionary biology in its first 90 years (1859 to the 1940s) consisted of two widely divergent fields: evolutionary change in populations and biodiversity, the domains of geneticists and naturalists (systematicists), respectively. Histories covering this period were usually written by geneticists, who often neglected the evolution of biodiversity. As I am a naturalist, I consider this neglect to be a grave deficiency of most historical treatments.

Curiously, I cannot pinpoint the age at which I became an evolutionist. I received all of my education in Germany, where evolution was not really controversial. In the gymnasium (equivalent to a U.S. high school), my biology teacher took evolution for granted. So, I am quite certain, did my parents--who, to interest their three teenage sons, subscribed to a popular natural history journal that accepted evolution as a fact. Indeed, in Germany at that time there was no Protestant fundamentalism. And after I had entered university, no one raised any questions about evolution, either in my medical curriculum or in my preparations for the Ph.D. Those who were unable to adopt creation as a plausible solution for biological diversity concluded that evolution was the only rational explanation for the living world................

The rest of this article is here: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/305/5680/46

view of a hatchling
humans are evolving all the time, as we are gettign smarter (individuals, George W Bush for instance, are not consideres as people, they are simply to stupid).

Actually GW Bush is smarter in most ways than the average American, perhaps smarter than thee or me.
My guess is humans are devolving in the USA and most of the first world countries, as the birth rate is higher among the intelligence and attitude challenged than among more successful persons. If this persists long term our average distant descendents will be less smart, with poorer attitudes = less fit than we are on the average = Evolution in reverse. Neil