Some benevolent aliens decide to genetically modify every human alive in 8000BC.
**What modifications would be most useful and most likely to survive to the present day? **, you can pick more than one.
Be warned, such modifications carry the tradeoffs they would in other animals. For example, Wings and the capacity for winged flight might sound good on paper, but the requirement to increase upper arm(wing)muscle mass at the expense of brainsize or legstrength, and losing hands. would make this a bad idea.
Feel free to critique other peoples suggestions
Now to my suggestion. I think giving humans the ability to produce vitamin c in the liver would prevent a lot of suffering from scurvy, perhaps even making long distance journeys easire. It’s found in almost all other animals, so it mustn’t be too costly.
Electrostatic and magnetic senses, the ability to sense electrical fields, and magnetism respectively.
Fish and birds have examples of these, in humans the genes for electrical reception are used to make the cheek. However there’s no obvious reason new genes to code for theses senses wouldn’t work.
I’d also equalize the strength, size, and aggression tendencies in males and females, code in better cancer cell destroying ability in the immune system.
If I’m feeling really ambitious, make a constant body temperature optional, and mentally controllable. That would greatly cut down on calorie requirements in bad times, while retaining the benefits of endothermy. Further I’d make the human body resistant to being frozen solid. Bad winter? Stop fighting it and go wait in a cave until you thaw out.
The problem with “less disease” modification is that you would end up with food shortages or overpopulation very early in history.
I’d go for convenience: massively fewer cavities and quarterly menstrual cycles.
If you’re reducing the menstrual cycle, isn’t that going to lead to a corresponding drop off in fertility? Women will only be able to get pregnant 4 times a year instead of 12.
I’ll go strictly utilitarian…no more appendix or wisdom teeth.
Teeth that are much more resistant to decay/breakage.
Better UV resistance.
Hard-code a “fat limit”, which is to say you could develop enough fat to get through a bad farming year or two, but beyond that the body would stop storing. This would lead to a decent distribution of body “types”, without the morbid obesity that is occuring in much of the world where we have amble food supplies year round.
Limit the fertile period in the female to quarterly. Make this a random thing across the species, so that there would always be fertile women around. This would, I believe, still develop the current sexual drive and such, but would limit overpopulation.
Connect those last two: In times of physical stress, such as when your body is burning through it’s fat reserve, fertility stops.
As noted previously, I don’t want to reduce disease. Disease is important. But I would make us significantly less prone to cancer.
I had a whole slew of them, but as I pondered the question I realized a lot of them would lead to the human race being wiped out or dying out.
ETA: Captain Amazing, as it is a woman can only have one full term pregnancy a year (roughly). I think this would see a slight drop in overall birth-rates, but not a lot.
Food shortages are unavoidable. Humans historically used as much as their environment could provide. However removing disease means evolutionary pressure will fall on other things such as physical fitness and intelligence, and not malaria resistance.
The human race’s most crying need is for male behavior modification,
namely reducing or eliminating their apparent genetic penchant for violent aggression.
Eliminate the appendix, for starters. Redesign the entire bipedal support mechanism to eliminate the tendency to lower back problems. Especially get some better support somehow for the uterus during pregnancy. Oh, and while you’re at it, redesign the sinuses so that they drain properly.
Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake is about a mad scientist who genetically engineers a new human race and keeps them in an enclosed artificial rainforest environment while plotting to exterminate the original human race…
Their genetic engineering removed aggression and for mating purposes substituted an estrus cycle in which men only went into sexual mode at intervals upon which their dicks turned blue and they lined up to dance to be selected by women to mate. Their creator, being a militant atheist, specifically removed the religion gene so that no religious thought would ever enter their heads. Then when the original humans were all exterminated, the sole survivor who was the mad scientist’s ex-best friend led the genetically engineered race out into the wild, and the next thing he knew, they were worshiping him like a god… :smack:
Assuming it has a genetic basis, I’d follow colonial’s lead, accepting Namkcalb’s objection–I’d shift the balance between predispositions for aggression/competition and altruism. There’s no reason why two societies built on opposing foundations won’t have the same desires to improve quality of life. It will be a much better society that focuses it’s collective energies on finding solutions and building up than one focused on quasi-zero sum games.
