Body and mindwise, how do you think we are going to evolve? We seem to be getting taller and older but are we gonna have acess to more brain function? I know I know there may be throwbacks (John Travolta, All the presidential frontrunners, anyone who enjoyed some of the latest movie garbage spewing out of Hollywood) but do you forsee us becoming more?
Personally I think that the great meltin pot of diversity will become more streamlined with intergender marriage becoming more and more the norm. Hopefully, maybe racism will phase out.
Maybe the Red Sox will win the world series too while I am dreaming.
Evolution is directed by natural selection: environmental factors may prevent reproduction and the passing on of genes. Any genes that somehow help the organism overcome environmental obstacles are more likely to be passed along to subsequent generations.
Homo sapiens is the first animal capable of altering his environment to any extent, thereby trumping natural selection.
First off, let’s deal with the most glaring error in your thinking. The Red Sox ain’t winning no World Series, OK?
The nature of evolution means that those characteristics that promote the ability of an individual to pass on either his own, or some close relative’s genetic heritage to offspring who are themselves able to do the same. Such things as intelligence are not strictly inheritable, and may not have that effect either.
One thing that I think will become a transmissible benefit to humans in the future is a highly effective and adaptable immune system. As human logistics continue the thousand-year trend toward more frequent (and more broadly inclusive) movement among populations the exchange of pathogens will make such immune strength a very desirable survival trait. In addition, the continuing intrusion into other biological systems will increase the species total exposure to zoonoses.
Of course from our perspective as individual organisms experiencing evolution it will look more like millions of folks dying from new, and renewed diseases. Medicine will continue to fight disease, and destroy all the weakest strains of organisms that are able to attack man, and man’s domestic animals. From the point of view of evolution that will make only minor differences. Of course it won’t be much of a news maker, since things that take millions of years don’t get covered in the paper.
I don’t think we’re as secure as most people seem to. One good, new disease jumps from animals to humans and a whole lot of people are gonna die.
Also, keep in mind that the number of vancomycin resistant strains of bactieria are growing. And we discoverd pennicilin not even a century ago, so it didn’t take long (in evolutionary terms) for the little buggers to adapt.
I think something, most likely a disease or bacterium, will cause another great plague, within the next century or two. If that’s not selective pressure, I dunno what is.
I’m not so sure that, as a species, our immune systems will really get stronger. A good plague can really narrow the gene pool, actually reducing how robust we are genetically.
Body and mindwise, how do you think we are going to evolve? We seem to be getting taller and older but are we gonna have acess to more brain function? I know I know there may be throwbacks (John Travolta, All the presidential frontrunners, anyone who enjoyed some of the latest movie garbage spewing out of Hollywood) but do you forsee us becoming more?**
Two points you mentioned, height and getting older. The added height is a function of improved diet. Better, regularly provided food allows the body to extend its potential. As for living longer, that’s primarily health care. Fewer people are dying in infancy and once into teen and adulthood, are receiving better, regular medical care. Therefore, they can live longer.
You seem to imply that evolution has a direction, but it doesn’t. Stated very simply, when the enviroment changes, those who can adapt, do, those that don’t die. One of the most wonderful things about the human genome is its plasticity. We originally evolved (apparently) on the plains of SE Africa, yet we’ve learned to live (long term) in every enviroment on the planet except underwater.
For example, compare the red blood cell count of a person living at sealevel with someone living at high altitude. Compare their lung capacity, etc. The high altitude person’s body has adapted for living in a lower oxygen enviroment.
Compare the nose of a person who living in a very cold climate to one who lives in a very warm climate. The nose filters and warms air for the lungs. The cold climate person’s nose is larger for warming the air before it enters the lungs.
You see my point, the body adapts to help the individual survive because of the plasticity of the human genome.
First off, hematocrit (red blood cell count) differences between altitudes is not an evolved trait. You can increase your hematocrit by living at a higher elevation, and decrease it by living at a lower elevation.
I, for one, believe that we are close to the end of the evolution of the human race. This is mainly because of my faith in new technology. Medical technology has advanced to the point that we know how to engineer single-celled organisms that don’t age. Gene therapy that cures the aging process in already-living people (i.e. you and me) is not that far off. Nanotechnology is considered to be an inevitable technology by many (most) people who have studied the principles of how it works. We are about 30 years or so away from the first universal assembler. Once we get the hang of diamond-age technology, we’ll be able to bolster our immune systems with artificial additions. We may even be able to link our brains directly to computers (so compact that one the size of a single human cell would be more powerful than all currently existing computers combined), increasing our mental capabilities to a currently unimaginable degree.
We have no need of evolution. It will not help you or me. Technology is what we should put stock in. Evolution is a brutal system that cares little if you wither away and die slowly. Technology is what will save us from natural selection.
Of course, that’s just my opinion, and my greatest hope. Such developments ARE possible, and likely.
A report I read many moons ago and which I now canot find reached some interesting conclusions about how current and developing trends might have their effects realised in the next evolutionary change (gradual as they may be)
As I remember.
We can expect to see an increase in cranial size and in particular far larger forehead regions.
The justification for this is the observed and continuing increase in the weight of the brain as we utilze the frontal lobes more and more.
We can expect to see the lower jawline weaken and recede.
Justification here is the change in our diet. It is becoming incereaingly unnesecary for us to have powerful meat cuting equipment when our main foodstays have been processed in the way they are.
I dont remeber the rest but I recall an artists impression. Long thin and lanky with a huge forehead , receding eyes and an almost completely absent lower jaw. Hardly what we might have hoped the Uberman to look like but there you go.
How could these changes be due to natural selection? Anyone who’s seen Jerry Springer knows that stupid people are fully capable of breeding. In the same vein, why would large-jawed people be at a reproductive disadvantage compared to weak-jawed ones? If anything, I’d say the opposite, since weak, receding jaws are generally considered sexually unattractive.
We live in a social structure where natural selection no longer plays a significant role. The static nature of evolutionary effects caused by the survival of the fittest among humans will mean that we cannot expect it to influence our bodies/minds to a noticable degree.
Therefore the next physiological changes we can expect to see will be influenced by the way in which we live in this equilibrium.
I concede that the description i gave is not an example of an evolutionary shift. That is something that I believe will only be brought about with meteor impact , nuclear war , pandemics etc. The effects of which are impossible to postulate on lest we understand the exact conditions they will create.
I replied in the spirit of the OP if not quite according to the letter of the law.
First off, hematocrit (red blood cell count) differences between altitudes is not an evolved trait. You can increase
your hematocrit by living at a higher elevation, and decrease it by living at a lower elevation.**
I didn’t say that the change in red blood cell count was an evolved trait. I was trying to say that the adaptability of the human body, of which the increase in red blood cell count is an example IS an evolved trait. It’s the adaptability, not the consequence that’s the evolved trait.
**you then wrote:
We have no need of evolution. It will not help you or me. Technology is what we should put stock in. Evolution is a brutal system that cares little if you wither away and die slowly. Technology is what will save us from natural selection.**
I disagree. If humans stop themselves from evolving, it certainly doesn’t stop the rest of the planet from doing so. Eventually, something will evolve that’ll find humans as a nice, tasty snack. No, I don’t mean big critters with sharp claws and fangs. Some nice little single-cell organism that’s immune to all our efforts to stop it will do the job just as nicely.
It is also posible that humans may evolve in diferent directions.
In wealthy countries the well-off may choose to mate in response to attracting factors, such as aesthetics and intellegence, whilst in the 3rd world (and the poverty ghettos in the 1st world) attracting factors may be strength and stamina.
As there seems to be no reduction impending on the gap between rich and poor, we may in a few generations time see this start to occur.
Back when getting laid meant getting pregnant, a strong sexual desire increased your chances for reproductive success. You didn’t have to want kids, they just came with the territory. The development of contraceptive technology, combined with the development of fertility-enhancing technology, to me means one thing:
In the next few centuries, humans are going to evolve away from having strong sexual desires, and toward having strong desires to have children.
As Max the Immortal and others have mentioned, evolution by natural selection will not play a significant role in human development, at least not as long as we retain our intelligence. For a relatively slow-reproducing species such as ourselves, natural selection operates over periods of tens or hundreds of thousands of years at the very fastest. Even given a civilization-destroying disaster, history has shown that we could expect to rebuild our civilization in mere thousands of years.
For good or for ill, it is only a matter of time before we understand our genetics and can manipulate the contents and expression of our genes at will. The choices we make, granted by technology, will dictate our genetic nature in the near future.
I have to agree with liss on the question of natural selection. Once we as a species were able to reshape our environment to suit ourselves rather than vice-versa, natural selection would cease to be a factor in human evolution.
Didn’t Time magazine just have something on this? I seem to recall…
Not that we won’t evolve at all, though if you watch daytime TV you will question this…
There was a time when people who were near sighted(like me) or manic depressive(like me) would die before they could reproduce. Thaks to glasses and Paxil™, I will survive long enough to find a nice Jewish girl and reproduce.
My point is that due to medical technology many genes that have obvious drawbacks and no obvious benefit are being passed on. Cavemen with diabetes died. So, unless we can develop therapy to actually change human genetic make up, we will have more and more of these genes passed on. In our future, I see more overweight, visually impaired, humans with various other conditions (mental illness, hemophelia etc)
Before any one misunderstands me, I am NOT suggesting sterilisation for any one judged “unfit to breed”. While some otherwise well meaning folks have supported such programs, the advocate who comes to mind is Adolf Hitler. While people with genes like mine probably shouldn’t breed (I’m gonna have to start a college and a psychiatric fund for my kids) no one has the right to forbid us from doing so.
I think that sexual selection is now far more significant than natural selection, considering that it’s fairly rare that nature interferes with an individual’s ability to reach adulthood and procreate – due to the development of government, medicine, agriculture, etc. However, each of us does need to find a mate that’s willing to have sex with us (or willing to have children with us) in order for our genes to be successful. And the more children an individual has, the more successful his genes have been, in evolutionary terms.
To determine which direction our species will evolve, all we have to do is look at the types of people who are having the most children. I’m not optimistic.
Paul
We’re going to grow up, that’s where. I figure we’re still in the late teens of our evolutionary maturity. We’ll probably enter our ‘20s’ in a thousand years or so.
There is no prediction to an outcome of evolution. Nothing is “higher” on the evolutionary tree. We are just as evolved as E. coli. Different selections lead to different outcomes.
So, I see a few things happening :
Bigger hips in women. Women with smaller hips tend to die more frequently in childbirth. Link this to larger fetuses with larger cranial size (probably a by-product of better nutrition all around), and hips will probably increase.
Darkening of the skin. Two reasons (short term). The ozone is decreasing, giving more and earlier onset melanoma (which kills, therefore reducing fitness), and spiralling birth-rate in “Third World” nations. This basically means that Europe and the USA (with basically Zero Population Growth) are losing the war on genetics, while India, China, Latin America, and Sub Saharan Africa (assuming HIV is controlled) are winning.
Better detoxification enzymes of the liver. This to better deal with our now constant lifelong exposure to environmental carcinogens like benzo-a-pyrenes, etc.
Natural selection will not stop. Even if we halt disease, there will still be reasons why people die before childbearing age or become sterile. There will still be changes in environment. There will still be people who are able to have 30 babies as opposed to only 1. These are all changes in fitness. Even if we assume the “Logan’s Run” or “This Perfect Day” scenario of a tightly controlled uniform world, people with slower reaction times will die more frequently in car crashes and people with less robust livers will die more frequently of drug overdoses. Etc.
Some of the evolutionary forces at work on all species…
Natural Selection
Sexual Selection
Genetic Drift
Mutation
Recombination
Gene Flow
Our medical technology may temporarily slow the natural selection aspect a bit, but it will still be at work to some extent. Even so, the other forces will still be at work.
Some speculations…
(1) the near-term gene pool will become more homogeneous as people travel the world more frequently (mixing of races, spreading of germs, etc.)
(2) in the long-term, if we’re lucky/skilled enough to colonize other planets, human evolution may experience a punctuated equilibrium due to sudden differences in environment & segregated societies (for the off-worlders anyway)
(3) I’m trying to speculate on some long-term anatomy changes, but it seems impossible to pin anything down since the long-term (100’s of thousands, or millions, of years) progress of our technology and changes in the environment are unknown and are key ingredients. Perhaps we’ll keep developing better technologies or perhaps our civilization will crash (overpopulation? environmental change?) and we’ll have to restart as hunter-gatherers…two pathways with two different sets of what would be advantageous to survival.