# What will humans look like in 5,000, 10,,000 and 25,000 years? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 9, 2018, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061 "2018-09-09T19:27:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b2d939/32.png) [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Go_Arachnid_Laser_1)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2018, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/21 "2018-09-10T16:24:26Z")
I think that the only think stopping the possibility of genetically engineered pink eyes and blue hair in the next few years is only stopped by this societal hangup about tinkering with the human genome. If we get over that hurdle, I don’t think that lack of melanin will be such an issue. ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2018, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/22 "2018-09-10T17:28:31Z")
I would wager that humanity will be extinct in 10000 years. If it does survive, it would be repopulated from isolated populations, so would largely look like them. I think that there are enough potential threats with low levels of probability that they add up to a very high level of probability of something destroying us. Population decline is the most interesting one. Maybe we just stop having kids and fade away into that good night. One interesting demographic scenario to look at is that if the world had the German birth rate and it continued at that rate, we would be extinct by 2400. That’s kind of cool to think about. For ‘real’ numbers, we project to go extinct by 3000. Of course, that’s not how things work. Birth rates would be certain to pick up at a certain point, but what if they didn’t? Shame I won’t be around to see it. ---
**Author:** ![WildBlueYonder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ce7236/32.png) [@WildBlueYonder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildBlueYonder)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2018, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/23 "2018-09-10T17:42:55Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > In ~100 years, we will either be engineering our bodies, or we will transition to another form. Either machine bodies, or bodies made of energy, or something else. I think that might happen but not in a 100 years. Going to take longer, unless, technology accelerates a bit faster than its been. Which is possible. I wont be around so… . . . And IQ’s getting better? Maybe in other countries…:eek::eek: ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2018, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/24 "2018-09-10T19:35:47Z")
> [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser](#): > > I think that the only think stopping the possibility of genetically engineered pink eyes and blue hair in the next few years is only stopped by this societal hangup about tinkering with the human genome. Pink eyes are doable - they even occur naturally, although very rarely. The downside is that they are often associated with poor vision. Blue hair, though, would be a problem. First, blue hair does not occur in any mammal. Animals that do have blue coloration, like birds with blue feathers, are almost always blue to due _structural_ color, not pigments. Blue bird feathers happen because the microscopic structure of the feather refracts light of certain wavelengths, not because the feathers are actually blue due to pigment chemicals. Mammalian hair would be challenging, at best, to engineer in such a manner, if it’s possible at all. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2018, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/25 "2018-09-10T19:59:02Z")
Structural color referring to light refraction caused by specific alignment of collagen fibers in the dermis, as opposed to an actual blue chemical. So we’d be much more likely to develop brilliant blue or red hides (like a [mandrill face](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwizivGHnLHdAhUGQ6wKHXygBCEQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjustfunfacts.com%2Finteresting-facts-about-mandrills%2F&psig=AOvVaw2HMVklKdfr2q-84yl8_mxC&ust=1536695791562262)) As for blue, I think George Carlin has already addressed it with his observations that there are no (naturally occurring) blue foods. Blueberries, he notes, are purple. So can we do purple hair? ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2018, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/26 "2018-09-10T20:08:09Z")
Forty Six and Two. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/27 "2018-09-11T03:09:05Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Perhaps you could provide evidence of this seemingly ludicrous claim. > **[New evidence for dysgenic fertility for intelligence in the United States -...](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10842506/)** > > Data were taken from the 1994 National Opinion Research Center survey of a representative sample of American adults to examine the relation between the intelligence of adults aged 40+ and their numbers of children and their numbers of siblings. The... There is also the issue of international fertility, where places like Hong Kong, South Korea, Germany, China, etc. have low fertility while sub saharan Africa has high fertility. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/28 "2018-09-11T03:19:52Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > We will likely be engaging in some degree of genetic filtering or enhancement, although I would hesitate to put any particular timeline on it as there are a variety of different technologies to be developed as well as much greater knowledge of the human genome and epigenetic factors that govern gene expression than we have today. Living or working in space, outside of a terrestrial environment, would almost certainly require significant changes right down to the cellular level to accommodate the environments and problems encountered in freefall or on the surface of low gravity worlds. I think any speculation we can make today about what that would look like would be about as accurate as a pre-transistor computer scientist would predict of modern smartphones; we just don’t know what the capabilities will be, or what we might desire in a future transhuman form other than very general statements about greater intelligence, emotional regulation, and physical resiliance. > > I think entirely synthetic “machine bodies” are unlikely, not only because it is more flexible to modify the existing human form but also because the “brain in a box” notion of transferring a brain or consciousness to a machine body misses the fact that the brain and central nervous system are a continuua with the rest of the body. There is no part where the CNS stops and the body begins, and a brain that is not getting adequate nervous stimuli and feedback will start to hallucinate it. (In the minds of some, everything we perceive is a “hallucination” insofar as it is a reconstruction that the brain produces by integrating a wide range of disparate sensory information.) And frankly, before technology is sophisticated enough to produce a mechanical simulacrum of sufficient fidelity to behave like a body we’ll probably find that it is easier to modify or synthesize biological-type machines to do work. The future is not aluminum and plastic, but carbon and amino acids. > > “Bodies made of pure energy” is a science fiction trope that doesn’t really have any physically realizable form; there isn’t really any way to create a stable self-regulating system that is “pure energy” like heat or light, without some kind of physical substrate. Bodies could be made in wildly variable form although altering the brain and its connections while retaining something that looks and acts like a human consciousness is more complex than people often realize, and would probably dictate a form that looks more or less human notwithstanding the social necessities of maintaining facial expressions, vocalizations, et cetera that are hardwired into our brains by tens of millions of years of primate evolution. > > Stranger Bodies made of energy may be bullshit, I’ll grant you that. My point with my statement was more that us trying to understand human civilization 500 years is probably like chimpanzees trying to understand why time slows down as you approach light speed, or how a quantum computer works or how nuclear physics work. I’m assuming civilization hundreds of years from now will be advanced in ways that our 3 pound brains can’t even fathom. And I disagree with people who claim the singularity will never happen. It may not happen in our lifetimes, but it is only a matter of time until we learn how cognition, innovation and problem solving work as a general concept, and create machines that can do it better than us. Not long after that, they will do it thousands of times better than us. Then millions of times better than us. I have no idea when it’ll happen but it is probably inevitable. And I personally doubt 150+ years from now, if we are still going to be a bunch of vulnerable, fragile primates whose biggest goals in life are to create an environment that triggers the reward mechanisms in our brains while avoiding things that trigger the punishment mechanisms of our brains. For the most part that is all we are, a bunch of meat bags trying to avoid being tortured by our own brains. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/29 "2018-09-11T03:39:10Z")
My bet: In 1,000 years humans will look much like we did 5,000 years ago. After we have exhausted all the easy energy sources, changed the environment enough so that agriculture collapses, and with it modern civilization, we will be back to where we were in the pre-industrial age. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/30 "2018-09-11T05:22:23Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > [New evidence for dysgenic fertility for intelligence in the United States - PubMed](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10842506) The study says, “The correlation for females between intelligence and ideal number of children was effectively zero, indicating that, if women had the number of children they consider ideal, dysgenic fertility would be reduced.” i.e. The whole effect is due to lower intelligence women having more children than they actually want. This suggests that availability of sex education, availability of birth control, and availability of abortion are the crucial factors. In the US there is a powerful movement actively trying to reduce all these. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/31 "2018-09-11T05:30:52Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > Actually IQs are rising all over the world, not falling. So the evidence doesn’t support your contention. That doesn’t seem to be true anymore, at least [not universally](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/13/health/falling-iq-scores-study-intl/index.html). (There’s no reason to believe this is due to stupid people outbreeding smart ones, though.) ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/32 "2018-09-11T06:05:18Z")
Just bones, if you’re lucky! ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/33 "2018-09-11T07:08:30Z")
I predict extra large thumbs and shrinking tongues. ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/34 "2018-09-11T13:27:28Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > My bet: > In 1,000 years humans will look much like we did 5,000 years ago. > After we have exhausted all the easy energy sources, changed the environment enough so that agriculture collapses, and with it modern civilization, we will be back to where we were in the pre-industrial age. That’s one of the more interesting theories I’ve heard about humanity. Basically, this is our shot. If we somehow end up going through another dark ages where we lose some technological prowess, as a species, we’ll never make it back to this point again. All of the easy energy sources have been exploited. Without our high level of technology, we’ll never again be able to tap into fossil fuels and without that cheap energy, we’ll never regain the technology we have lost. If some sort of cataclysm or just cultural evolution pushes us back to say pre-1900 technology, that’s where we’re going to be stuck essentially forever. ---
**Author:** ![Hi\_Neighbor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hi_neighbor/32/494_2.png) [@Hi\_Neighbor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hi_Neighbor)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/35 "2018-09-11T13:37:45Z")
From the [Timeline of the far future](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future): In 10,000 years - > [@](#): > > If globalization trends lead to panmixia, human genetic variation will no longer be regionalized, as the effective population size will equal the actual population size. This does not mean homogeneity, as minority traits will still be preserved, e.g. the blonde gene will not disappear, but it will be rather evenly distributed worldwide. Also, > [@](#): > > Humanity has a 95% probability of being extinct by this date, according to Brandon Carter’s formulation of the controversial Doomsday argument, which argues that half of the humans who will ever have lived have probably already been born. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/36 "2018-09-11T14:11:06Z")
> [@FoieGrasIsEvil](#): > > Forty Six and Two. That always struck me as a flawed theory. Add just one extra chromosome and you get devastating consequences. I can’t imagine anyone would be viable with two extras. But it’s still a good song. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/37 "2018-09-11T15:27:12Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > And I disagree with people who claim the singularity will never happen. It may not happen in our lifetimes, but it is only a matter of time until we learn how cognition, innovation and problem solving work as a general concept, and create machines that can do it better than us. Not long after that, they will do it thousands of times better than us. Then millions of times better than us. I have no idea when it’ll happen but it is probably inevitable. This is a statement of religious faith, not of scientific fact. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/38 "2018-09-11T15:34:08Z")
Jennshark, you’re question indicates that you are an extremely optimistic person. LOL ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/39 "2018-09-11T16:42:53Z")
People misunderstand “The Singularity”. It’s just a point beyond which further speculation is impossible, because circumstances will have changed so much that all the old rules about what was possible or impossible no longer apply. Agriculture was a singularity, because it enabled a style of living that was incomprehensible to hunter-gatherers. It’s not that agriculture was incomprehensible, seeds and roots growing into plants is well understood by hunter-gatherers. It’s that agriculture itself allowed population densities and social stratification on an unimaginable scale. Yes, hunter-gatherers had social stratification, they had food surpluses, they had specialists. But all that was on a limited scale. Add in agriculture, and you get stuff like the Pharaohs and the Pyramids. The industrial revolution is another singularity. Ask someone from Renaissance Italy what would happen if steel production improved 100 fold, and they’d imagine more swords, more armor, more plowshares. They wouldn’t imagine the Eiffel Tower, or a battleship. So the future singularity is just a point beyond which it doesn’t make much sense to speculate about. It’s not that things will happen that are impossible, it’s just that they will be the consequences of dozens of advances thatwill lead to applications that wouldn’t even occur to us today. Or they might occur to us, but we’d have no idea which ideas we have about the future will make sense. Take a look at the treatment of computers and robots and thinking machines in science fiction. All over the map, and almost all of it wrong. One story, “[A Logic Named Joe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Logic_Named_Joe)” from 1946 manages to get most of the gist of “the internet” correctly, although it’s done in a completely different manner. But if you were in 1950 and someone asked you about the future of computers, would you point to “A Logic Named Joe” and say that this guy Leinster has it all figured out? Anyway, it’s certain that technologies that are now in their infancy will radically transform our future society in ways we won’t predict. And then we can look back and say, “hey, some people predicted this, look here and here.” But in 2018 we don’t know which of these predictions to listen to. Anyway, barring genetic engineering, humans will look pretty much the same thousands of years in the future. Take a _Homo sapiens sapiens_ from 25,000 years ago and they’ll look like a normal modern human. There might be some subtle changes. Lots of people have genes that didn’t exist 25,000 years ago, like abilities to digest lactose, different skin colors and eye colors. It’s pretty likely that a person in 25,000 years ago won’t look like a member of any current ethnic group. People of the future are going to evolve traits that allow them to tolerate conditions in the future. What that will mean will depend on the conditions of the future. Is it a polluted junkyard? Is it crystal spires and togas? Is it as pets/servants for Skynet? But we can’t rule out genetic engineering. So what will that mean? Dystopia, with people bred to be natural slaves? Conformity? Diversity? Adaptation to extreme environments? Will people be smarter, stronger, nicer, tougher, better looking, or whatever? It depends on the choices we make, and the actual design constraints about which we barely have a clue. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2018, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061/40 "2018-09-11T21:18:48Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > This is a statement of religious faith, not of scientific fact. The idea that humanities problem solving capabilities will grow with time, and become vastly superior than they are now is a religious belief? So are you saying in a million years we will still use our biological brains as the major tools to innovate and problem solve? Despite the fact that in just under a century we’ve already seen meaningful progress on machine cognition? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-humans-look-like-in-5-000-10-000-and-25-000-years/821061.md?page=3)