Human Evolution
 

I brought this topic up a few years ago, and it did pretty well, so I thought of asking you guys about it.

Do you think humans will evolve in the future. Like, for example, the working class will gain tougher skin, more resistant to disease, while the rich become weaker and so forth?

Possibly, but humans tend to change their environment, rather than themselves and if there was a drastic, sudden change, we'd just die out before we could evolve.

And I brought this topic up a few months ago.


Yes, I believe that humans will evolve into a more aquatic species assuming we don't wipe ourselves out by then.

true dat, we have become a weak race. I don't think if the ice caps melted, we'd get gills, like in WaterWorld. Thats highly unlikely.

As Bill Hicks once said: "Human evolution doesn't stop with us growing thumbs.".

We will not evolve. Why not? Because we adapt our enviorment to us, we no longer need to adapt to our enviorment. Easy as that. We have reached our peak, from here on it can only get worse. We will whipe ourselfs out one day.

What Havoc and everyone else said, there is no real natural selection in modern society anymore. I have terrible genes, both my grandfathers had diabetes, heart attacks, and high blood pressure and my dad had a heart attack not all that long ago, yet I'll still live to be at least 60 and have children. Go go medical technology

Yep, this is just like what we talked about the first time I brought this up. Humans are so unwilling/unable to adapt to out environments that we decide to cahnge the environment instead of ourselves.

BTW Havoc, I like your new sig ^^

Damnably good timing, as The Straight Dope had something on this on their website today: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_047.html

I thin that in the future people will have less and less hair until we're a bunch of baldys

Evolution = not going to happen because when we were first stuck here we had all we needed to get on with life.

Sorry to bring religion into this, this is not an invitation for everyone to start flaming me (hides under desk).

We screw up and theres no second chance when we grow gills and go populate the oceans. Human technology may change, in effect evolve, which may allow us to populate the oceans and the moon and Mars and so on and so forth but we'll most likely mess that up like we did with Earth.


We might adapt, we don't evolve, humans arer made to survive on Earth and as we changed Earth we are now causing ourselves problems.

*tries to be the voice of reason before anyone more vindictive comes along*

You know, that was entirely unnecessary. Clearly this topic was not created with you in mind so it would have been best for you to ignore it completely.

Yea I don't think this topic was meant to go religious... so lets keep that subject out of it.

Why do you say unable? Random genetic mutations are not a choice. Adapting our environment to suit our needs seems to be working much better than natural evolution anyway.

Holy crap, Joe posts and it's not an insult.

While it's true genetic dyversity/mutation is still happening in Humans, it's no longer constructive.

We're not becomeing better at what we do. We're just making it easier to do what we do by using technology. However, this can become very bad. We've now allowed other organisms to evolve to the point we can't cope with them (SARS and other retroviruses/antibiotic-resistant strains). Also, things like allergic reactions may be caused from our protective environment. Since we keep children away from things that are dirty/unhealthy they do not have as strong an immune system, and may react dangerously {hyper-sensitivity} to relativly safe things (like milk, dust, etc).

While I think human can still evolve, it will take a lot before it results in a "better" mutation.

I don't think humans will evolve again. In fact, science, medicine, physics ect can be never perfected but the human is able to enlarge his knowledge about the science and everything, which has to do with it. I think the only thing the evolution gives us, will be a bigger brain and less muscles and less hair. The easier the technology, the more useless muscles will be because work gets easier and we mostly see untrained and procreative humans on earth, which might be a dominant fact in future (hopes not so).

Since we know what our ancestors looked like (Australopitecus, Homo Agaster, Homo Habilis ect), we can guess that we won't have so much hair on our body as today. Sure, it will take hundred, thousand of years till the human is totally naked like a baby butt, but I think that hair, which is actually horn that grows on our skin to save us from sun and extreme atmospheric conditions, already belongs to the rudimental "organs" on the human body.
I don't want to assure it now, but it's that, what may come in future. It will take ages, but think about the body of the human. We have 12 rudimental organs already, why should we keep hair then?

White Rabbits!
I will probably happen in 100yrs time. I've saw the film Waterworld!

Unfortunately, you have already happened.

And evolution takes millions of years. It could never happen that quickly.

We never have evolved and we never will evolve. Our bodies will never change. We will never have less or more organs (or whatever), we will never go completly bald and we definately will never ever grow gills. It'll only change if you eat loads of choclate and fatty stuff like that and become huge.

The only way humans have evolved is through knowledge. I know you don't want to bring this up, but i'm a christian and of course we beleive in creation not evolution.

You don't want religion to come in to this (that's what the religion thread is for), but what you're talking about is technically religion, although not directly related. Some of you beleive in evolution and that we'll evolve even more, even if it takes million more years. But there's some of us (christians) who beleive in creation and that we were placed on earth by God. With topics like this, you'll never keep religion out.

Even Darwin, when he was on his death bed, he said he retracts everything he said about human evolution and beleived that God created us.

Well god created Monkeys, didn't he? *Looks at evil genetic DNA*

Quite a while ago I heard (Can't remember where) that Humans were evolving to grow wings... Doubt thats true. But now they are evolving to be psychic. As more and more people claim to be psychic. I'll try to find where i read this.

If the creation 'story' is true, then arguably we had no ice ages or dinosaurs either, as well as no evolution.

I just found two pretty interesting links, I read the first one. then remembered about the second.
http://www.medicalpost.com/mpcontent...31_193430_3652 - First Link, About Humans evolving to ward of HIV (Aids)

Then i remembered this. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4432564.stm A man in the UK. Cured himself of HIV... Twice.
Now I find that pretty amazing. I recomend that you all check the links. :)

I think humans will 'de-evolve'. Become weaker, more dependant on technology and medicine and such. People who can't have children are having children. People who have athsma, diabetes etc. and who would have died stay healthy and breed. People with weak immune systems are living as long as those that have strong ones. People are becoming allergic to all sorts of things, like dust and wheat. I predict that somewhere along the line we'll become almost totally dependant on vaccines, medicines and the like for our health.

Basically, I agree with Havoc: some day we'll wipe ourselves out.

Yes, I know I sound evil and like I have a death wish for weak people (I don't! My pappy needs glasses and my granny is diabetic), but I'm trying to look at this from the outside. I'm also kinda pessimistic with regards to the future of people and the planet.

EDIT: Interesting links there. I still think we're in trouble though.

I am almost certain we will wipe ourselves out, War is an example. We won't de-evolve, But we will become more dependant on technology, As you said. Think aobut it. If you took away everything we had, And we started from the very beginning. Not many people would survive, as we are too dependant on technology.

I suppose de-evolve was the wrong term. 'Cease natural selection' would be more accurate for what I mean to say. And I agree with people not surviving without technology. I can't help but be very conscious of it, especially since the past few days have been very cold. What would we do without heating? Even when lighting fires, people use matches or firelighters. I think if you took someone and sent them back a thousand years or so they'd be in a lot of trouble.

Of course!
If humans evolved from cavemen, then think of the future! I mean, we could develop weird things, like little tails, or wind tips.
Hell, maybe we'll become super-smart, or our minds might de-evolve, but our bodies'll change.
Anything can happen. Just think of it.

Assuming we continue to consumer resources at the alarming rate we do, as well as pollute the earth, perhaps we'll start evolving to tolerate some of the more hazardous chemicals...but who knows maybe they'll just wipe us out before that happens.

Al, we protect ourselves from these chemicals too much to actualy get used to them.

I've heard of humans that seem to have wings, or at least what look like the remains wings after they've been cut off from near the shoulder... but I don't know if I really believe in it.

As for curing AIDS, this isn't too surprising. After all, we develop a cure for influenza almost every time we catch a new strain of it. Being able to cure AIDS is a good indication of the ability to "evolve" on small scale.


...and just incase there are any Christians out there that are angry with this thread, let a Catholic who is studying biology ease the mood by saying that "[in biology] we believe that life does not come spontaniously from non-life" (i.e. We don't know how life started. We're pretty sure it evolved, but there's still room for someone to have gotten the ball rolling.)