• Question: Do you think we will keep evolving further? And if so, do you think it will be more mentally/ psychologically or physically?

    Asked by crouchingmurloc to Ben, Dave, Ed, Sam, Susana on 18 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Benjamin Hall

      Benjamin Hall answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      We are still evolving, there is no ‘end point’ to evolution.

      We will evolve in both ways but to predict how we will evolve we have to look at what drives selection in humans. In the modern era, that is really intelligence. Intelligence allows you to get a good job that allows you to provide for a family. That’s what people look for in partners.

      So it’s not unreasonable to expect that people will become, on average, more intelligent.

      Physically we will also evolve. The trend since we diverged from apes is to become less hairy. I think that will continue. We’re also losing ur wisdom teeth. Something like 35% of people are born without them. There’s no selective pressure to keep them so ultimately, I think they’ll be gotten rid of.

    • Photo: David Briggs

      David Briggs answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      Great question.

      Evolution is just mutation, and we are still mutating, so evolution will continue.

      Evolution is also driven by reproduction – so we will only keep mutations that improve the chances of reproduction. That could be either psych or physically, so I don’t know which is more likely.

    • Photo: Sam Horrell

      Sam Horrell answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      Evolution is going to keep happening, there’s no way of stopping it really. Exactly how we are going to evolve is hard to pin down as there are so many factors. in my oppinion the influence of technology will play a big part in evolution. A good example of how this might affect us mentally is our memory. The age of the smart phone is making us less dependent on our own memory as we can just make a note or look something up. This may have no effect at all in the long run but things like that could alter the course of our evolution.

      In terms of physically, who knows. Maybe we’ll get taller, more muscular, longer necks. maybe we’ll just addapt to be able to type better on keyboards. Apparently red hair is slowly being selected out. One thing is for certain though, it will happen so slowly we won’t need to worry about it.

    • Photo: Susana Teixeira

      Susana Teixeira answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      There will definitely be some changes, we see them already from 1 or 2 generations ago until now, many of them caused by improved nutrition and progress in medicine. I suppose there will always be a tendency for people with better imune systems to live longer, so I guess those would be selected by evolution.
      It is all a very slow process anyway, but if I had to guess the physical changes will tend to evolve faster. I believe those have more immediate effects on attractiveness and ability to reproduce, but I may well be very wrong because a natural catastrophe or a pandemic can be very fast and have unpredictable effects.

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