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The Next Step in Human Evolution

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Our environment is constantly changing; we still have natural enemies. It's inevitable.

Humans will evolve, assuming we survive the next million years.

But to what?

Will humans lose their hair, since clothes have nullified their use? Atrophied limbs in favor of a larger, more powerful brain?

Or will future people look the same, but biologically different (e.g. more efficient brain, muscles, immune system, etc)?

But unlike other living things, humans have absolutely no predators (not including bacteria and other microorganisms), advanced technology (that is becoming more advanced by the day), and most of all, humans have a different advantage compared to other creatures. They're the only fully sentient species on Earth, eons ahead of others in the animal kingdom (including fellow apes).

Discuss.
 
Humans no longer evolve physically, we evolve via society and technology. All adaptations to our environment for the past 8000 years or so have been via technology. Essentially, we're static, and will probably remain so. Even minor trends such as us getting larger can be traced back to a technological influence. And no, we don't really have natural enemies anymore. Nothing preys on humans consistently enough to have a genetic effect. Also, because humans can travel frequently around the world, populations are constantly intermingling. One of the main requirements for speciation is isolation, which we are not - we're a global population.

Essentially, physical human evolution is done, aside from development of minor things like immunities to disease. But even those are dealt with more with technologically than anything. Not enough to cause speciation in any noticeable form.
 
Zeta said:
Humans no longer evolve physically, we evolve via society and technology. All adaptations to our environment for the past 8000 years or so have been via technology. Essentially, we're static, and will probably remain so. Even minor trends such as us getting larger can be traced back to a technological influence. And no, we don't really have natural enemies anymore. Nothing preys on humans consistently enough to have a genetic effect. Also, because humans can travel frequently around the world, populations are constantly intermingling. One of the main requirements for speciation is isolation, which we are not - we're a global population.

Essentially, physical human evolution is done, aside from development of minor things like immunities to disease. But even those are dealt with more with technologically than anything. Not enough to cause speciation in any noticeable form.
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But what if there was a global climate change of sorts? Something beyond our scope? Take the Sun or a meteor, for example.

EDIT: A quick Google search brought me this article.
 
Zeta said:
Humans no longer evolve physically, we evolve via society and technology. All adaptations to our environment for the past 8000 years or so have been via technology. Essentially, we're static, and will probably remain so. Even minor trends such as us getting larger can be traced back to a technological influence. And no, we don't really have natural enemies anymore. Nothing preys on humans consistently enough to have a genetic effect. Also, because humans can travel frequently around the world, populations are constantly intermingling. One of the main requirements for speciation is isolation, which we are not - we're a global population.

Essentially, physical human evolution is done, aside from development of minor things like immunities to disease. But even those are dealt with more with technologically than anything. Not enough to cause speciation in any noticeable form.
Click to expand...

Actually...we are evolving. It just doesn't SEEM like we are BECAUSE of things like technology.

Taking advantage of data collected as part of a 60-year study of more than 2000 North American women in the Framingham Heart Study, the researchers analyzed a handful of traits important to human health. By measuring the effects of these traits on the number of children the women had over their lifetime, the researchers were able to estimate the strength of selection and make short-term predictions about how each trait might evolve in the future.

After adjusting for factors such as education and smoking, their models predict that the descendents of these women will be slightly shorter and heavier, will have lower blood pressure and cholesterol, will have their first child at a younger age, and will reach menopause later in life.

...

The changes may be slow and gradual, but the predicted rates of change are no different from those observed elsewhere in nature, the researchers say.
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I still wish we had tails. ( Thanks, Dragonball! )
 
AngadS said:
I still wish we had tails. ( Thanks, Dragonball! )
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*Assuming you're being serious*

But if we had tails, then wouldn't that complicate things? We can balance ourselves quite well. After all, having no tails makes life easier, that's why we lost them.
 
I would make an X-men joke, but I won't. Cause its going to happen anyways and isn't a laughing matter.
 
Will humans lose their hair, since clothes have nullified their use? Atrophied limbs in favor of a larger, more powerful brain?
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There's still sexual dimorphism at play here.
 
Meister2192 said:
*Assuming you're being serious*

But if we had tails, then wouldn't that complicate things? We can balance ourselves quite well. After all, having no tails makes life easier, that's why we lost them.
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I wasn't really being serious about the tails, but if we could have them without losing our balance, wouldn't that be awesome. (Thanks, Aipom and Ambipom.)
 
But if we had tails, then wouldn't that complicate things? We can balance ourselves quite well. After all, having no tails makes life easier, that's why we lost them.
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I just want something to work a mouse while I type and have an extra appendage to carry things.
 
In order for humans to "evolve" so to speak, we need traits that are both helpful and actually desirable in our mates.

Would you want to marry someone completely bald, atrophied limbs or a tail?
 
AngadS said:
I wasn't really being serious about the tails, but if we could have them without losing our balance, wouldn't that be awesome. (Thanks, Aipom and Ambipom.)
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Assuming we had any type of dexterity with them, then yes, having a tail would be awesome. Buuut, assuming we ever do need an extra limb some time down the future, I highly doubt it's gonna sprout out from above our butt-cracks.
 
I think internally we will continue to evolve, like GnrnMarv's article said, but externally we are essentially static. Every adaptation we need is now taken care of by technology. Some negative things will even happen, like the fact that our feet are so weak. It's come to the point where we actually need shoes or our feet will get destroyed. We've also adapted a different, unnatural walking style because of shoes.

One thing that must be noted though, is if we ever get off the earth, physical adaptation will have to take place. If a group of people end up living in space for a few generations, then I'm sure that they will be physically different then people on earth.
 
PDL said:
In order for humans to "evolve" so to speak, we need traits that are both helpful and actually desirable in our mates.

Would you want to marry someone completely bald, atrophied limbs or a tail?
Click to expand...
My inner furry says yes sadly enough.
 
We're actually evolving to catch up with our technology. The reason we have such high obesity rates is because we're built for hunting and gathering but live a lifestyle based on agriculture. It's been recently discovered more and more people have enzymes to burn more fat than usual and better adapted to more the sedentary lifestyle. I'm in fact one of those people.

If you want to see more visible evolution, my guess is reemergence of aquatic traits is most likely based on humanity's fascination with the water.
 
With the advancement of medicine and other technologies, human evolution is practically finished.
 
Dr. Pichu said:
From what I learned from watching 2001 - A Space Odyssey, we'll evolve into pure energy.
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Yeah, that's a very common theme. It's in Star Wars, Star Trek, you name it.

Personally, to transcend into immortal, godlike beings is pretty farfetched, seeing how we haven't changed much in the entire history of Earth (we've only evolved to adapt to our environment).

Humans could, however, use technology to make themselves like that...
 
I think I read somewhere that "Test tube babies" (IVF) are physically different to babies concieved naturally. The person who wrote said article was of the opinion that this constituted a new stage in evolution
 
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