Evolution and hte human race?

Humanity has out grow evolution... if somebody was born with 4 arms even though they could be twice as productive they would be seen as a circus quality freak, any phisical innormality" wouldn't be seen as an evolutionary advance. Evolution is random so we can't know what to expect.

 

Do you think it's entirely random? I'm sure we can predict it by studying the how other animals have evolved. I think from this knowledge we could have a good idea to predict or even produce certain traits.

Of course evolution of humans is just not fathomable to anyone alive today, it would take so damn long.

 

What I want to know is if any other species will evolve like humans did. We probably would kill them off before they could or something knowing humans.

Imagine another species as intelligent as us.

 

Discover Channels show "Life" showed a lot of evolutionary trains among animals from all over the world, and many of them pertained to how humans had evolved over time as well.

In the last few hundred years alone the height of the average human has gone up about 6 inches...indicating that natural selection favors slightly taller people. Not to imply shorter people don't reproduce or that there is anything wrong with them.....but genetically the "average" of the world has gotten taller .

I think that our evolution is being stunted by technology though, but in another way even technology is evolving us in it's own way. Just so happens that the world is more obese than it use to be as well (America helped lead the way there )

 

Speciation requires reproductive isolation. There may be some small groups that are isolated enough to speciate, but its pretty unlikely. Your best candidate would be some tribe that is still undiscovered and has no contact with others, and that would have to go on for a quite some time before they had such genetic differences that they were no longer capable of breeding with humans.

 

I read a comment here that made me wonder about how cannabis has affected our evolution.

 

Check this out i made a thread about this a few months back, but its an article about how the tibetans underwent the fastest evolution in human history and they've developed what is being called a "super athlete" gene.... Tibetans Underwent Fastest Evolution Seen in Humans | LiveScience

Edit: Definately didn't see the post above mine, but this article goes in depth about the tibetans haha

 

Good posts guys. Great stuff I will read later on.

 

Evolution is about natural selection.
We are already adapted to every habitat thanks to technology, so I don't think we'll become another specie. At least for now, but in other planets if we get to them, maybe.

 

I read the article.
They are so high...

 

Don't have tie to read the article now, but its not surprising that they are evolving faster than other groups...they live in an extreme climate and are reproductively isolated (I'm guessing not a lot of outsiders go to tibet and make swirl babies). In fact this is probably one of the better examples of how evolution works and how speciation could happen within the human species. Give them 100,000 more years of isolation and you'll see some substantial differences.

I'm guessing this super athlete gene has to do with lung capacity or ability to process oxygen more efficiently?

 

I love that article...

 

"food of the gods"

very interesting read on how we evolved as a species. involves "magic mushrooms" haha

 

Cannabinoids, Anandmides and Bliss Consciousness, A sequential biochemical and neurological pathway through life

interesting thought

 

This.

I try to tell people we have already evolved beyond 'humanity' if you really want to think about it. We carry in our pockets the ability to instantaneously transfer information to anyone, anywhere. We can freeze time by taking pictures, we can travel the world in no time at all. We can go on the water, under the water, through mountains, in the air and beyond.

If you are strictly talking about biology, you just need to wait till we have developed technologies regarding the recent breakthrough of cracking the human genome. Of course developments in stem cells will help, as well. Once we master these technologies humanity will be changed forever. Not to mention by the time we have mastered these technologies, other technologies will have been mastered as well. Nanotechnology, computers in our eyeballs, that kind of thing. For all we know we may find that electronic vessels are better fit for space travel or exploration. We would just put our minds into these new computers and float around space with photovoltaic cells or nuclear fusion reactors to power us.

Don't think about evolution as only biological, and definitely don't think of it as taking a long time. It won't be long... We are coming closer to the point of immortality and exponential rates of evolution every day. Just imagine when we create artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence will dream up these technologies and create meaningful ways to implement them at speeds unheard of today. It will be insane...

My closing statement is that evolution does not require natural selection, it just requires selection. We have seen it in just about every animal we have domesticated. It will inevitably happen to humankind, as well.

 

its a really hard question to answer but nevertheless fun to think about.

if we hadnt modernized and didnt have the ability to travel across the globe today, the individual races of the world (chinese, native american, european, ect.) would have continued to diverge until we split into separate species. In the short time we spent away from each other we already developed strikingly different appearances.

Have you ever wondered why europeans have pale skin when they were once africans with black skin? Well its mainly because humans use the radiation from the sun to synthesize vitamin d3. Roughly 100,000 years ago the first of our species began to leave Africa. As they dispersed away from the equator sunlight grew weaker and our evolutionary response to this is fascinating. Eons before our relatively brief flight out of africa our ancestors (from the likes of homo habilis, homo erectus spanning back to australopithecus and beyond) lived in a hot, radiation-rich environment. This was the forge in which the true foundation of who we are was crafted, the place where the blueprints of our species were drawn and redrawn over and over again. At the equator, the intensity of sunlight is consistent throughout our whole neighborhood of the electromagnetic spectrum not just in visible light. For our bodies that simply means having more infrared and UV rays to deal with BUT also to benefit from. While UV rays are damaging they are also required by us. At the equator, radiation is in such abundance that inhabitants need not worry about getting their required dose of UV, instead they must guard themselves against too much. In fact the fundamental limiting factor against human brain capacity during our evolution on the savannah was due to heatstress, something our large brains have always been susceptible to. THIS is why africans are dark skinned (darker objects absorb more light making them better at blocking radiation--its why that bottle of hydrogen peroxide in your bathroom is dark brown instead of white).

Now imagine (not in the sense we are accustomed to which deals in days and years but in the evolutionary one) the impact leaving the heat of africa had on our bodies. Under exceedingly weaker skies the UV rays which were taken for granted and shielded from in africa were suddenly desperately needed. Those individuals who by chance produced less melanin than was average (its what determines the color of our skin): had lighter skin color = were able to absorb more UV radiation = produced more vitamin D3 and subsequently had a lower mortality rate due to vitamin d deficiency than did people without skin-lightening genes. In this way there formed enormous pressure which constantly pushed those who stumbled into areas of weak sunlight towards lighter and lighter skin. THIS is why many northern asians and europeans have pale skin.

It is important not to confuse all northern territories as weakly lit. Radiation does climb again once you get nearer the poles due to elevation and the shape of earths magnetic field and we can see a relationship we'd expect between this fact and the skin color of the locals.



To go all the way back to your original point i do not know if we are still evolving. An assumption of evolution is that the successful propagate while the unsuccessful are diminished. There clearly is and always will be a distinction between the successful and unsuccessful for our species. So there must be some sort of an evolutionary pressure tugging on us but humanity is so complex its difficult to think about what it may be. On the other hand we have gotten to a point in technology and infrastructure such that even the unsuccessful among us can survive and propagate their genes--this has a dimming effect on evolution. So really, its unknown where humankind is headed. The only thing thats certain is that we will be different from our distant descendants. For example gorillas, lions, and llamas today are not the same as gorillas lions and llamas 2 million years ago, we dont really think about this but its true. In 1 million years (assuming were still around) we may still consider ourselves human because we can all make babies together but our genes will have drifted so far one way or another that by then we would be noticeably different from our species today.

Speciating entirely however is out of the question (at least imo). At the moment death throughout most of the planet is too easy to avoid for any evolutionary pressures to isolate a specific group of more "fit" individuals. edit: its true that this statement^^^ is not true everywhere on planet earth. I some places death comes easily which raises all types of questions. If we lose our infrastructure or our body of knowledge however we would be back to 10,000 BC and evolution would kick in a heartbeat.

Then of course there is devolution, caused when staying alive no longer requires great effort (like if deer dont run quick deer get eaten fast). I.E. If someone is born without fingernails today, he/she is at no life threatening disadvantage. Therefore, from that person onward the coding for a human being without fingernails has entered the genepool where given time will propagate. The fact that we no longer need hair to keep us warm, physical strength to fend off predators and find food, and fingernails to survive coupled with the unescapable truth that our lives are only growing more entwined with technology ensure in my mind that one day it is possible for a human being to become a creature who may not even be able to grow hair, fingernails, or even properly working eyes. Instead relying absolutely on clothing or artificial environments for warmth, wheels and buttons to manipulate and travel through its world, and even cameras to give it sight--in short a machine-like animal 100% dependent on the offspring of its mind.

 

Imagine a video game, say Grand Theft Auto cause I'm sure many of you have played or atleast know what it is. While playing the game you fly a helicopter over the skyline and see the orange and deep blue colors spray across the skies as the sun is beginning to set. You go down to street level and you see all the people and trees and buildings, while dodging the traffic of cars swerving in real time trying to avoid hitting you, then you realize that you're only playing a game. Everything you just experienced are just individual pixels coming from a centimeter piece of plastic holding a giant code consisting of repeating 1's and 0's being read by a laser and computed in the processor. Think, if you were to throw thousands and thousands of pixels, or let alone the code of 1's and 0's into a disc, there would be nothing more than meaningless code freely wandering with no purpose, nothing todo.
But then an intelligent being comes into the picture and begins using software to design everything, using the before pointless individual pixel and morphing objects and things from these pixels. Without the implementation of an intelligent designer all the code would simple be useless and given millions and billions of years, I can guarantee those pixels will never suddenly form into some sort of object or thing and write out its own code and make its own video game.
All the above applys just the same to real life as we know it. We are all made of individual atoms, very much like pixels in a game, which are made up of energy curving at the speed of light in a unimaginably small ball. Just to be able to form each individual atom would require such great power, let alone the billions of atoms making up our body. And then all these atoms someone coming together and randomly by chance creating the life we know today? Isn't it a bit absurd to deny an intelligent designer? All the evidence surrounds us with the perfect cycles in the moon and the seasons how everything on the earth is made to repair itself, can you tell me how that all happens by chance? If evolution were real why didn't we ever evolve wings to fly, or gills to swim? Why are humans so amazingly different than every other specie on this planet?
We were obviously designed to be very different from the animal kingdom, as even the most of intelligent animals are still no smarter than a unmatured infant and are nowhere near where humans are. So if evolution is true, then why us? Why only have we evolved so much more than everything else there is today? And why are all other animals so much alike in comparison to us? All I've ever seen proven is mircoevolution, better known as adaptation, which is what has been able to give us such variety in each and every animal such as dogs and cats, but no matter what you will never see one of these cats begin to grow a pair of 6 eyes. And if any animal ever gives birth to something mutated, they are Always crippled by the affect and doesn't go on to produce more kittens being born with 6 pairs of eyes thus creating a new species. There was actually experiments on some sort of bee, trying to force evolution on it by crossing it with another bee. In every test the bee always came out grossly mutated and its gene allowing it to reproduce was automatically shut off. If thats not enough evidence of some sort of design then I'm not really sure what would be..
and don't even get me started on our consciousness. The fact that scientists have no clue where it originates in our brains let alone even fully explain what our consciousness is. To think that it came from a swirl of chemical soup is crazy talk imo. Is this all there really is to life, to work 40 hours a week until you're an old man/woman then to be put into a home for you to quietly rot away from soceity? Or is there a truer meaning human beings were put here on this earth to serve an actual purpose other to make money? I'm not really even sure this would belong in this thread, I'm just high and rambling and just realize I wrote a fuckin lot lol so I've best quit now

 

lol science. Technology is not apart of us nor within us they are merely tools of thought we have improvised on nothing more. To say we have truly evolved as a species cannot be determined by external factors. Whats the difference between us now and us in Ancient Egypt or Greece? For humankind to truly evolve consciously we would have to viciously eradicate religion and not believe that there is some great father personally taking care of us. This is a delusionary thought and on top of that extremely narcissistic and with this thinking being the basis of thought we get somewhere but as it seems obvious now we have reached the edges of that sort of thinking. Religion holds all of us back those who practice it, those who tolerate it and atheists who become the antithesis of it (Just move on with your life don't be mad all day at religion) The only way humanity can truly evolve is when we scrape this archaic means of thinking and not think a cat peeing on a pole is a sign from God that dogs are watching.