Thinking About Human Evolution

[ermitonto]

Fundamentalists, this is not the thread for you.

I've been thinking lately about human evolution. Evolution is a process that affects all species, and there is no reason to believe it has stopped working in mankind. In fact, it is well known that species which have to suddenly adapt to a new environment evolve more rapidly than others. Now, in the past 10,000 years, just 1% of the time in which modern Homo sapiens has existed, we've witnessed the creation and flourishing of civilization, by far the most dramatic change of environment our species has ever faced. Change in our environment has been accelerating at even more incredible rates since the Industrial Revolution.

It stands to reason, then, that human evolution must also be accelerating, right? No doubt that with a new environment there will be new criteria for selecting who lives to pass on their genes, and those criteria will manifest themselves in the genetic code of our descendants.

But are we overlooking a critical factor? With the rise of sanitation and modern medicine, it has been possible to save the majority of people who, in the wild, would otherwise have died from poor genes. People with debilitating disabilities and diseases of a genetic origin are often now able to stay alive and reproduce. Certain symptoms of these conditions that might otherwise repel potential mates are also minimized, and they may even appear to be perfectly normal. So, if all these people with poor genes are allowed to live in safety with the help of modern civilization, might we actually be slowing down the process of evolution?

What are your thoughts on this? Is our evolution speeding up, slowing down, or staying the same? What do you think is the next evolutionary step for our species?

P.S. Here is another thing to think about. How much is mate selection these days based on genes, and how much is it based on personality characteristics? And what effect does that have on our evolution?

ermitonto Reviewed by ermitonto on 09-14-2005. Thinking About Human Evolution Fundamentalists, this is not the thread for you. I've been thinking lately about human evolution. Evolution is a process that affects all species, and there is no reason to believe it has stopped working in mankind. In fact, it is well known that species which have to suddenly adapt to a new environment evolve more rapidly than others. Now, in the past 10,000 years, just 1% of the time in which modern Homo sapiens has existed, we've witnessed the creation and flourishing of civilization, by Rating: 5

[mrdevious]

you dont' exactly know what evolution is do you?

[ermitonto]

Why do you say that?

[mrdevious]

I've been thinking lately about human evolution.Evolution is a process that affects all species, and there is no reason to believe it has stopped working in mankind. In fact, it is well known that species which have to suddenly adapt to a new environment evolve more rapidly than others?

there is quite a reason to believe it stopped in mankind. evolution isn't a magical process that happens every once in a while just because, as presented in X-men. it's the result of natural selection. a member of the species that has an advantage in attracting mating partners, or asserting dominance, becomes dominant in the human gene pool. when a species adapts to their environment, the individuals do not actually change. rather, the members of the species that are most suited to surviving in the environment will become prominent in the gene pool. because we have society, government, and welfare programs (and the such), those who would naturally end up dead and out of the gene pool are artificially kept alive by government and societal assistance. for example, if we cure all the cancer patients, those more prone to getting cancer will not die and be removed from the gene pool, hence cancer will persist.

btw, I'm not saying we should let everybody die.

[mellow mood]

heres wut i think: humans reached a certain level of evolution. now, we focused so much on improving our condition by inventing new things, technology, etc etc that we forgot the pure esence of the meaning of our existence

now ppl are regressing. we became all brainwashed by today's society, all those stupid concepts, materialist etc, and we are now only wolves trying to dominate other living creatures because of our domination mecanism.

world is gettin bad, there are extremist etc etc, ppl dont know what to think, were killing ourselves each others, were exploting ppl too. so wut i say is we reached a certain level of intelligence which finally resulted in regressing our state.

we have now good living conditions, while 75% of world population is dying, and we forgot our spirituality. we are goin straight to the end of the world.

we reached a plateau. now its too late. were killing our planet. were gonna die. so i think humans evoluated during all these years in a certain way, while we completly regressed in an other. thats wut i tink. there is still a lot of good ppl on this earth, but not enough. trust me, it is hard to resist to this big machine called society and government. if your not like everyone else, your not a good cityzen. we end up with suicides, depressions, etc etc etc

well i said all what i tought

peace

[ermitonto]

there is quite a reason to believe it stopped in mankind. evolution isn't a magical process that happens every once in a while just because, as presented in X-men. it's the result of natural selection. a member of the species that has an advantage in attracting mating partners, or asserting dominance, becomes dominant in the human gene pool. when a species adapts to their environment, the individuals do not actually change. rather, the members of the species that are most suited to surviving in the environment will become prominent in the gene pool. because we have society, government, and welfare programs (and the such), those who would naturally end up dead and out of the gene pool are artificially kept alive by government and societal assistance. for example, if we cure all the cancer patients, those more prone to getting cancer will not die and be removed from the gene pool, hence cancer will persist.

btw, I'm not saying we should let everybody die.

Evolution is a constant and gradual process. It does not stop for any species. Why would one assume that we have reached the end of our evolutionary path, when our form has been evolving consistently for 4 billion years? Evolution is the constant change of the makeup of the genetic pool, and we can all agree that today's genetic pool is not exactly the same as the genetic pool of 10,000 years ago. As people are born and die, the genetic pool changes and the human phenotype changes as some populations persist and others die out. No amount of society and government can stop that. The question is, what kinds of changes will come about, and how beneficial or harmful will they be for humanity?

I'm not saying we should let people die either. I'm just trying to generate some discussion on what effect modern civilization is having on the inevitable process of evolution.

[beachguy in thongs]

You know that junk in the corner of your eyeball? If we were in tune with the Universe, and growing, as it is, then eventually it will contract, do we digress at that point? We used to be of a reptilian nature, at one point, I guess, because that junk in the corner of your eye used to be a second eye-lid, like Alligators have, to keep the water out.
Our web feet, why do we have them and when are they gonna go?

And when are we gonna evolve enough to use the rest of our brain and maybe meet God in the process?

Well, gotta cut this short, I have a monkey on my back.

[mrdevious]

Evolution is a constant and gradual process. It does not stop for any species. Why would one assume that we have reached the end of our evolutionary path, when our form has been evolving consistently for 4 billion years? Evolution is the constant change of the makeup of the genetic pool, and we can all agree that today's genetic pool is not exactly the same as the genetic pool of 10,000 years ago. As people are born and die, the genetic pool changes and the human phenotype changes as some populations persist and others die out. No amount of society and government can stop that. The question is, what kinds of changes will come about, and how beneficial or harmful will they be for humanity?

I'm not saying we should let people die either. I'm just trying to generate some discussion on what effect modern civilization is having on the inevitable process of evolution.

humans indeed change, but change itself is not evolution. evolution is the result of a certain area of the species having a survival advantage which makes them dominant in the gene pool. over the millions and millions of years creatures evolved because those most adept to the situation stayed alive, not because our genes recognized the need for survival. that is why we would stop after 4 billion years of evolving, because disantvantages to survival no longer mean death as they would in nature.

[Mojavpa]

I think you have to go on a case by case basis-disease wise. For example, the number of children with down syndrome might increase because more women are having kids when they're 35 or over with the help of drugs, which increases the liklihood of having a child with down syndrome.

However, many incidences of diseases that come up in close knit communities might decrease because of technology. We can choose potential mates from all corners of the earth, and more and more people are migrating from country to country. genetic variation is a good thing evolutionally speaking. It kind of "dilutes" bad genes.

[mellow mood]

our brain is still evolving, by our own will, but not our physical condition.

if u can and u want to evolve, u can reach places u would never think possible. u can seek and find new abilities of your brain. possibilities are infinite.

if u want a pretty good book that i recommend to EVERYONE in the world, its called

The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (not sure bout first name)

this book is about our evolution, our possibilities and sooo much more. after reading this book your are definitly a better person. its REALLY worth the 10$ u would have maybe spend in weed.