Evolution Theories

I have a theory about the next evolution of *person* sapiens (correct terminology for humans). Well actually 3 theories. Theory one:Humans will not evolve one more time before the end of the world. But instead deevolve because we have had it in the spot light for far to long. *person* sapiens have been the most dominent creatures on the planet. Theory two:Humans have evolve thousands of times already. Every time we get smarter and smarter and make a great stride in any field whether it is Science (mostly science though) to Language Arts. Like the first human in space we evolve enough to get the inteligence of building a rocket or space craft that will go in space.Theory three:Humans will be wipped out before we have a chance to evolve. Like the dinosaurs lay live as the dominent creatures of the planet for millions of years. We are going to be the dominent creatures of the planet for millions of years too then be wipped out. Mostly by the climate changing far to fast for humans to adapt too.

Evoltion is a fact not a theory.

nehmanator333: Evolution is indeed a theory. It hasn't been proven decisively, though it has much evidence towards it (I myself believe in evolution, all the way).

 

MTGaming:

 

Theory no. 1

I'm not sure what you mean about humans having "it ... in the spot light." Perhaps you mean that because humans have been the dominant species on the planet for so long, that we shall collectively be dethroned, so to speak, to be replaced by some other species. If that's truly what you're saying, I don't agree. Firstly, there has to be another species capable of overpowering h o m o sapiens (pardon the spacing, but the filters are cruel and unusual). This species would obviously have to possess immense amounts of intelligence. As of right now, the most intelligent creatures on the planet, next to humans, are creatures such as dolphins, whales, and chimpanzees—none of which seem ambitious enough to claim dominion over the earth. If you're saying that humans are bound for deevolution, that is highly unlikely, regardless of species or situation. I agree with you on the point that humans may regress, but not deevolve, and only insofar as our physical stature. As you say in your second theory, humans have progressed in achievement and cognitive skills, so I think it's fairly safe to assume that the cerebral facet of human evolution will continue it's trend, don't you?

 

Theory no. 2

I can't seem to find what the theoretical part of your statements is. It sounds like you're saying that humans are always evolving, and they are always evolving to higher ranks of intelligence.—Sounds pretty solid to me.

 

Theory no. 3

The fundamental problem here is that dinosaurs weren't as powerful as humans. Dinosaurs were the dominant species because they were the best adapted to their environment, for evolution had been very kind to them. Humans are different in that if we were stripped of our societies and higher intelligence, we wouldn't survive in the wild nearly as well; we maintain any superiority through our technological and social sophistication. We aren't as well developed to our environment, and it's not our trend to adapt to the environment, rather, it's our trend to adapt the environment to ourselves. Right now there is global warming, the source of which is controversial. No matter what the source, chances are, at our current rate of technological advancement, that by the time that global warming would have been a serious problem, we'll have developed technology to counteract the effects, whether eliminating global warming altogether or devising new tools to survive on an ecologically unsound planet. As long as we continue to make advancements like we have been, our dominance is quite likely to continue.

Edited July 8, 2006 by morosophos (see edit history)

Something you all failed to mention is that human evolution seems to be leading towards a combination of a biological and technological synthesis. Humans have been using technology to alter their own bodies, to make themselves faster, smarter, quicker, and better adapt for centuries. Technology is now evolving at such a rapid pace in this century that there are real fears about technology getting out of hand. Humans augmenting their bodies with mechanical parts is around the bend, people that have lost body parts will soon start replacing those parts with mechanical parts. Due to the advancement of technology human beings genetically altering their body is not that far off. Imagine a world where people can design their babies. Then imagine a world where you can design your own body to be whatever you like. Human beings will be able to replace organic parts with mechanical parts and alter their own biology. The future that is coming is one where humans if allowed by law or if not done illegally will be able to alter themselves into becoming some kind of new lifeform. This is an uncharted territory that we are venturing towards.

Edited July 20, 2006 by iancovenant (see edit history)

Something you all failed to mention is that human evolution seems to be leading towards a combination of a biological and technological synthesis.
Humans have been using technology to alter their own bodies, to make themselves faster, smarter, quicker, and better adapt for centuries. Technology is now evolving at such a rapid pace in this century that there are real fears about technology getting out of hand. Humans augmenting their bodies with mechanical parts is around the bend, people that have lost body parts will soon start replacing those parts with mechanical parts. Due to the advancement of technology human beings genetically altering their body is not that far off. Imagine a world where people can design their babies. Then imagine a world where you can design your own body to be whatever you like.

Human beings will be able to replace organic parts with mechanical parts and alter their own biology. The future that is coming is one where humans if allowed by law or if not done illegally will be able to alter themselves into becoming some kind of new lifeform. This is an uncharted territory that we are venturing towards.

well...thats not really evolution, because humans will be born being normal but then can alter themselves later.

I honestly think that we will not evolve anymore. Evolution is based on a part of a species being killed because they could'nt adapt or weren't fast enough to outrun predators, or anything like that. The threat of being killed is now gone. All of those that normally can't adapt to the environment have clothing, or shelter to shield them from the elements. People who wouldn't be able to outrun a predator no longer have the need to run from a predator because they have weapons or a vehicle or there are no predators to run from. So all of the people that are supposed to be killed off so that the species can evolve... don't. So the human species in my mind will stay the same, in looks and natural ability.

well...thats not really evolution, because humans will be born being normal but then can alter themselves later.
I honestly think that we will not evolve anymore. Evolution is based on a part of a species being killed because they could'nt adapt or weren't fast enough to outrun predators, or anything like that. The threat of being killed is now gone. All of those that normally can't adapt to the environment have clothing, or shelter to shield them from the elements. People who wouldn't be able to outrun a predator no longer have the need to run from a predator because they have weapons or a vehicle or there are no predators to run from. So all of the people that are supposed to be killed off so that the species can evolve... don't. So the human species in my mind will stay the same, in looks and natural ability.

Yes, but then humans that alter themselves so much that they become a new lifeform, may then become capable of having children that are not human but instead this new lifeform.

Humans are still evolving naturally to a degree though, their bodies are still changing according to the climate and temperature but as you said the evolution of current man is much more lax and different from that of their ancestors. However war, natural distasters, and global warming may change modern man potentially destroying modern societies and plunging the world into a dark age. If this were to occur humans living on different parts of the earth may then begin to evolve differently into new separate and diverse species.
Edited July 20, 2006 by iancovenant (see edit history)

True evolution takes countless generations of mutation. Humans haven't even been around long enough for the races to become seperate species. And it will never happen cause we move around and mix 2 much which is healthy. It will take at least 300 thousand years of consistency in where we live to truly evolve. Man is too impatient though and will find a way to manipulate the process and choose evolutionarily how we will change. which some members of society will reject. Thus creating different kinds of humans. That is biological, there will also be cybernetic evolution the more we integrate nano technologic and bionics into our bodies and existence. And space travel might affect our evolution if we choose to migrate to another planet it make take a few hundred thousands years of space travel to get to that planet. And a few hundred or thousand of generations of living in space. Hell look at dogs, We have chosen there evolution and so far..... they are no more than wolves with the violence bred out of them. But they are wolves genetically none the less. and they live 1 tenth our life span. If we evolve anytime soon it will be of our doing. Its either that or wait another few hundred thousand years lol.

As Xugal said, evolution is the improvement of a species through multiple genetic mutations - cyborg inplants wouldn't be evolution because it wouldn't be a trait that would pass on to one's offspring.

 

As for humans constantly evolving, no, since h o m o sapien first evolved (if you believe in evolution, that is), there has been no change. True, we've acquired knowledge, but knowledge in itself does not constitute evolution. We're still the same species and are no smarter than our ancestors (perhaps even a little dumber due to incest, genetic breakdown, etc.). Better educated, maybe, but not necessarily smarter (and the education comment is in debate as far as the US education system goes).

Humans have not physically changed pretty much since we started walking upright. This is fact. It has been shown that our brains have not changed since the caveman days. The way we use it has.One generation learns something new and passes it on to the next generation. Though we are technically not genetically passing it along, it is still being passed. The definition of evolution should include this.To expand a bit more...The last "evolutionary" change in humans was when we started walking upright. For the last 20 or so years though, we have undergone a different type of evolution.The information age has transformed humans. the next evolution of human beings will be done using technology as an enabler. For example, when virtual reality comes and we are all plugged into a "matrix" like environment, we are no longer humans in the traditional sense. We "evolve" to a new form of life, that is being played out only in our minds. In this way, humans physically will not change but they will harness technology to enable them to move into another stage of evolution. This is just one possibility. There are many more. Look at genetic engineering. Technology and the information age (human genome project) has allowed humans to understand what we are made of and how we are built. Right now, if we can genetically modify people... or "evolve" them to something different.

But then there is, of course, the ethical questions that come along with that. How does one know that giving people an extra arm is actually the way we should go? Isn't genetically modifying people to be smarter, faster, stronger, etc. cheating to a degree? What about those who were born without modifications? They would become like retards compared to enhanced humans, forcing them do to menial tasks as the genetically superior people took on the jobs of intellectual value. The list goes on.

Genetic drift causes evolution. Genetic drift itself is often caused by the need to survive in the given environment, that is, adaptive evolution, and at other times genetic drift comes about through change and spontaneous mutation. Humans must still be undergoing evolution, where evolution can be defined as "genetic drift."

 

A healthy child is ideally produced from two genomes, one from each parent, different enough so that there is little error when the two sets of chromosomes combine into a zygote. However, even with the over six billion people currently inhabiting the earth, reproduction through unique genomes is becoming more uncommon because of intermarriage.?That is, exogenous marriage is bringing peoples together into just one generic people. The human race is essentially becoming one giant family, where all intercourse is really incest, the result of which is genetic mutation. This problem cannot even be solved by each people keeping to itself, because even what little genetic variation there is within the system is wiped-clean by intermarriage, resulting in genetic drift within the separated communities, so instead of the human race evolving all together, hypothetically there would be several different species, all traced back to the h o m o sapiens. Of course, all this would take a long time, so it's likely there would be technology developed to ameliorate the problem of convergent genome structures. As Cerebral Stasis said, the question of ethics comes in insofar as genetic engineering and whatnot, because genetic engineering is very scary business.

 

Let's say that perhaps six million years go by, and still the human race hasn't degenerated into one giant inbred mob. This means that there was genetic mutation going on during those elapsed ten thousand years, because the genomes still remained different enough that reproduction could go on without really being incest.

 

Humans are the product of many, many years of evolution, and they still evolve even now; it's just so slow it's nearly unnoticeable. As someone brought up, the human physical structure hasn't really changed since h o m o erectus, the first upright man (though there has been change in other facets of the physical condition, such as size), but this change is relatively recent. The next major change may not be due for a long time. One noticeable genetic change happening even now is size. Many of my peers (being around sixteen or seventeen) are all around 185 cm (~6 ft), but our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, loss of bone mass aside, are significantly shorter. Even taking into account the drugs dumped into the milk, enriched foods, and healthier diets, the height discrepancy is great enough to be attributed to the very genes of the offspring.

Edited July 31, 2006 by morosophos (see edit history)

One noticeable genetic change happening even now is size. Many of my peers (being around sixteen or seventeen) are all around 185 cm (~6 ft), but our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, loss of bone mass aside, are significantly shorter. Even taking into account the drugs dumped into the milk, enriched foods, and healthier diets, the height discrepancy is great enough to be attributed to the very genes of the offspring.

The height difference you are noticing between your parents or grandparents is definately NOT "genetic drift" or evolution. You think that could happen in 2 generations? Highly unlikely. It is more likely that those "minor changes" you mention are things like tolerances to certain diseases or chemicals that we've produced. This is the extent of our "evolution" since homoerectus.

The height/size difference you are talking about is simply a result of people having DIFFERENT lives. There are a few schools of thought around this.

1. People, in the last 10-20 years have consumed more an more "growth chemicals/hormones" through our food supply. Those "special" grains or feeds that are given to cows and chickens to produce bigger chicken breasts. This could filter down to the people who eat that meat. For example, there was a study that showed girls hit puberty earlier when exposed to growth hormones from beef.

2. People are eating healthier and standard of living is improving. Getting the proper vitamins and minerals and eating balanced diets. The other side of it is also people eating bigger portions... generating a fat population.

Evolution is a fact not a theory.

I disagree completely... and I'm surely not the only one...
Why do people believe in evolution? Now there's a real question... Is it because three or four guys a few hundred years ago thought it up?
Perhaps, Perhaps not.

In reality, evolution is just an idea of what "might" have happened. It has not been proven and will likely never be proven... just like the theory of creation...

people can believe what they want to believe and that's great, but they shouldn't try to force their beliefs on others as fact...

but anyway...

I have to agree that there is indeed "de-volution." People are getting dumber and dumber... I think we peaked in the 18 or 1900s...
Thanks for that bit of truth...
nice theories about evolution...

and I also agree with what was said in response to the height change discussion... interesting stuff...

Of course, GH and other hormones ample in the food and milk supply in many industrialised countries has a lot to do with the height discrepancy between generations. Here's an example, however, how height was affected in the opposite direction through genetic drift. The Pygmy people are famous for their tendency towards a smaller size. This size is surely not accounted for because they don't drink the same milk or eat the same foods as perhaps you or I would eat or drink; rather, the size difference is accounted for because their island is very small and therefore it has only capacity enough to support a small system of life. Rather than few people living on the island, their bodies adapted over time to become shorter. The smaller size enables them to consume less food and resources of the island to survive.

Human will involve into mutants with special supa human ability... just like the x-men ... nah... just jk..This may sound stupid, wat most of my fren thinks that human may eventually evolve to monkeys....