• Question: If human evolution carried on what would humans evolve into next and what would their features be?

    Asked by 268susb46 to Samuel, Richard, Nikolai on 16 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Nikolai Adamski

      Nikolai Adamski answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      The thing is that we as a species are artificially changing our “natural” evolution. Evolution happens when successful traits get propagated or at least kept alive in a population of organisms (animals, plants, bacteria): An organism with a successful trait passes it on to its children and so on, whereas disadvantageous traits usually lead to a loss in fertility, i.e less offspring. However, our use of technology and medicine can compensate some traits that would normally have been selected to be “unfit” in “nature”. So in a way we are deciding our evolution based on social and technical criteria. Where will it lead? Your guess is as good as mine 🙂

    • Photo: Richard Simons

      Richard Simons answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      there was a very similar question to this which we’ve all answered here:
      /susm15-zone/2015/03/16/what-is-our-next-evolution-going-to-be-and-when-is-it-going-to-happen/

      As often happens in science where the answer is unknown, Nikolai and I have different views but that’s part of the fun!

    • Photo: Samuel Ellis

      Samuel Ellis answered on 19 Mar 2015:

      I also answered this on that other question Richard has linked to. As a quick answer, I’d say one interesting aspect will be whether there is a ‘blurring’ in races, as populations around the world get more multi-cultural perhaps there will a larger population that is ‘mixed race’ than there ever has been before. We shall see I guess 🙂

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