Are the products of human evolution (technology, etc.) also causing us to de-evolve?

Question

Are the products of human evolution (technology, etc.) also causing us to de-evolve?

Answer 1

Frankly, devolution is a mystical concept that should only be reserved for the live action mario movie. Secondly, there is no evidence that humans are becoming less intelligent, actually it would appear that humans have become more knowledgable, although this might not be a morphological difference. Humans have for the past 200k years been getting less robust along a large scale.

Answer 2

Probably - as technologies that allow those that would not normally survive to do so. The benefits of civilization also stop human evolution - still the benefit of technology and society outweigh this - technology grows much faster than evolution happens.

Answer 3

Devolution implies that evolution would take the exact path backwards as it did forwards.  This is impossible since the mutations and stimuli are different and we different organisms that our ancestors were.  Technology certain has an impact, but I wouldn't say that we're going backwards.  We do continue to evolve, but evolutions is such a slow process that we can't observe it happening.

Answer 4

More likely the opposite.

The size of our brains has often by the determining factor in how human or advanced we are. It's been pointed out that the head of a baby can't get much large. The birth canal is the limiting factor. Conversely, should the birth canal become larger, women would have difficulty in walking.

The caesarean section allows babies with large heads to be born. Conceivably this could result in humans with larger brains that would be an evoluntionary advance

Answer 5

First there is no such concept as "de-evoloving".  Evolution is a continuous process of adaptation to their environments by living populations.

In the case of humans, we have evolved the use of culture as our main means of coping with our environment.  Think of the Eskimo as an example, who live in cold year around.  The way they adapt to the arctic is not by morphological adaptations, like thick coats of fur or blubber, but by cultural means--shelter, use of domesticated animal, specialized hunting gear for hunting seals, etc.

So while some products of culture may not be as benign as we could hope for them to be, it is not weakening us either.

wl

Answer 6

Yes.

The proof is on here. Half the people answering can't even spell.

People don't bother to remember anything anymore because it's on their cell phones.

People don't bother to learn anymore because they can cheat and look up the answers online - or ask on here.

People can't even be bothered to read maps anymore.

All these things result in the "dumbifying" of us as human beings. Way to go technology!

Answer 7

No. Anyone who has told you that does not understand evolution. Evolution, which is merely the change in allele frequency over time in a population, has no direction, or purpose.

Technology is just another environmental influence that can drive evolutionary processes; possibly. Only one of the forces, though.

So much confusion about evolutionary processes in social science

Answer 8

Evolution is unidirectional like time. Does not mean we get brainier or stronger either. It just happens.