Have humans killed evolution and natural selection with technology?

Question

Have humans killed evolution and natural selection with technology?

Answer 1

Evolution is a process.

What about this:

anything that humans do, achieve, develop, are, or become is all included in our...

evolution!

Answer 2

Not yet but they are sure as h**l trying.

Answer 3

No, probably not, and it likely started changing use a couple of million years ago.  We have smaller teeth and hands probably as a result of technology allowing us to use our larger brains to make up for a relative lack of strength.  It is very likely our brains changed to allow much greater coordination to accurately throw weapons for example.  Further technology further isolates our need to have many of the natural instincts and abilities that keep wild animals safer.  That could allow other abilities to increase further. Our seeming lack of positive selection pressures through medicine compensating for problems could degrade the genome.  Only time will tell many generations down the road.

Answer 4

umm, someday technology will kill the humans

Answer 5

No, though some selective pressures have been changed or reversed.

For example, due to prolonged periods of hunger in early hunter gatherer societies, human evolution used to favor individuals who have an efficient fat storage system. (i.e. they are able to survive until the next meal)

However, with obesity becoming a problem in industrialized nations and the increase in obesity related diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, evolution (not to mentioned human culture) now favors humans without such an efficient fat storage system.

Answer 6

yep

Answer 7

No.  You're giving human beings too much credit.

Answer 8

Technology has changed the conditions for survival and "fittest"

For example, a person of smaller size finds it comfortable to travel in an air plane compared to a huge person, due to space restrictions.  The advantage of smaller size is considerable in these times as we have machines to do all kinds of tasks and a big and strong body is unnecessary burden.  Big body is also not that healthy as well.

Due to technology, I think smaller races will find it easier to live and will be more successful in the next 1000 yrs.  They will produce more offsprings or will have better economic and tehcnological power and success.

Answer 9

Quite the opposite. The sudden change to our diet to a high glycemic index diet with a lot of carbs in it sees us in the middle of a 'selective sweep'. Prior to farming humans ate mostly flesh and some vegetables, then when farming arrived we had to adapt to a more plant based diet.

Now there's a lot of sugar in our diet due to technology, and this makes a lot of women infertile and it's the cause of obesity. People who don't handle sugar well are being selected out as we speak.

Technology only changes the direction of natural selection, it won't stop it or even slow it down. In fact, the huge global population will make more mutations occur more frequently.

Evolution races on.

Answer 10

Not yet... Although if designer babies ever become legal/possible, you could argue we've achieved acceleration of both.

Answer 11

Yes, we used to get no older than 45 or 50. Nowadays we average 75. Which means there's no more natural selection. Medicine decides when we die. I guess in the (very) old days one wouldn't hardly survive if the eyes turned bad, teeth started to fall out, or the back would go wrong. Nobody these days would accept this to be life threatening...These days a car without 10 airbags is life threatening!