If humans survive for another ten thousand years, how different will they look?

Question

How about twenty, thirty, or forty thousand years? If someone travelled that far in the future, wouldn't humans look like aliens to that person? Or would they just look slightly different...

Answer 1

I hope Ed is right but I suspect there won't be much difference in that short of time except blurring of races.  There probably wouldn't be a significant difference for a few hundred thousand years unless they decide to use genetic engineering on humans as Ed suggests.  If that happens, you would probably get the super nerd race of people and the super athlete race and beautiful artist race...

Answer 2

My point of view is that as we turn to technology to solve most of our mental problems we are going to grow smaller brains instead of bigger.

The more processing power we have at our fingertips the less we will need in our heads.

Answer 3

Because humans have the keys to their own destiny & evolution, via genetic engineering, one can expect future looks to become a fad. Some genetic engineering may be dictated by climate change or needs adapt to off earth conditions, but it will be largely discressionary.  Undoubtably humans will need to genetically engineer food producing plants & probably some animals to provide a food supply for the rapidly increasing population.

One can expect humanity to seek better brains & other methods to enhance intelligence in the future. Natural birth severely limits brain size, so I expect us to extend childhood & increase the time a brain can grow... thus producing larger brains. I would also expect brain effeciency to increase & expect electronic enhancements to brain activity in the future.

I suspect our lifespan will be seen as alarmingly short by our future descendents.

Answer 4

not much different i guess...maybe the only thing that would change is that we would use a much higher % of our brains...thats all....

Answer 5

It is impossible to tell exactly how people will look at any given time in the future. Look back even a century and you will see a stark contrast in features, height, weight, life span, etc. The main reaso for such rapid changes is the blurring of the races, which will only increase as the years pass.