Is there any scientific evidence that the human race is still evolving?

Question

Looking at Tutenkhamums mask, his face looks the same as ours today, even though he lived over 4000 years ago. Assuming you agree that we evolved from monkeys, have we now finished evolving or is there more to come mentally and physically? And if so what?!!

Answer 1

I know this sounds like a small thing but most of the people I know have 4 wisdom teeth that normally need to be pulled but I have only two... so I guess that counts in a way.

Answer 2

Some humans are born with webbed feet. *shrug* that's what I heard, anyways...

Answer 3

Evolution, the change in allele frequency over time in a population of organisms is the evidence.

Evolution is not progressive and 4000 years is not even a drop in the large bucket of evolutionary time.

You people make me tired!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Answer 4

Honest answer: Some claim that people being born without back molars is evidence of an evolutionary trait, however in population genetics you can find more evidence of evolution currently going on. Some entire regions of a population are completely immune or susceptible to diseases foreign or otherwise. So either through genetic isolation or mutations they've evolved for better or worse.

You're right that we did not evolve from monkeys though, it was apes.

Best answer: I didn't evolve from no monkey man. That's just the liberal media.

Answer 5

We are evolving, with every newborn, in most of our systems. If you went back in time, say twenty years ago and looked at some one the same weight, height, etc. as you, you would be superior. Our immune systems adapt constantly, our brains begin passing on new information, at our bodies are slowly evolving for some and devolving for others. Soon we will depend on technology so much, we will devolve. It may already be happening.

Answer 6

The principles of evolution require that humans, that all organisms, today keep evolving. The processes are things that simply happen when a species is living on Earth and exchanging DNA among its members. You seem to have a couple of misconceptions about evolution, which are easy to clear up.

No one in favor of evolution is saying that people came from monkeys. This is the most cited argument against evolution, as far as I can tell, and it's not even a claim that evolution makes. This is basic.

You may need a better grasp of the timescale something like evolution employs. If we mark a human generation at 20 years (give or take), there have been roughly 200 generations since the time of Tut. All of my biological anthro friends and professors tell me that at least 1000 generations are needed for mutations to accumulate enough to become apparent in a population. This is why species change over the course of millions of years, not hundreds or thousands. No one generation is going to be able to mark such changes without being able to look at something like a fossil record to make the long-view comparisons. It's like making Jello. You put it in the fridge a liquid, and pull it out a solid, but if you sat there and watched it, where's the point when it changes. It's only readily apparent (important word, "readily" apparent) when you look at shapshots separated by long enough stretches of time.

So if you believe evolution is supported by evidence, then you should believe that people today are evolving. If you don't believe evolution is supported, then you probably don't think people were ever evolving, much less that they are doing so today.

Answer 7

Evolution is a fairy tale. There is no true scientific evidence that it exists at all.

We are taller because of better nutrition and health care.

We are no smarter than we were 4000 years ago. Look at the pyramids! We today don't even know exactly how they were built. Ditto Stonehenge and the Easter Island statues. We just have a greater accumulated knowledge base, plus faster communication to exchange and refine ideas.

Answer 8

Yes. Everything evolves even in the most obvious way. Evolution is not just physical appearance but also our way of life which has change dramatically. mENTAlly, we have evolved, we have become smarter and cleverer...

Answer 9

we are taller than we were a hundred hears ago.

Answer 10

Of course the forces of evolution are still acting upon us.  They are filtered by our advanced culture though.

One example is eye sight.  Look around at how many people need glasses or contacts.  In other species, individuals being born with bad genes for sight are very rare.  Thats because natural selection weeds them out of the gene pool.  But because of our culture, we can put corrective lenses on individuals with bad sight, and they lead "normal" lives.  They reproduce, and pass on the genes for bad vision.

Answer 11

Yes.,,,.sience has shown over and over that mankind is evolving along with all other lifeforms

Answer 12

For the record, science holds that man did not evolve from monkees, but rather from a common ancestor preceding both apes and hominids.

Are we through evolving?  Fortunately, it certainly makes sense that we are not, and most likely never will be.  We're still in the process of losing our tails (as evidenced by the coccyx), seem to be getting a lot less hairy (some more so than others), and will hopefully become more intelligent and less agressive, if we don't destroy ourselves first.

As for funky ol' King Tut, remember that 4,000 years is about one millionth of the age of the earth; not a very long time in that context.

Answer 13

"Assuming you agree that we evolved from monkeys,"

We certainly did evolve from monkeys.  Some of the scientific types seem think they are clever in saying the common ancestor of humans and monkeys weren't monkeys.  They were monkeys, just not the same kind of monkeys as today.  Apes evolved from monkeys so we also evolved from monkeys.  

To answer your question, evolution doesn't necessarily work on time frames as short as 4000 years.  Our gene frequency will change as selection pressures in the future favor some over others.  That is basic biology and common sense.  Nobody can accurately predict the selection pressures in the future so we couldn't say where evolution will ultimately take us or how fast evolution will happen.

Answer 14

I think humans took themselves out of that ladder the first time a caveman used tools. No need to evolve if you can just make a tool. Evolution is changing to meet an environmental need---we just make something instead.

Answer 15

It is impossible to not evolve. We are adaptations of our environment, and thus will react to the outside stimuli. It is definitely possible to "regress" if exposed to adverse conditions. We cannot see the changes because we live for only a short time; evolutionary change takes place over thousands of years~  

Humans for about 200000 years have not really evoled physically but mentally however this could be due to the thousands or more years that evolution takes place this is normal human progress. All animals would progress in knowledge like this as well, but because they cannot communicate in words, or think outside of hardwired primal instincts (survive, hunt, have offspring, die) they cannot evolve knowledge-wise, but only body-wise, because the existance of humans have changed things for them. I think the homo-sapiens came into existance when language was invented. This is many, many times more significant then most would think. This doesn't just allow pure communication between humans, but a way of expressing one's feelings, and thoughts. Before we had language, people were no better than animals, because the only thoughts they had were primal. Once language was introduced, instead of thinking: food, survive, mate, die, they could have infinite thoughts, because they thought in a language, before they couldn't think because they had no language to think in. It's like a computer with everything disconnected. The processor is capable of 3 billion actions a second, (3ghz) but it can't function without input, or an output, so it lays dormant until it becomes connected with a common thing, language.

There are no stages in evolution, that would imply some final product that were striving to be. Evolution is a never ending process so yes we are still evolving. just remember that it takes a very long time so changes will not be detectable in us . who is to say that a bacteria is any less evolved than we are just because they are less complex. Who knows what we will look like in the future, it depends on what sort of pressures are on us and mutations arise and what traits allow some people to be more successful than others.