What are humans evolving into?

Question

We started out as little organisms made out of a few cells, and we are at this stage now, so are the way future humans going to look or be really different? I know no one knows the exact answer, but what do you think?

Answer 1

I feel that human beings are evolving into idiots.  I don't feel their appearance will change much unless they continue to pierce, have plastic surgery, or alter their bodies.  It appears that humans are more idiotic today than before.  We have the knowledge and yet so many people are so dumb.  Thank you and may GOD come soon to right the wrongs that have been done on this earth.

Answer 2

We are evolving into nature and species killers. But seriously besides that I do not think we can evolve into anything soon enough before our species are wiped out by mass extinction due to natural forces. (meteors, volcano eruptions etc.)

Answer 3

We are evolving into fanatical theocrats, because they are the people

that are producing the most offspring. A previous answerer noted that

mexicans are breeding at a high rate. That is mainly because many

mexicans are heavy-breeding catholic theocrats. Funny that the

theocrats are breeding heavily as if they were hard-core atheist genetic

determinists, whereas the secularists are breeding comparatively little,

as if they were theists that believe in the non-importance of the

material genes.

Answer 4

I don't think that humanity is going to survive long enough to evolve beyond what we now are. We don't learn from history or our mistakes. The present day world is driven by money. Greedy people don't have everyone elses best intrest at heart. You know what they say money talks and bullshit walks.

Answer 5

we are evolving into MORE humans!

Answer 6

I think the question is irrelevant.  We will eventually develop sentient computers before that and they will no doubt enslave us.  Then we'll either be turned into cyborgs or rendered obsolete.  In all seriousness I think cybernetic implants might soon be used to 'enhance' humans.  That might very well be the next important step in evolution.

Answer 7

Humans are evolving into the worst kind of species that this world has ever seen. We, the humans are creating  lots of good things for the betterment of our race and along side of these  we have  been creating weapons of destruction, plundering this planet, ravaging  its beauty and spoiling our climate. In fact we are humiliating ourselves...our world. This is what we  are evolving into.....

Answer 8

There's no reason to think that we are still evolving physically, and some reason to think we aren't.

I don't think we'll be different at all physically.

Culturally we ARE changing; I think we'll be less messed up in the future -- but it will take a while.

Answer 9

Higher state of energy. I hypothesize that one day us humans will be able to rid our physical bodies and live in a higher state of energy. However, I do not believe humans will ever reach the state of Pure Energy will we always cycle and have to recharge somehow.

Answer 10

A brain and periferal organs to sustain the brain.

Answer 11

We evolve into gods.

Answer 12

I don't think our evolution is going to make us fitter or stronger, or more adapted to our environment. The advance of medecine means a lot of diseases are now treatable, so people aren't dying of disease as much (except in some countries - where I suspect evolution will continue as normal until we buck our ideas up). Therefore more people who are not resistant to disease, or even have genetic disorders are passing on their genes. The genes aren't being eradicated from the gene pool, so....I think evolution in the future will follow a random path, if we change at all. Perhaps our appendix will shrink more, and maybe even disappear because there's no need for it any more. But that's the most radical thing I can think of right now!

Answer 13

Because of globalization, the general trend seems to be "race" elimination. 100 years ago, you would most likely marry someone within a 50 mile radius. I would also think that the influence of climate is waning due to technology. Climate is the biggest factor in our appearance. I think that the characteristics that we use to classify race are fading.  That's just over the horizon. Eons from now, who knows. I think we'll be completely different creatures all together if we don't annihilate ourselves first.  Hopefully we will be beings of pure radiant light and spread goodwill and truth throughout the universe, or something like that.  :)

Answer 14

we'll be evolving into the chinese

Answer 15

machines

Answer 16

There is not such thing as evolution other than what mutations have occured.  So, given the current rate of mutant humans, you could say that we will be a world of downs syndromed humans, with some haveing 6 toes, with cleft palets, and extremely hairy individuals.  Sounds like fun if you believe in that c**p.

Answer 17

Humanity is evolving into Mexicans and Blacks by sheer force of reproduction.  White Protestant European patriarchal hegemony was merely a transient opium dream.

"You should be running."

Answer 18

Not sure about what Nature reserves to us, but I also believed that cybernetic and nanotech implants will make their appearance pretty soon. Also genetic manipulation will enable some individual to mix with some other animals to get either their senses (like eagle eyes), a little like we are modifiying our cars... So the human race will diversify to a large extand, while genetically speaking, will become more homogenes, thus increasing our vulnerability to pathogen agents...

Anyways, I guess that Human race will make a while on Earth but the "race" that really stand a chance to rule the universe will be the self replicating robots sent on other planets to mine them...

Answer 19

Your question contains the classical mistake given to evolution that it is progressive... it is NOT progressive.  Evolution is based on variance within the population allowing adaptation to fill new environmental niche.  Fortunately for humans we are the most generalized mammal on the planet and as of such have found a nearly universal sucess throughout most of the environments that we encounter.  That said it is difficult to imagine an environment that would be different enough and that we would habituate for long enough to allow natural selection to act upon the effected population for long enough to create any kind of significant visual change in our species.  At the same time we as a species are truly defeating the few acts of natural selection that were acting upon us with advances in medicine.  With this in mind the changes that might occur could be much like your thanksgiving Turkey, a creature who has been put under so much unnatural selection that it no longer is capable of mating due to humans artificially breeding them for nothing else but size.  If humans were no longer present to do this service for Turkeys, they would go extinct. Through "unnatural selection" humans are doing very similiar things to themselves.  Undoubtedly a woman who goes in for infertility medicines has a greater chance of having children who would require the same, children that have severe enough allergies/asthma that may have killed them in the past will now grow to a reproductive age with the assistance of asthma/allergy medicines will also produce offspring who have higher occurances of asthma/allergies.  This is a bit of a concern, seeing as at the same time we are making ourselves more susceptible to asthma and allergies we are also taking actions that are converting the environment that we will have to adapt to, to containing more contaminants.  If it gets serious enough those who are persevering with the assistance of medicine may be the first to become too sick to be reproductively successful such that the power of natural selection might overbear unnatural medical selection once again in this area?  Some areas where medicine is making slow progress, like cancer and Aids, there will be a continued evolutionary process.  Already there have been a few case studies that have shown a truckstop in Africa where the prostitutes, despite an alarming exposure rate, are not catching or dying from Aids suggesting that natural selection has already discovered a variant within one ethnic group that appears to have white blood cells which are not as susceptible to the AIDS virus, much like sickle cell trait does the same red blood cells resistance for Malaria.  As this gene now becomes more prominent due to the pressure of AIDS we may also see the advance of a new genetic disorder if a person is born with two recessives, much like two recessive copies of sickle cell results in anemia instead of trait.  So if people do begin to die from a worse environment that causes worse Asthma/Cancer/AIDS, undoubtedly natural selection will find many variants within our population which now far exceeds 6 billion people and will come up with the needed solutions to combat these problems so that enough people make it to a reproductive age and then go to the doctor to get their fertility drugs.  If there is also enough disruption in the sociopolitical structure such that medicine is no longer readilly available, at least to the poor, then natural selection will also reclaim the realm of fertility and those who can't naturally, won't.  So that is what our environment has in store for us...

But what about technology, if it is allowed to persist and becomes an enpowered agent towards our development.  If on top of the fertility drugs, people take medical-engineering so far that they also have their fetus' genetically altered to bring out the "preferred" characteristics.  Well it sounds great on the surface, this is actually a dangerous game of Russian roulette.  First of all, if the procedure becomes too widespread we would in essence be eradicating variability within our gene pool.  It is this same variance which is the mobilizer of natural selection that gives us our ability to adapt to new environments.  Now lets say a bacteria or virus evolves to exploit a now homogenous niche that our scientists have now placed in EVERYONE.  Not a single person will have the variance to counteract that virus/bacteria... whoops.  Secondly, if genetic altering is only a thing for the rich, then we might find that if two genetically altered children were to fall from the economic status of their parents that either they could not have children at all as they have so many recessives combining inutero that the fetus is continually rejected, or if a new baby is conceived without the same genetic tinkering that the parents underwent, that the resulting child may have severe genetic defects, again by two recessives that matched up in the new baby for the fact that that recessive with a different dominant in both parents had allowed a benificial trait in their parents genetic engineering procedure.  Simply put, genetic engineering may create a circumstance where it becomes a neccesary procedure for genetically engineered people to have healthy offspring and the Human race would be up the creek without a paddle if we somehow lost the ability to continue the procedure, once started.

So what are we evolving into...  What environment are we heading towards and how will our biology enpowered by natural selection and our sociopolitical and medical progress, which cheat the processes of natural selection, shape our evolution, our sucess within this new environment?  This is the question.  The answer is everything above.

Answer 20

Homo Economicus

Answer 21

I'm going to get flack for this but it seems to me that stupid people create more offspring than smart ones.  I'm not sure why this is but it creates a lousy outlook for the future.

Chances are, globalisation being what it is, there will be  a mixing of races and everyone will be darker skinned which will be a bonus considering what is happening to the ozone layer.

Other than that, we can say goodbye to appendixes and thank our keyboards for giving us a continued use for our pinky fingers (otherwise we'd end up with hands like cartoon characters, future generations would have much to think about if this came to fruition).

Answer 22

Since we started out as we are now (God created us in His own image)and we have been evolving over time, we should become smarter and smarter and destroy ourselves a whole lot sooner than expected, unless Jesus returns soon.

Answer 23

There is no current direction.  It usually takes selection or large numbers of people dying to create a direction.