What is the evolutionary future of mankind ?

Question

Considering the evolutionary history of hominid species, what is the future of man. Will the species be a deadend or mutate into another species; and what are the possibile mutations?

Answer 1

Evolution means reacting and changing to fit our environment, and now since we have so much control over our environment (cyberspace, pollution, I don't know, everything), then we can chose how to evolve - what a statement of freewill would that be!!!

In Kurzweil's book, he says the next stage in evolution after thumbs, logical reasoning, creativity, all that, is becoming computers.

Perhaps we will all become something of our own designs, computers, half - computer, I don't know. It's too imaginable to be called crazy.

Answer 2

We will all develop a proboscis for drinking cola and have only two fingers, the rest being redundant to the operation of a keyboard

Answer 3

What I have read is that our brains will get larger and women's hips will get larger to accomodate this.  Doesn't sound pretty but I guess we will get use to it.

Answer 4

The effects of global warming will kill us before we have the chance to evolve significantly.

Answer 5

Since there is zero proof in any branch of science, religion, or science that hominids exist that would not be a valid consideration for this discussion.

However, when God created man he made us so that we will withstand anything and all things that He decides we will survive.  While surviving we will also thrive according to His plan and purpose.  So, in short, man is here as long as God says we will be.  He ans He alone is in control.

Now before you go nuts!!!!!  Think about this...It takes the same amount of faith to believe as I do and you do because I believe in an invisible God and you believe in a transmutation between species that has not yet been discovered.  This is not my thinking but Jay Gould the godfather of Darwinistic science.  He admitted to Phillip Johnson when writing his book "Darwin on Trial" that very thing.  Both Darwinism and Biblical Creation require faith!

Answer 6

I doubt our species will evolve any more, because technology is us being too impatient to wait for it. We make all these devices to support our life as it is now, so there would be no evolutionary imperative to change unless something truly catastrophic happened.

Answer 7

I wouldnt say another species at all.  More likely we will become smarter, and less athletic.

Answer 8

evolutionary future of mankind

(1) Our overall body size will get reduced.  Having a bigger body has become disadvantageous.  Three Chinese people sitting in a row of seat in front of me in an airliner find it more comfortable compared to three very large guys sitting in the next row.  Their happy mind set help them achive more after the journey as well.  Large guys find this difficulty everywhere they go and they find their size has no advanatge when it comes to medical or financial well being.  They are LESS fit to survive.

Find some other stuff that will be advantages for a better human life in the future (the time of technology and science) and you can have the vision of the evolutionary future of mankind.

Answer 9

Further technology.

Answer 10

I assume you are asking for an opinion from someone who has pondered this very query.  You have asked a 4 part question, and in the tradition of communication (especially conveying certain terms, ideas, and other such rhetoric that individuals may not recognize, relate to or, fathom),  I will be more than happy to do my best to offer you a part of my mind. Understand that this is BY FAR the most thought provoking question (for lack of a better term) that I have had the opportunity to entertain .                                                                                              The future of mankind is optomistic. Never have we had a  brighter future. Homo-sapiens (same-species) are making progress on an exponential scale. I, myself am 39 rotations around the sun. And since I graduated high school in 1986, it is starting to become difficult for me (SMART M/F!!) to keep up with technology. Let me offer you an example: I was about 10 years of age when the video games started to take the place of Pinball Machines. The FIRST one was called "PONG". That was the one where you controlled a "PADDLE" at the bottom of the screen, and kept your "BALL" alive by attacking a series of "BRICKS" that were stationary (in a solid formation) at the top of the screen. That was around 1978 or so. And they just got better and better. My 5 year old daughter has a better grasp on these things (games, etc.) than I do. It is fascinating and  humbling because at one time my mom (60) was in the position that I now occupy! Do you understand? When I was young, my parents could NOT grasp what I found to be second nature. Now, because my priorities have evolved into a role that does NOT afford me to be able to keep up, my 5 year old daughter is almost a freak of nature to me. What I have shared with you thus far is a metaphoric example of your first thought! As far as your thoughts on the dead end parts,  I will be bold enough to assume you are speaking about governments. This has been a thorn in earths foot. If "WE" spent what we do on national security on space exploration, etc. it would boggle the mind!!!!!!  The mutation part :1) as a species we have about 35,000 years. 2) we share around 97% of our DNA with the other primates (APES) (monkeys have TAILS!) now as far as mutations go; there are virtually countless combinations of DNA. A mutation would be such until many generations had the signature in increasing proportions to actually become a trait! I apologize for my fainting attention span, but I must fly! BB

Answer 11

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 is the evolutionary future of mankind... 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 12

We must evolve spiritually before our species can reap the benefits of science and genetic therapies to eradicate disease.    That so many fellow humans suffer while a few run through ridiculous ammounts of resources is wrong.

My best possible future is a vision of Employee owned industries and actual representative governments protecting citizenry.  The evolution must come from within.