Living beings evolve to adapt, usually out of necessity.

eg. Predator developed stereoptic vision, while prey do not possess them, they have wider angle of view to ensure predators don't get an easy jump on them.

Human evolved through the ages as well, but now we seems to take the equation out through technology.

When we need to see better at night, we have IR lenses, when we need to communicate, we reach for our cellphone, when we need to go about places faster, instead of walking or running faster, we use vehicle to commute.

Has the human species reached the end of evolution, be it natural or hindered by technologies? or will humans evolves into other form? If you think we still have room for improvement, what do you think human will look like in the future?

Note : Biological evolution, meaning not involving technology.

This post has been edited by wKkaY: Jun 20 2009, 03:43 PM

Homo-Cyborg: Our Next Evolution

Mechanical enhancement aren't evolution. We're talking about biological evolution.

Bio/DNA engineering?

I think human beings are evolving day by day... 2000 years before human is weak.. but now human can live more than 100 yrs old... also because of food, health, technology that prolong human life span.. but then again... the evolution aren't visible... we are living comfortably the way we are now.. unless you tell me earth has no more oxygen and human began to extinct.. maybe in a way our body will evolve to adapt to this.. who knows our evolved lungs can process CO2 instead of O2

imo human will look like aliens in the future.

that's ugly.

do not want

do you really think our ancestor comng from an ape? i dont believe it..

See this is where misconception on human evolution comes in. We SHARE the same ancestors as modern apes. We did not evolve from them. Modern apes have evolved too albeit a slower pace.

Fossil evidence clearly shows relation between primates



Comparison of modern bone structures(oversized so i put it in spoiler atg)



This post has been edited by befitozi: Jun 20 2009, 04:03 PM

We are still having evolution. Most probably the stage of human being would be getting a larger brain and a smaller 'the rest of the body'.

We're emphasizing on mental intelligence more than physical strength

With onset of robotics and neural transmittance, we may evolve to have nothing but a brain!

Though problems with reproduction and the joys that come with it may be .. erm .. lost

if it involves engineering, it's not evolution.

mental intelligence? does that mean there's such thing as physical intelligence? spiritual intelligence?

regardless, seeing the way you put it "emphasizing on mental intelligence more than physical strength" - AFAIK humans have always placed emphasis on the mental capacity (there's a difference between intelligence and knowledge, so i prefer to use the word mental capacity) and the head sizes have not shown to be significantly distorted than before.

in fact compare then and now, we have progressed in technology but the not-so-clever people are still a large %.

the unfortunate thing about evolution is that it's not always for the better, at least that's the way i see it. humans kind seem to be degrading.

Erm well maybe the word intelligence should be suffice and yes the % of educated people is still very low overall and the evolution of clever / educated people might be greatly different from those uneducated ones.

Evolution is not about improving ourselves into greater lifeforms at all, as a matter of fact, it is never so. Evolution is about adapting the environment of the organism, the current culture and lifestyle of humanity requires us to utilize our brains more and so we might adapt to it by having perhaps greater memory or so. So a human that lives in jungle and feed himself by hunting wild animals could undergo evolution into something with more developed muscles and bone structures, at least that's the theory I guess~
=/

they say we evolve from ape, why does ape still exist?

Once again, it's misinterpreted. Scroll up for my previous post on this.

if technology isnt available, probably we would evolve with wings to replace the need to travel

we are evolving right now, imo. all the complexity of the world, i believe our brain and our descendants' will be much more powerful that our ancestors'. with all the readily available knowledge ready for absorption, our brains will adapt.

so we might not like grow an extra limb or anything, but the people of the future will be undoubtedly much smarter. or at least the potential to be.

Human evolution hasn't stopped. However, the nature of our interaction with the environment has changed drastically: instead of the environment mostly shaping us to it, now we shape our environment to us. We also do a lot to keep alive what would have been genetic dead-ends even 100 years ago; infertile couples now have children, babies born with chronic problems live to reproduce, and people live far longer than when we were little more than animals, causing the non-reproducing elders to have more of an impact on society than had been the case, say, 10,000 years ago.

Our very intelligence is compensating for many brute environmental evolutionary forces. For example, take the smallpox vaccine. Hundreds of years ago, populations evolved through the ravages of smallpox -- sickly or low immune people died, while those resistant were more likely to survive, making for a more resistant to smallpox population. Those isolated from these forces were greatly susceptible -- when Europeans came to the Americas, they brought smallpox with them, and the native populations had not been winnowed out by that disease the way the Europeans had; estimates range from 60%-90% of many American populations died from these diseases in a very short time.

Instead, we force evolve other species: look at the many breeds of cats, dogs, horses, cows, etc, which were selected and bred for certain traits -- this is evolution in a microcosm, with human wishes instead of environmental factors being the guiding principles.

Homo sapiens have only existed for about 100 000 years now. Although we are far from what these original people are like, the process of evolution would take many more 100 000 of years or even millions. However, evolution only occurs when a selection pressure is applied to a population and individuals will evolve to over come this. This best present by looking at the peppered moth. It originally was white to camouflage itself against lichen on trees but pollution from factories killed off the lichen. A black variant of the moth (the melanic form) was found later which was camouflaged against the trees without lichen. This is an example of evolution but occured in a very small time period and the selection pressure is that the loss of lichen ment that they had lost their camouflage. In humans, there is no real selection pressure as we are pretty much safe above everything so we do not currently need to evolve. However, this could change, for example, global warming could eventually mean that we adapt to be more cooling efficient due to increased temperatures.

Also, the human species has evolved a few times in the past. The first time was ape to human, and then when humans migrated to colder north from Africa, they started to evolve again, because the at least one offspring had a genetic mutation that made their skin lighter(people with darker skin were reflecting too much sunlight, and hence making less Vitamin D), allowing them to survive and reproduce in places where there are little sunlight.

I hate it when people do not believe in evolution, because they were told that God created man the way we are now, and that's that. It is a more complicated process than that, it's just that some people do not want to denounce what they were taught when they were young, or they are just too lazy to discover how humans actually came to be.

taking the darwin's theory out of context, i have always find hairier people have not fully evolve much as compared to the less haired people.

I'm sorry to burst ur bubble but apparently have you realize this is named 'Science lab'?
No offense to ur religious views but how do you prove Adam and Eve is the first human ...'created'? By who? By how? Suddenly pops out from the midst of air?

And according toe the average lifespan of humanity as compared to centuries ago, we live longer than ever. People usually live at most 70 averagely last time and now we're reaching 80 and 90 because of the advancement of technology which gives us immunity to diseases and improves of diets which will then lowers the mortality rate of humans.

If this is call a 'concept', then what 'concept' does your claims belongs to? Seriously Darwin's theory of evolution is the only logical theory that can explain lifes form and the there's evidence as well. I'm lazy to search up to evidence, so do a search urself if you're interested.

its all depend..
science it good for humankind..
as long it dont go wrong..
mostly like darwin..