Is human evolution over?

[Otto_iii]

Simple question, just asking 

[captain_to_fire]

No it’s not. However, scientists think that human evolution became slower because there is lesser evolutionary pressure and Homo sapiens learned to take evolution to their own hands. 

 

[lewdicrous]

This thread might be interesting.

 

[Beef Boss]

It's been slowed down because we aren't all you know... Starving or dying from predators for the most part anymore. There are always threats, but like, you city folk don't see as much. Some of you get scared at the drop of a hat, while I'm hearing a pack of wolves in my back yard

[Kilrah]

Evolution happens over hundreds/thousands of years. Nothing you're going to be able to see.

[Guest]

No, it's not slowing down, or stopped. It's just different. A selection pressure does not need to be in response to a threat, or drive evolution in a good way.

[duncannah]

Wasn't there something about humans evolving to "grow horns" because of smartphone usage?

[Roswell]

2 hours ago, duncannah said:

Wasn't there something about humans evolving to "grow horns" because of smartphone usage?

That's not how evolution works. 

[Bombastinator]

11 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Evolution happens over hundreds/thousands of years. Nothing you're going to be able to see.

Perhaps overbroad.  Most of the time yes.  It can be quite fast if the lifespan of the animal is short enough and the evolutionary pressure is great enough.  Humans  have a long lifespan and a pretty slow reproductive cycle compared to other creatures though.  There are cases in things like bacteria where it can happen surprisingly fast.  The whole antibiotic resistant bacteria thing is based on that.

[amdorintel]

14 hours ago, Otto_iii said:

Simple question, just asking 

you are evolving right now, and 14 hrs ago

always evolving

[Mark Kaine]

On 12/22/2019 at 12:48 PM, Otto_iii said:

Simple question, just asking 

It's a good question,  but it's also really weird you would think that (if you do).

 

Humans are from an evolutionary standpoint not far from actual Neanderthals at all,  so I sure hope this is not the end of the road......

 

 

Although we'll personally obviously never know.   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[minibois]

Devolution has started. Our skeletons will change to accomedate the slouching to look at our phones!

It's evolution, baby!!

/s

 

But I think robotics are in a much more near future than us seeing 'evolution'  take place. Survival of the fittest is just not that much of a thing with the state of modern medicine.

[Ralphred]

No, the pressures are changing.

People are just removing themselves from the gene pool in many new and inventive ways, whether it's picking a non viable mate to making yourself non viable, you are essentially weeding out genes that are not conducive to a functioning and sustainable society.

Personally I think we are entering a period of heavy pruning, no one really uses the term degenerate in it's true meaning anymore, and very little is taboo, people who are unable to see how their own behaviour isn't sustainable will die out. This will hold true for people who procreate in an unsustainable way, and those who choose not to at all.

Obviously, all this is predicated on the infrastructure that supports the social contract that is western society staying intact, because if it doesn't evolutionary pressures will suddenly become very VERY acute.

[amdorintel]

each and everyone of use has evolved from yesterday to today

 

[wasab]

3 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

It's a good question,  but it's also really weird you would think that (if you do).

 

Humans are from an evolutionary standpoint not far from actual Neanderthals at all,  so I sure hope this is not the end of the road......

 

 

Although we'll personally obviously never know.   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You are assuming we are more "evolved" than Neanderthals.

[amdorintel]

well, that is a very broad aspect, in what way exactly, because as far as dna or genomes or whatever, i think they say 99.99% match

[tikker]

As long as there will be a pressure to evolve, evolution will continue. It may speed up or slow down though. On a slight tangent, there was an article ~2 years ago that said we are possibly reaching some limits, however: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171206122502.htm

 

Quote

Humans at maximum limits for height, lifespan and physical performance, study suggests

 

Newly emerging trends in data suggests humans may have reached their maximum limits for height, lifespan and physical performance. These biological limitations may be affected by anthropogenic impacts on the environment - including climate change - which could have a deleterious effect on these limits. This review is the first of its kind spanning 120 years worth of historical information, while considering the effects of both genetic and environmental parameters.

 

[TetraSky]

It could be argued that whenever you become immune against some pathogen, you've "evolved" to counter it.

While it certainly isn't the same as having a third arm grow out of your back or something, which would be so incredibly for various reason ( ͡• ͜ʖ ͡• ), it's still technically a type of "evolution" of your cells.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Ralphred said:

No, the pressures are changing.

People are just removing themselves from the gene pool in many new and inventive ways, whether it's picking a non viable mate to making yourself non viable, you are essentially weeding out genes that are not conducive to a functioning and sustainable society.

I think what you are trying to say is that some familial traits may be absolved out of the gene pool. We already have  many non-functioning genes in our genome,  in-fact most of our genome isn't even made up of functional genes - they only make up 1% of our whole genome, even with those we have vestigial and pseudogenes. It would be an assumption that one individual would impact the population in this way. 

5 hours ago, Ralphred said:

Personally I think we are entering a period of heavy pruning, no one really uses the term degenerate in it's true meaning anymore, and very little is taboo, people who are unable to see how their own behaviour isn't sustainable will die out. This will hold true for people who procreate in an unsustainable way, and those who choose not to at all.

Obviously, all this is predicated on the infrastructure that supports the social contract that is western society staying intact, because if it doesn't evolutionary pressures will suddenly become very VERY acute.

What your misconception here is to look at evolution on an individual level - it simply does not occur in that fashion, but rather looking at a population we can see some differences. Evolution will not change due to population size, unless it is a very small population, in which Genetic Drift will occur. 

 

So to see if Evolution is truly happening in our population we can look at the four markers that will induce evolution, which is the change in allele frequencies. 

 

1) Genetic Drift

- Genetic drift is the change in allele frequencies due to chance.

- This will not occur due to the world population. It only has a chance of happening in small, isolated communities, I think there is an example of a small village in Italy, and perhaps isolated tribesmen of this happening. It can occur in infinite populations, however the effect is reduced. There needs to be a bottleneck effect. 

 

2) Migration

- With new transport, all the time. Everyone is migrating everywhere. 

- The change in alleles depends on the migrants and the source population, humans are quite similar enough for this to have a relatively small effect.

- Certain populations have different alleles, and are different that we use gene sequencing to determine, really easily enough, where your ancestors are from. This means with migration there may exchange of these hereditary genes causing a shift in allele frequencies - however with relatively benign genes its nothing major. 

 

3) Selection

- Over the years this has grown pretty prominent. I think an example would be the Black Death in Europe, I think it mutated the CCR5 gene, so because its a target for HIV, over the years Europeans grew resistant to HIV due to the pressure by the Black Death. Its really cool, so we see Africans, Asians and Native Americans don't have this mutated CCR5 and so are more susceptible to HIV. 

- What we will see is more pressures I suspect quite like this, related to chronic diseases as they become more prevalent and incurable. 

- Selection is definitely occurring. You shouldn't think big for evolutionary selection, people might say the environment or perhaps isolation, but they are becoming more archaic concepts. 

 

4) Mutation

- Mutation is definitely occurring, we see it all the time, people being born with genetic defects, likewise other genetic adaptations may occur. 

- Mutations happen all the time in your body, its not simply inheritance. There are many ways for genes to arise on a molecular level; gene duplication, transposition, pseudogenes, lateral gene translation etc. Think about cancer, how that arises. You won't develop a third arm or anything, but certain habits can transcribe different processes allowing different susceptibilities, for instance smoking will give you lung cancer due to the carcinogens and effect on your epigenetics. Likewise new technologies can correct the mutations. 

- Lots of mutations can occur on this scale and be passed down, however these mutations are often just point mutations and mutation is a relatively small force to guide evolution. 

- We have a relationship between mutation and selection, if a mutation is favourable to the fitness of an individual, that individual will theoretically live longer and produce more offspring. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dalekphalm]

7 hours ago, wasab said:

You are assuming we are more "evolved" than Neanderthals.

Why would you assume anything but?

 

There may well some aspects about them that were more evolved, but as much as we can tell, our current understanding has us as the more evolved species. 
 

For one thing, we both co-existed for thousands of years in very large numbers. 
 

They died out (or interbred with us), and we didn’t. For whatever reason, we won the evolutionary lottery, and they didn’t. 
 

With that in mind, every person of European descent is part Neanderthal. 

[wasab]

2 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Why would you assume anything but?

 

There may well some aspects about them that were more evolved, but as much as we can tell, our current understanding has us as the more evolved species. 

That is like saying birds are more evolved than reptiles. 

[BuckGup]

I'd say natural selection has slowed down. As instead of the person with poor vision dying due to not seeing the predator coming. We now have glasses and Lasik. But we haven't done anything to change all the gamma rays blasting us from space altering our DNA 24/7

[Otto_iii]

i don't remember making this thread, think i was drinking, but seems to have turned out okay so guess i won't worry about it. 

[Otto_iii]

i didn't go to school for this subject, and not claiming any expertise, so feel free to correct me just don't beat me up, just commenting for fun, not claiming to be any expert.

 

19 hours ago, wasab said:

That is like saying birds are more evolved than reptiles. 

IIRC Birds give some interesting incites into how quick evolution can be, i forget which example it was but there was some species that completely changed when stuck in the wrong geography (i think it was a species that migrated to some small island) in only a few decades.  Sure they likely have much quicker birthrate then humans, but iirc something like 19 generations of humans (something like 500 years) one group can completely change in build, looks etc, i think Gaad Saad was commenting on this in one of his videos (sadly no clue which one, as likely it had a example which one could cite, so ya, big pinch of salt)

 

19 hours ago, BuckGup said:

I'd say natural selection has slowed down. As instead of the person with poor vision dying due to not seeing the predator coming. We now have glasses and Lasik. But we haven't done anything to change all the gamma rays blasting us from space altering our DNA 24/7

I think there is more and more evidence natural selection isn't the only means for evolutionary change at this point, but it is the most easily provable, fundamental.  Epigenetics has hinted at some cool potential stuff, and may be a bigger deal then we initially thought.  Again big salt, im just playing with the subject

[jakecrew]

I dont think so