If we evolved, are we still evolving?

I am not one to totally dismiss evolution as a farce. I have a question for those of you who are knowledgable about this topic.
1) Are Humans still evolving? Will we evolve into more biologically necessary humans or will we ultimately become something more? Perhaps biology has an answer for morality? Will we ever learn to be the smartest animal on the planet and stop knocking each other off?

To answer this you need to know if we are still under selective pressures. The answer is, probably, yes. But what are they? I dunno. As we become more and more crowded and things like road rage increase in likelyhood of being fatal then we may be evolving to be a bit less agressive. Part of this question seems to indicate that you think we should "improve" in some fashion. If we have environmental collapse and have to revert to hunting to survive we may find that we evolve canines and greater strength and visciousness. Would that be an improvment? Under those circumstances, maybe. Under such circumstances a smaller size with a less expensive (smaller less capable) brain may be advantageous. To us that would not look like an improvement but if the big-brained, large humans starved it would be "better".Without a major change in the selective pressure I would guess that evolution will be pretty slow for us. We may develop better immunce responses to handle the increased exposure to disease as population densities raise and I could see that taking, maybe, only 100's of generations. That amounts to 1,000's of years so we aren't going to see it happen in front of us.If we do mange to establish space colonies but it remains very expensive to "commute" then we would have isolation of some humans. This would allow for speciation. Those conditions would, I think obviously, supply different selective pressures as well which would encourage rather rapid speciation. Science fiction stories are full of humans who are tall (circa 7 foot), slim, not very powerful who live in,say, the asteroids. How long would that go on before they would be "unattractive" to 1g humans causing reproductive isolation?Will we learn to stop knocking each other off? That is possible. If attempting to do so is not a very good survival strategy.However, my pessimistic, view is that we face an possible extinction event before we get much chance to evolve. If we bugger the ecosystem badly enough and our civilization collapses we may spiral downward to zero.

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Common sense isn't

Well, I am sure that we are still evolving but the main question is how will our technology and our medical advances effect the course of our evolution. As for us learning to just get along I think we are pretty far away.

Phatboy,You got into this in another thread too. As I mentioned there, yes, we are still evolving. Evolution is a natural, on-going process that will never stop unless time stops, if that is ever possible. The idea that humans are somehow isolated from it is preposterous. It would be akin to thinking we could somehow stop ourselves from being affected by gravity, while the rest of the universe is still subject to it.I think it is important to keep in mind that everything is subject to evolution. It doesn't apply just to animals, and to life. Mountain ranges evolve, rivers evolve, and heck, planets evolve. Music evolves, the rules of football evolve, laws evolve. In short, nothing can escape the evolutionary process. Nothing.Verzem

Hello All,I've been a reader for a while, and think I'm about caught up enough on the history of these boards to start posting on at least a few of them.Are we still evolving? I would have to think we are, but our sophistication has removed some of the natural pressures to evolve. Wisdom teeth for example. When these come in impacted, they can most definitely affect our ability to eat. People whose wisdom teeth come in smaller or simply don't come in would be favored. Likely our wisdom teeth would be continuing to shrink or disappear if not for the human invention of dentistry. In this case, it seems,the development of dentistry happened mid-evolution. Note how late these teeth come in compared to others. And many people never fully develop them. As a reference, I offer my own mouth in which 2 of mine never got past BB size. Inherited that from my father -- same thing. With dentistry, wisdon teeth essentially cease to be a selection factor. If they do go away eventually, it is going to take a long, long time.I can't really claim I would have had any sort of evolutionary advantage back in the hunter-gatherer days due to my teeth, though. I also inherited absolutely wretched eyesight from both parents. As blind as I was, I probably wouldn't have made it past the age of 10! But these days there is LASIK. From 20/3000 to 20/20 in 24 hours. So eyesight isn't much of a natural selection factor anymore, either.There are still other selection factors at work, though. The sexual selection factors are still at work. Study after study has shown that women prefer taller men (bummer -- I'm 5'5"). And sure enough, the average height seems to be increasing with each generation. Part of this is no doubt to improvements in nutrition, but certainly genes have something do with it. Despite my height, I was hardly malnourished as a kid. I just have a 4'8" tall mother.So my basic take on it: yes, we are still evolving, but the driving factors are not so much necessity driven as they are preference driven.Just my thoughts.Ian

Ian C,I agree with you that our nutritional expertise is evolving and that is one possible explanation for our height increase. Perhaps that is also an explanation for records being constantly broken in sports. That and performance enhancing drugs.I also think that you and NoseyNed are correct when you say that we are doing things that have slowed (or maybe re-direted) our evolution. Besides the things you mentioned I would add that we have enacted laws that protect our weak, who then reproduce. Morally, most of us could see it in no other way. But it certainly does hold us back in some ways. And think of all the advances of modern medicine that have allowed people with congenital defects to reproduce.How interesting it would be to be able to see into the future and see how humans will evolve as we colonize other planets with differing gravities, atmospheres, etc. Does anyone reading this watch the show "Enterprise" on TV? I think it is very interesting that a new foe they have encountered called the Xindi have many different looks depending upon which planetary colony they are from. That seems very realistic to me.Anyhow, I'm pretty new here too. I'll probably see you around.Verzem

How, exactly? I mean, the fact that some people can't outrun a cougar doesn't make you run any slower. I think that the fact that physical shortcomings no longer mean near-certain death helps us. Stephen Hawking can't exactly run down a wooly mammoth, you know. But it's kind of silly to suggest that he represents some retarding influence on society.

Just for grins, lets extrapolate: Are these Xindi a further evolved species than the Enterprise? They are described as a "foe" so I guess not. Then again, maybe I am a Xindi myself who just happens to look like the place I was from.

Crashfrog,Your point is well taken. I guess that when I originally wrote what you were replying to, I had the blinders on and was thinking along purely physical lines. Thanks for the input and for making me think a little more about it. That is why I come to forums like this. This looks to be a great one and I look forward to learning much more.To anyone,Now that we have the know-how to do it, should we be doing things like using the sperm of guys like Stephen Hawking and his few peers to impregnate our brightest women (where they are willing, of course). I'm not talking about scientific rape. But imagine the progress we could make if we dramatically increased the number of super-intelligent people we produce as opposed to our present situation where we occasionally have a couple of really intelligent people meet, fall in love, and procreate. Instead of it being a fluke as it is now, we could develop lots of them (the super-intelligent). Think of the advances that could be made, and the jump-start it would give to our evolutionary advancement. Perhaps it is our destiny to do so.Please note that when I mention destiny I'm not saying it has something to do with something pre-ordained by some higher power. Rather, I'm saying that perhaps it is inevitable. We make advances in genetic engineering regularly now. It would be folly to not use them to the utmost advantage for humanity. Maybe it is time for some new perspectives on morality. Could it be immoral to not use our scientific advances to the fullest advantage?Verzem

Phatboy,I think that for the show, the Xindi would be considered to be on peer level with humans. I just think it is rather intriguing that the author(s) thought of the idea.Verzem

Some folks think that changes are happening faster than adaptations can keep up.Global warming is one such example. I don't see how our species will survive with the numbers we have now. There are simply too darn many of us.Can we learn to survive without wars over resources, however?

"Can Evolution Keep Up with Global Warming?"Of course it can. And? Then the numbers will decrease. Based on history? No!

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Immigration has been a problem Since 1607!

The major problem will be for larger animals with longer generation times. I would not be surprised to see some mass extinctions involved, but don't expect it to reach the level of the K-T extinction (for one because it will be slow enough for organisms adapted to more extreme conditions to spread into new habitat as the more vulnerable species die out.We may or may not be one of those that adapt. That is evolution.Enjoy.

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I believe we are evolving from the inside out. As the physical world evolves, the minds, emotions and understandings in each other evolve also. They are inseparable, and only now are we beginning to become aware of the connection.
I would name it as 'spiritual evolution', taking 'spiritual' to mean the unseen.

Rand Al'Thor has a point that technology and medical advances might effect our evolution.Of the one or two million years we've existed, it is only since the last 10 to 12 thousand years we've made any significant advances in technology, and only lately (the last 200 years) we went from the horse and steam tech to landing on the moon, particle acceleration, mach flight, computers, atom spliting, and we are about to get into nano technology and quantum mechanics.That is incredible. In a person's lifetime, we can expect to witness technological advances, just look at the baby boomers (invention of plastic and the television to, well, today). How much more will we advance in the next 200 years.And note that evolution takes place after hundreds of thousands to millions of years. Who knows what we'll come up with?