THE END OF EVOLUTION?

The ideas put forward in this PNAS study aren't actually inconsistent with what's being said in the Time article. The PNAS study says that genetic changes have accelerated in humans leading to more diverse populations over the last 40,000 years. The Time article is putting forward the idea that, being one interconnected society now, diversity will be reduced and new genetic innovations won't have the opportunity to spread far, being swamped by the majority.Admittedly, the PNAS study is a little confusing, as the author seems to be misrepresenting what it shows* when he talks to the press. He insists that there is no sign that human evolution is slowing down and we should expect this diversity to be increasing today; whilst also admitting that his techniques can't really track changes in the last 2,000 years. The BBC quotes him as saying there has been little flow between different regions of the world since we all spread out from Africa, but if he believes this he apparently slept through the last 500 years.*Or what I thought it showed from reading the abstract, anyway.

Thank you for your detailed refutation of my argument. Would you mind explaining how they are totally at odds?To recap, one says that human evolution has increased in speed over the past 40,000 years, partly because populations were mostly isolated from one another in novel environments. The other says that the large size of and connections within the human population in the 21st century will cause diversification and change to slow.How do these two ideas come into conflict?

One covers a time period of 50,000 years, with this key caveat by the conductor of the research:"The technology can't detect anything beyond about 2,000 years ago".The article from Time is only discussing the past century or two, so it's arguments apply exclusively to the time period the techniques used in the first study can say nothing about. They don't contradict each other - they're looking at different things.It's true that at least one of the authors of the study publishing in PNAS, Henry Harpending, would disagree with the Time article. To complete the quote above:"The technology can't detect anything beyond about 2,000 years ago, but we see no sign of [human evolution] slowing down. So I would suspect it is continuing,"but this is his personal suspicion - he's not pretending it's established by their research.