It has been argued that human evolution has stopped because humans now adapt to their environment via cultural evolution and not biological evolution. However, all organisms adapt to their environment, and humans are no exception.
Genetic studies have demonstrated that humans are still evolving. To investigate which genes are undergoing natural selection, researchers looked into the data produced by the International HapMap Project and the 1000 Genomes Project.
The last “sympatric” humans we know of were Neanderthals, who became extinct only about 30,000 years ago. Since stable separation of parts of the species is the key factor for the formation of new species, we can say that a new split of our species is impossible under current circumstances.
Human Muscles Evolved Into Weakness, In Order to Boost Our Brains. Much like our brains, human muscles have evolved several times more rapidly than primate muscles, according to a new study — but that process has made us weaker over time in a process, while brains become more advanced.
Modern humans originated in Africa within the past 200,000 years and evolved from their most likely recent common ancestor, Homo erectus, which means 'upright man' in Latin. Homo erectus is an extinct species of human that lived between 1.9 million and 135,000 years ago.
Within the next 200 years, humans will have become so merged with technology that we'll have evolved into "God-like cyborgs", according to Yuval Noah Harari, an historian and author from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.
Brains use up a lot of energy, and smaller brains use less energy. The externalization of knowledge in human societies, thus needing less energy to store a lot of information as individuals, may have favored a decrease in brain size.
Strength changes
While there is no proof that modern humans have become physically weaker than past generations of humans, inferences from such things as bone robusticity and long bone cortical thickness can be made as a representation of physical strength.
Our ancestors, who had to hunt and gather their food before the invention of agriculture, were more physically active than we are. Their bones were much stronger, too. A new study shows that human skeletons today are much lighter and more fragile than those of our ancient ancestors.
According to the company, humans in the year 3000 could have a hunched back, wide neck, clawed hand from texting and a second set of eyelids.
100,000 Years From Today
We will also have larger nostrils, to make breathing easier in new environments that may not be on earth. Denser hair helps to prevent heat loss from their even larger heads. Our ability to control human biology means that the man and woman of the future will have perfectly symmetrical faces.
Until a few years ago, scientists favored a simple explanation: H. sapiens arose relatively recently, in more or less its current form, in a single region of Africa and spread out from there into the rest of the Old World, supplanting the Neandertals and other archaic human species it encountered along the way.
We will likely live longer and become taller, as well as more lightly built. We'll probably be less aggressive and more agreeable, but have smaller brains. A bit like a golden retriever, we'll be friendly and jolly, but maybe not that interesting. At least, that's one possible future.
There are humans (Bajau Laut- sea nomads) who can hold their breath for longer durations (up to some minutes) underwater. However, it is biologically impossible to evolve (or devolve) to live underwater in a short period.
The scientific consensus is that there is a relatively low risk of near-term human extinction due to natural causes. The likelihood of human extinction through humankind's own activities, however, is a current area of research and debate.
According to research, we're losing substantial bone strength – with up to 20% less mass than our ancestors had [4]. This trend toward less bone mass is one of the most conclusive signs that we are becoming weaker as a species.
Strictly speaking, humans are the smartest animals on Earth—at least according to human standards.
If we were to exert our muscles to or beyond their absolute maximum, we could tear muscle tissue, ligaments, tendons and break bones, leaving us in dire straits. "Our brains are always trying to make sure we don't get pushed too far to where we actually damage something," says Zehr.
There is nothing new about humans and all other vertebrates having evolved from fish. The conventional understanding has been that certain fish shimmied landwards roughly 370 million years ago as primitive, lizard-like animals known as tetrapods.
Many scientists and philosophers of science have described evolution as fact and theory, a phrase which was used as the title of an article by paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould in 1981.
Worldwide there are roughly two new mutations for every one of the 3.5 billion base pairs in the human genome every year, says Hodgson. Which is pretty amazing - and makes it unlikely we will look the same in a million years.
As early humans faced new environmental challenges and evolved bigger bodies, they evolved larger and more complex brains. Large, complex brains can process and store a lot of information. That was a big advantage to early humans in their social interactions and encounters with unfamiliar habitats.
The bodies of early humans were adapted to very active lifestyles. Their bones were thicker and stronger than ours. Starting about 50,000 years ago, as a result of less physically demanding lifestyles, humans evolved bones that were sleeker and weaker.
The brains of our closest relatives, unlike our own, do not shrink with age. The findings suggest that humans are more vulnerable than chimpanzees to age-related diseases because we live relatively longer.