This question will enable me to tell the different changes that would be there if evolution still continued.
Life in the coming decades will look different in almost every dimension: how long you live, how you work, what you eat, how diseases are treated, and where your energy comes from. Some of these shifts are already underway, while others depend on breakthroughs still being tested in labs and clinical trials. Here’s what the best available evidence suggests about the world taking shape between now and 2050.
1.How would the world look like if evolution still continued up to date? This question will enable me to tell the different changes that would be seen if evolution still continued? If humans don’t die out in a climate apocalypse or asteroid impact in the next 10,000 years, are we likely to evolve further into a more advanced species than what we are at the moment?
A common belief is that human evolution has ceased, perhaps due to modern medicine and technology. However, humans are still evolving, and in some aspects, this process has even accelerated since the advent of agriculture. Natural selection, where advantageous traits become more common in a population, continues to act on human populations.
Humans will almost certainly evolve to live longer – much longer. Life cycles evolve in response to mortality rates, how likely predators and other threats are to kill you. When mortality rates are high, animals must reproduce young, or might not reproduce at all. There’s also no advantage to evolving mutations that prevent ageing or cancer – you won’t live long enough to use them.
When mortality rates are low, the opposite is true. It’s better to take your time reaching sexual maturity. It’s also useful to have adaptations that extend lifespan, and fertility, giving you more time to reproduce. That’s why animals with few predators – animals that live on islands or in the deep ocean, or are simply big – evolve longer lifespans. Greenland sharks, Galapagos tortoises and bowhead whales mature late, and can live for centuries.
Published: March 1, 2022 6.13pm SAST
Author
- Nicholas R. LongrichSenior Lecturer in Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Bath
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Nicholas R. Longrich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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READER QUESTION: If humans don’t die out in a climate apocalypse or asteroid impact in the next 10,000 years, are we likely to evolve further into a more advanced species than what we are at the moment? Harry Bonas, 57, Nigeria
Humanity is the unlikely result of 4 billion years of evolution.
From self-replicating molecules in Archean seas, to eyeless fish in the Cambrian deep, to mammals scurrying from dinosaurs in the dark, and then, finally, improbably, ourselves – evolution shaped us.