Human evolution - where next?

[brucewarren]

Evolving several attributes at the same time is perfectly reasonable and
probably commonplace, but I really hope we don't split into subspecies.

That was first suggested in "The Time Machine." - the book not the
watered down film which followed it.

The author was quite scathing about how the upper classes had become
the beautiful but worthless Eloi and the working classes had remained
underground, tending the machines and keeping the former as cattle.

I know it's optimistic, but I would hope we develop the morality to stop
this happening.

[BugMeister]

reckon he was talking more of sociological effects, rather than evolutionary ones..
if the two are related in any way, it's probably a "cause-and-effect" thing..

one can only surmise a theory of evolution on a "grand" scale
by studying trends over thousands and thousands of years..

to think that this can be so closely related to events happening right now is taking a really long leap into conjecture..

- Wells probably just wanted to kick-start a debate on the matter..

[Usenko]

For what it's worth, one of the first things to happen in speciation is that the two communities stop interbreeding.

It's hard to say how that would work out in a species that is fully self-aware, but my guess is that before we have complete speciation, we would have already have lost any sense that they other species was actually related to us.

By analogy: a normal human wouldn't even CONSIDER the possibility of mating with a chimpanzee. Despite genetic similarity, the difference is too great.

Now, a chimp isn't that closely related; but it illustrates the principle. Part of the speciation process would be a divergence of the sexual signals and interests to the point that interbreeding simply wouldn't happen.

[mrbadger]

There is a hypothesis that the human population that existed in the UK before the ice age that was wiped out had almost certainly speciated, since it had at least 150,000 years separated from other humans.

Unfortunately almost all traces of them have been literally scoured away by the ice age, so we won't ever know unless some highly improbable archaeological evidence is found.

[Kapakio]

[Bishop149]

[AdrianM]

[Tracker001]

[IcarusJones]

Regarding Tsar's scenario: the imagined split between the 'chavs' and 'your kind of people' exists already. When it comes to mating, men in the 'your people' group will still take a pop at the girls in the 'chav' group because, in your scenario, such girls are probably rampantly promiscuous. To put it another way: men will get it where they CAN get it.

The tech/understanding argument is interesting too. In theory people who understand tech can exploit it to their advantage. However, when something happens such that the tech fails then the advantage passes back to those with a bent for adaptation. I am sure there has been at least one sci-fi book based on this idea.

Personally I see the world getting much, much worse - the current ideological wars will drop away to be replaced by resource wars as the population continues to spiral out of control and resources dwindle. Those controlling the resources will have it their own way for a while but eventually the resources will reach a critical point where nobody benefits from non-cooperation. Perhaps that will be the last turning point of man, his less-than-triumphant swan song, or perhaps it will mark a radical shift in scoiety leading to a new style of cooperative species.

I'll be dead long before then so I don't really give a chuff!

Icky

[fiksal]

[AdrianM]

[Mazz]

Oh my Dawkins, I feel like 2 years of studying BA in biology has experienced a negative selection pressure resulting in extinction from my brain. Oh dear I have exams soon.

[Tracker001]

[Jumee]

I think (and it was already said in this thread) that we will actually evolve slower and slower as we no longer need to adapt to fit into environment we adapt the environment to fit us, people in far north have not grown massive fur yet, have they?

Regarding separation into more than 1 species? I'd say not in the closest future maybe at one point when/if we spread across the galaxy or something, regarding the taboo/lack of mixing between races, if anything mixing is getting more widespread than less, I mean people are moving from being very racist to becoming more and more accepting of each other, I'd actually expect some of the races to just get fully absorbed or die out than to evolve into different species

[Tsar_of_Cows]