• Question: What will humans be like in 10000 years, will they have evolved into something else?

    Asked by to Kate, Kieren, Nicola, Rowena, Roy on 16 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Rowena Fletcher-Wood

      Rowena Fletcher-Wood answered on 16 Mar 2014:

      10,000 years isn’t actually very long on an evolutionary scale! Remember, in 2000 years we haven’t changed much.

      The comedian Bill Bailey proposed the theory tgat we wpuld evolve to have just two big thumbs and no fingwr so we could all use our electronic devices! If you look at your toes you will see they are much shorter than your fingers – so evolution has definitely acted there! We are also getting less hairy. I expect skills valued by society will also increase a bit, like being musical. We have got more and more diverse but because cultures are.mixing more there are theories that we will all begin to look more similar, with a chocolate coloured skin and asian-european blend fce shape. Of course, these are just logical guesses. What do you think?

    • Photo: Nicola Rogers

      Nicola Rogers answered on 16 Mar 2014:

      I’m not sure humans will undergo evolution by means of survival of the fittest anymore: now that we have the medical technology to allow not only the fittest but also many medically less fit people to survive and to procreate, natural selection will not be as prominent

    • Photo: Kate Nicholson

      Kate Nicholson answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      I think aside from a few changes in body shape, for example shortening of fingers is already being shown in response to typing so much, and we are generally a bit taller than our ancestors, there won’t be a huge shift in human appearance unless there is some event that causes us to evolve. If for example the ozone layer did not repair and we were exposed to high levels of UV then we may evolve skin pigments or hair to reflect it. I do think that we will rely on technology and not adapt ourselves anymore, survival of the fittest is not really a human condition now. Oh and I do think we will all have food allergies – people who would have sadly died because of these as children can now grow up and pass on that genetic code, so we may have to watch our diet!

Comments