The Future Of Human Evolution Essay -- essays research papers

The Future of Human Evolution Evolution, the science of how populations of living organisms change over time in response to their environment, is the central unifying theme in biology today. Evolution was first explored in its semi-modern form in Charles Darwin 's 1859 book, Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection. In this book, Darwin laid out a strong argument for evolution. He postulated that all species have a common ancestor from which they are descended. As populations of species moved into new habitats and new parts of the world, they faced different environmental conditions. Over time, these populations accumulated modifications, or adaptations, that allowed them and their offspring to survive better in their new environments. These modifications were the key to the evolution of new species, and Darwin proposed natural selection or "survival of the fittest" as the vehicle by which that change occurs. Under Natural Selection, some individuals in a population have adaptations that allow them to survive and reproduce more than other individuals. These adaptations become more common in the population because of this higher reproductive success. Over time, the characteristics of the population as a whole can change, sometimes even resulting in the formation of a new species. Humans have survived for thousands of years and will most like survive thousands of more. Throughout the history of the Huminoid species man has evolved from Homo Erectus to what we today call Homo Sapiens, or what we know today as modern man.. The topic of this paper is what does the future have in store for the evolution of Homo Sapiens. Of course, human beings will continue to change culturally; therefore cultural evolution will always continue; but what of physiological evolution? The cultural evolution of man will continue as long as man can think; after all it's the ideas we think up that makes up our cultures. In a thousand years man might complete a 180 degree turn culturally (not to mention physiologically) and as seen by our fellow inhabitants of earth we would in essence be different beings. One can say that this new culture has chosen its ideas based on Natural Selection. One can see this in the spread of ideas in the past history of homo sapiens, the ideas which cause man to succeed are chosen such as science and demo... ...random genetic drift, but it may become homozygous for allele "A", whereas the first population has become homozygous for allele "a". As time goes on, isolated populations diverge from each other, each losing heterozygosity. The variation originally present within populations now appears as variation between populations (Suzuki 704). The evolution of man can be broken up into three basic stages. The first, lasting millions of years, slowly shaped human nature from Homo erectus to Home sapiens. Natural selection provided the means for countless random mutations resulting in the appearance of such human characteristics as hands and feet. The second stage, after the full development of the human body and mind, saw humans moving from wild foragers to an agriculture based society. Natural selection received a helping hand as man took advantage of random mutations in nature and bred more productive species of plants and animals. The most bountiful wheats were collected and re-planted, and the fastest horses were bred with equally faster horses. Even in our recent history the strongest black male slaves were mated with the hardest working female slaves.