Why has the evolution of mankind come to a halt?

Answer 1

Natural selection is still occurring, just very slowly, and perhaps in ways we are unaware of. Society protects people who would otherwise have died without passing on their genes- from physical or mental disabilities, which might be having an effect on our evolution. I'm not saying it,s a bad thing, just trying to explain that survival of the fittest is becoming harder to define. There is also a theory of punctuated equilibrium, where species stay the same for many thousands of years, and then rapidly evolve to respond to a period of great environmental change.

Answer 2

Evolution only occurs when there are natural selection pressures on a population - in other words if a new adaptation means that some people will have more children than others natural selection or evolution would favour them and that trait would become more common until everyone had it.

In developed countries at least, everyone has a fairly good chance of surviving and reproducing - ie. our population is not being subjected to many selection pressures. (Yes - you could debate that ugly people are less likely to find a partner and have kids therefore we are evolving to be better looking, but look around you - I don't think that the evidence for this will stand up in court!!!)

The greatest selection pressure we currently face is disease. It is possible that we could be evolving resistance to untreatable and deadly diseases such as HIV. However, this would be a very slow process (as evolution is!) and hopefully we will find a cure for such illnesses way faster than we can evolve resistance to them.

In short, because of our extensive gene pool, we as a species definitely hold the potential to evolve in the event of a selection pressure (eg. if a terrorist set off a biological weapon), but luckily right now we don't need to evolve so we wont.

Answer 3

if you were genuinely a physicist, then I would have expected you to have some familiarity with the journals Science and Nature, at least. I would even have expected you to open them up and look at them once in a while, given that they cover a range of subjects, including physics.

This being the case, what is your excuse for not being aware that evolution as a science is testable and replicatable, and the heart of evolutionary study is experiment -- regardless of what outdated, oversimplified or contrarian texts might say.

For example, why are you not aware of the papers in the 7 April issue of Science, "Evolution of Hormone-Receptor Complexity by Molecular Exploitation" by Jamie T. Bridgham, Sean M. Carroll, and Joseph W. Thornton, or "Darwinian Evolution Can Follow Only Very Few Mutational Paths to Fitter Proteins" by Daniel M. Weinreich, Nigel F. Delaney, Mark A. DePristo, and Daniel L. Hartl, or the slightly earlier paper (3 Feb. issue of Science), "Evolution of a Polyphenism by Genetic Accommodation" by Yuichiro Suzuki and H. Frederik Nijhout. All these demonstrate quite clever experimental design and testing of evolution, both in specific detail and of the general theory.

Answer 4

what makes you think that the evolution of mankind has come to a halt?

evolutionary changes are slow

check back in 100,000 years and see if something is emerging

I see no reason at all to believe that the evolution of mankind has halted

that being said, civilization does change how evolution works
for example, imagine a childhood disease that is usually fatal

without civilization, people susceptable to this disease die before breeding, while people with resistance survive

eventually, people evolve such that nobody is left with genetic suceptability to this disease

WITH civilization, we find a treatment for the disease, and many of the susceptable live to breed and the evolutionary selection does not take place

Answer 5

It hasn't halted, but it has been manipulated. In most industrialized countries there is no longer natural selection. People with diseases are being kept alive with medications, operations, and organizations. While many people die from certain diseases, many more with erroneous genes are being kept alive through various therapies and having children. It used to be that Type 1 diabetics would die (usually) by the age of 30, not the case anymore. Also people with heart problems at birth have surgeries, spino bifoda can be fixed. Only in more poor countries is evolution continuing to happen at a somewhat normal rate.
All in all we are keeping people alive that a hundred years ago would have died and never had progeny. Genetic diseases are no longer death sentences and we don't really have mass deaths due to influenza (in industrialized nations) like we used to.

Answer 6

We are evolving. Medical advances such as cesarean section are allowing babies to be born with larger heads and can therefore have larger brains. Natural selection, would normally select against this because of the size of the birth canal. There is a trade off between head size and lnatural birth. Our heads can only get so big with natural birth or the life of the mother and unborn child is in danger. Yet, babies are being delivered via cesarean section selecting for larger head size. We are actually making evolution happen. Another example would be the rise in the number of indigo children.

Answer 7

Artificial intervention in cases of severe illness, and artificial methods of reproduction allow for people who would not previously have survived in a 'natural' environment and/or reproduced to live. Despite the inherent political incorrectness of such a statement, natural selection would ordinarily have ridden the earth of such people that were not fit enough to survive, such as people suffering from genetic illness, and the physically and mentally weak. The strong would have survived through having characteristics that benefitted their survival, such as greater hunting capability, resistance to disease, parasites, and so on. In our 'modern' industrialised society mankind is no longer exposed to nearly as many many natural dangers, and modern medicine keeps the weak alive. Also people that would have previously have been eaten by predators, due to their inherent lack of cognitive capacity and lack of ability to do anything useful in a survival scenario now sometimes thrive (i.e. actors, some artists, politicians, tax collectors). Evolution (in terms of macro changes) no longer really applies to humans, although minor adaptations sometimes can potentially still occur especially in less developed environments. However, when there is a long lasting global social collapse or environmental disaster, it will probably make a comeback.

Answer 8

You will have to qualify your question with some data or theories - otherwise the only theory we have to go on is evolution. There is no reason to think evolution has halted, look at mental development - the Internet, mobile phones, REM (maybe a bad example), it hasn't stopped, OK?

Answer 9

it hasnt, evolution occurs over a very long period of time, ppl have changed body wise due to lifestyle changes in the last hundred years not by a great difference but there has bee some change. evolution can occur via silent mutations, these may not affect ppl for many generations.

Answer 10

Evolution in no way stops or is going backwards. there are circumstances even as evolution is amazingly gradual - which frequently signifies that the organism is properly adapted to its ecosystem or that the pressures of organic determination are operating in equivalent yet opposite instructions. besides the undeniable fact that that's continuously taking position and continuously going forwards.