What is the next stage of physical and mental human evolution?

Question

In terms of biology, anthropology and psychology......

Please do not get into the Creationist vs. Evolution debate.

What is the next stage of physical and mental human evolution if we did not become extinct as a species?

Please think outside of the box theoretically - perhaps beyond the possibility of extinction....

Answer 1

How could we possible know that? Evolution is change in gene frequencies over time. Natural selection is the differential survival of replicators/reproducers. Evolution by natural selection responds to a change in the environment by the survival of random, beneficial mutations. Unless there is artificial selection, we will not know what our environment will be. We still can predict, but how accurate is that.

PS What you would call " thinking outside the box " I would call sheer conjecture. I am an evolutionary biologist. Inform yourself in an evolutionary way and then make your own conjectures. Evolution does not plan or predict the future; either do I.

PSS There is no separate psychological/anthropological evolution; all is encompassed by biology.

Answer 2

There is pressure,and that is extinction caused by human activity.So,if we suppose our specie won't extinct,that's because we'll have made an evolutionary jump.That's probably of a spiritual nature;an alteration of consciousness.During the last 4 centuries we achieved a better level of life.But during the last decades,day by day, we face the consequences of our activities. Our occupation with the level of our life has become an obsession,but soon we'll have to get over it -if not, we will do nothing and thus extinct. Suppose we proceed to this next evolutionary step -this alternation of consciousness;we will probably find out that -and how- we can live in harmony with nature and with our fellow beings.The centrality of humans will have to be uprooted,and replaced by nature.We -as humans- will realize that we are part of nature and these ideas are as old as human thought.

Answer 3

There isn't one, and for a very simple reason.

Evolution is driven by the 'fit' between the organism and its environment. Adaptations that enhance that fit, or multiple adaptations that enhance a variety of fits (such as Darwin's Finches), will spread throughout a population over time.

Humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, have culture. Culture is a more flexible mechanism for adaptation than is biology, or that biological process we identify as evolution.

As a consequence we are far less vulnerable to "pressures of selection" that drive evolution elsewhere.

For example, if the climate gets colder or warmer, we learn to adapt our behaviour to those circumstances, and we don't get weeded out of the gene pool because we have too much or not enough body fat to survive in the new climatic conditions.

This is not to say that human populations 20,000 years from now will look and think the way we do, but that those changes will result from cultural developments, such as cross-cultural marriages, or better or worse states of education, or the development of scientific means for altering ourselves.

They will not, in all liklihood, be a direct consequence of evolutionary pressures.

Answer 4

The next stage is where we evolve enough mentally so that we don't hate people that are different this us anymore. We stop thinking that just because we drive a car, that means we can drive it like a crazy person. We evolve enough to know that we only need to push the crosswalk button once. We stop and smell the roses. We don't take 6 years to figure out that global warming is real. It doesn't make headline news when a woman, a black man or a gay person wants to be president. We will have evolved into a new stage when we stop being PC and start being kind. We say "excuse me" like our mother taught us when we walk in front of someone or accidently bump into them. We don't blab on our cell phones in quiet places. We all volunteer. We all listen. We all love.
Then, we'll have evolved mentally. The body will follow.

Answer 5

Wow! A lot of these responses are so depressing. I asked my biology teacher the same question a while back. He said that since there is pressure on people to be intelligent in most modern societies, mental capacities and abilities will increase in humans. Intelligence gives people more $ and happier, longer, and better lives. And if you have a lot of $, your kids will not only inherit your $ but also you genes and life style.

Answer 6

It's literally impossible to accurately determine where we will go mentally. What people forget when answering this question is that what is "good" in modern society can be completely irrelevant to survival and passing on genes. It might take tens of thousands of years to see a significant change.

I will, however, make some predictions:
* We will soon no longer be able to have live births b/c c-sections will eliminate the need for the baby's head to be small enough to exit the pelvis of the mother.
* Men will either have much smaller sexual organs or else will have to evolve a tolerance for pollution since it appears to hit reproductive organs quite quickly.

Answer 7

Extinction

Answer 8

I tend to agree with Dav. However, there is pressure to evolve. Background radiation is increasing. Radiation is an important inducement to leukaemias and other cancers, including childhood cancers. Some people are less susceptible to these cancers due to their genetic makeup. That is, they lack the critical breakpoints which can lead to cancers starting. Anyone without these breakpoints will be more likely to live to adulthood, and this resistance will increase within the population over many generations. This will become an increasing pressure as radiation increases.
So, in my opinion, one of the next steps in the evolution of man will be an increase in the resistance to cancers induced by radiation.

Answer 9

So far, social evolution has been the most rapid change in the human race. This doesn't actually change the human, just the way he acts in a crowd. Eventually, the mind will adjust from its "fight or flight" instinct to more of a balloon with two holes (to prevent stress from building when bludgeoning someone to death just isn't the answer). Other than that, we'll probably become prettier, since everyone wants their partner to be hot.

Answer 10

It really depends on technology and how far it will develop. For instance, our bones would become less dense because we are exercising less. The way we interact with people would change because there would be different ways of communicating (i.e. e-mail). Our limbs and fingers would shorten, because we would not need to use them often. There are a million and one ways our bodies would change as a result of technology and its effects on our enviorment.