Mankinds evolution will look like?

Question

what? I have been reading how we came to be, through the evolutionary process. Projecting out another 5 million, then 5 billion and then 500 billion years will I be 40 feet tall with an umbrella instead of hair? Will I walk or fly?

Help me get a head start on this evolution thing, for my kids sake anyway.

If I couldn't find a mate, but the umbrella head worked so well keeping me dry and cool, and helping with lift during flight, wouldn't I just become asexual?

Answer 1

Impossible to say. Evolution takes place over many generations, and often most dramatically due to environmental pressure. As it is, humanity as a whole has come to dominate its environment and not the other way around. If there were to be a significant change in that environment (permanant increase or decrease in temp, higher or lower levels of sunlight or radiation, etc...) then a change in humanity's physical form MIGHT occur. This would depend on Natural Selection: Those who failed to adapt to the new environment would eventually die off while those who did would survive.

But FYI: Even if such a drastic change would happen tomorrow, any noticable change in our physiology would take place over GENERATIONS. (Creationists like to pretend that science says that changes can happen very quickly. That is only true in the Marvel Universe (X-men, etc...).)

Answer 2

Mankind will not evolve, we will de-evolve. Mankind is an evolutionary dead end, at least the majority of the species.

Give most humans plumbing, central heating and cooling, fast food and cable and they will be content to live out their lives as is. The do not strive for anything more because they are content and secure the way they are. All "advances" mankind has made in the last hundreds of years has done nothing really to further us as a species, only to make us work less. Read some Nietzsche, he's far better at explaining and elaborating on the subject than I.

And yeah, we'll probably wipe ourselves out before we could even come close to any real evolutionary advances.

Answer 3

At the present rate, mankind will genetically slowly die out and become extinct, probably within a few hundred years. Fortunately, we are very intelligent and, like everything else, we are not affected by "evolution".

We should be able to figure out and control the decay of our DNA, if we decide to do so. We can do this nicely, using science and discovery, compassion and love -- or by horrible, evil, Nazi methods, methods well established by evolution. The evil methods will not work of course, but they could delay our demise for a while -- it's just that who wants us to survive if we have to become that?

It is so much better to see what we can do with what we were given. In a billion years from now, if it is still the reign of mankind on earth, we will still all be human, and recognizably so. The danger is the religion of evolution. Using it, we will probably genetically contaminate everything and destroy ourselves instead of trying to fix any damage that has been done.

Answer 4

Since space is getting limited, and physical size isn't as important as it was for earlier generations if anything we will stay about the same size if not shrink, become more intelligent, and develop less of a need for sleep to cope with the demands with working to keep the bills paid.

Being forty feet tall, flying, nor having an umbrella for hair does nothing to further survival. besides people would think that you looked funny and you would never get laid, hence no way to further your evolution


EDIT: if you keep playing with yourself maybe, but I doubt it.

Answer 5

I can pretty confidently predict that you as an individual will be long dead by 5 million years. Whatever life forms exist then, they won't, by any stretch of the imagination, be "you".

If you are extremely "lucky", you may have descendents living in 5 million years. Their human heritage will be recognisable, but it is unlikely that a present day human sent there in a time machine would be the same species.

Answer 6

Human beings have gotten about a foot taller and about fifty pounds fatter as we have had machines increasingly do our work for us. It's reasonable to assume that will continue. (ETA upon reading previous answer: Physical space is a good argument - I may well be mistaken in the height increase. I certainly doubt we'll get skinnier, though, given our current trend.)

It's also reasonable to assume that with continued multiracial relationships, physical differences between races (ie skintone, all trivial) will lessen and probably, given enough time and statistics, disappear.

That's not evolution, however. That's genetics, as far as race, and adaptation to environmental pressures, as far as the height/weight issues.

Answer 7

right now I don't think there is a lot of natural selection pressure on us, save for the ability to cope with the stressors of modern life and our breeding preferences dictated by cultural stereotypes. Eventually the whole planet will probably turn a nice light brown color if current patterns of intermingling continue.

When our environment changes dramatically, that is when you will see us change as well.

Answer 8

In another 100 years humans may not even exist.

Answer 9

Well, in 500 billion years YOU won't be alive, most likely.

Answer 10

Will probably look like those grey aliens you see in those old sci/fi movies. Tall, grey skin, big black eyes, and the ability to be psychic.