What will be the next big leap in human evolution and when will it happen?

Answer 1

That is a difficult question to answer. I believe that we can go in two directions:
1.) have a very large natural or human made disaster.
2.) technology can be the big leap for evolution.

These two choices are very broad, but they answer the question.

When will it happen it the big question here. A disaster can happen any time or technology evolution will occur over many years. This question mainly depends on opinion and no answer is correct or wrong. It will just give you a sense of what people think of the world.
good luck.

Answer 2

Evolution does not happen in leaps. It is gradual. As the first answer suggests, if a natural disaster occurs, it may speed things up. By natural disaster, I mean tidal waves and floods which wipe out everyone but people living at high altitude, or a plague which kills 99% of people on Earth, leaving only isolated pockets of humanity like Iceland and the Falklands. A nuclear war might do the same, leaving only a small pool of DNA to carry on. Any traits, either advantageous or deleterious, would obviously then become more prevalent in the population. If survival was due to resistance to the disease, or to radiation induced injury, then these would be advantageous traits. If survival was due to isolation alone, then this does not bode well, as eventually the disease, or radiation etc, may affect the population.

So, in summary, big leaps require a lot of deaths, such as happened with the asteroid 65 million years ago wiping out dinosaurs.

Answer 3

I agree with the no leap thing.
However, I think the next form of evolution will not be biological, but rather technological.
Nanotechnology (and soon picotechnology on even smaller scales) is rapidly advancing. Similarly, attempts to emulate human intelligence with the capactiy to learn and identify patterns is improving. While not nearly at the level of human competency, this technology should start to boom as more people invest their time and money into research.
It is not improbable that this technology can be used to enhance humans in terms of intelligence and physical performance. We can modify the brain by implanting picorobots; we can enhance muscles in the same way.
These ideas come from Ray Kurzweil's book "The Singularity is Near." It's an awesome read.
I also believe that we should stop helping people with sickly constitutions continue to survive and breed, as this obviously perpetuates less fit alleles in the gene pool. However, this is from the stance that we will not advance very far in terms of nanotechnology.

Answer 4

It's hard to predict, since evolution happens over tens of thousands of years. Mutations happen at such a slow and random rate, that it could be a hundred thousand years into the future or more for what we could call a new species of the Homo genus to appear. It's impossible to know when the next big natural disaster or human epidemic will be, and what new species will come out of it.

I'm not sure I'm understanding your question, though, but I hope I answered it.

Answer 5

There is no "leap" in human evolution.

Evolution in itself is not clearly defined. For example, many textbooks regard evolutionary processes as "random".

The question is: if it is random, why it is so beneficial? Why is it so symmetrical?

If it is random, then why we have 2 hands with 5 finger on each hand. If it is random, why they are not different numbers.

Evolution indeed is a way for mankind to explain what he cannot explain by referring to something that he is not certain of and he cannot prove.

Answer 6

We can not know the mutation coupled with the proper selection pressure in advance. Any predictions, outside of allelic changes, are purest speculation.

PS Well, Pris, I see you do know something of evolution. secretsause is the evolution man here. Check out his well thought out answers in evolutionary theory.

Answer 7

When we stop using medicine to patch over all the health problems developing. We can't evolve if every single person reproduces regardless of how "good" they are.