Humanity has been on the planet a little ....?

Question

Humanity has been on the planet a little while ,what maybe five thousand years or something with some amazing technological developments and some minor progress in human conflict but what about a full billion years from now what might one expect to see?

ok change it to homo sapiens 300,00 to 800,000 thousand years and still our species time line is a drop in the bucket . so use your imagination and prognosticate if you will a billion is very far sighted but still less than after the sun burns out and maybe we go to space migration 5 billion or after to a trillion years like to here some futuristic dreams if possible.please

Answer 1

Homo habilis
H. habilis lived from about 2.4 to 1.5 million years ago (MYA). H. habilis, the first species of the genus Homo, evolved in South and East Africa in the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene, 2.5–2 MYA, when it diverged from the Australopithecines. H. habilis had smaller molars and larger brains than the Australopithecines, and made tools from stone and perhaps animal bones. One of the first known hominids, it was nicknamed 'handy man' by its discoverer, Louis Leakey. Some scientists have proposed moving this species out of Homo and into Australopithecus.

Homo rudolfensis and Homo georgicus These are proposed species names for fossils from about 1.9–1.6 MYA, the relation of which with H. habilis is not yet clear. * H. rudolfensis refers to a single, incomplete skull from Kenya. * H. georgicus, from Georgia, may be an intermediate form between H. habilis and H. erectus, or a sub-species of H. erectus.

Homo ergaster and Homo erectus
The first fossils of Homo erectus were discovered by Dutch physician Eugene Dubois in 1891 on the Indonesian island of Java. He originally gave the material the name Pithecanthropus erectus based on its morphology that he considered to be intermediate between that of humans and apes. H. erectus lived from about 1.8 MYA to 70,000 years ago. Often the early phase, from 1.8 to 1.25 MYA, is considered to be a separate species, H. ergaster, or it is seen as a subspecies of erectus, Homo erectus ergaster. In the Early Pleistocene, 1.5–1 MYA, in Africa, Asia, and Europe, presumably, Homo habilis evolved larger brains and made more elaborate stone tools; these differences and others are sufficient for anthropologists to classify them as a new species, H. erectus. In addition H. erectus was the first human ancestor to walk truly upright. This was made possible by the evolution of locking knees and a different location of the foramen magnum (the hole in the skull where the spine enters). They may have used fire to cook their meat. A famous example of Homo erectus is Peking Man; others were found in Asia (notably in Indonesia), Africa, and Europe. Many paleoanthropologists are now using the term Homo ergaster for the non-Asian forms of this group, and reserving H. erectus only for those fossils found in the Asian region and meeting certain skeletal and dental requirements which differ slightly from ergaster.

Homo cepranensis and Homo antecessor These are proposed as species that may be intermediate between H. erectus and H. heidelbergensis.
* H. cepranensis refers to a single skull cap from Italy, estimated to be about 800,000 years old. * H. antecessor is known from fossils from Spain and England that are 800,000–500,000 years old.
Homo heidelbergensis

H. heidelbergensis (Heidelberg Man) lived from about 800,000 to about 300,000 years ago. Also proposed as Homo sapiens heidelbergensis or Homo sapiens paleohungaricus.

Homo neanderthalensis H. neanderthalensis lived from about 250,000 to as recent as 30,000 years ago. Also proposed as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis: there is ongoing debate over whether the 'Neanderthal Man' was a separate species, Homo neanderthalensis, or a subspecies of H. sapiens. While the debate remains unsettled, evidence from mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomal DNA sequencing indicates that little or no gene flow occurred between H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens, and, therefore, the two were separate species. In 1997, Dr. Mark Stoneking, then an associate professor of anthropology at Pennsylvania State University, stated: "These results [based on mitochondrial DNA extracted from Neanderthal bone] indicate that Neanderthals did not contribute mitochondrial DNA to modern humans… Neanderthals are not our ancestors." Subsequent investigation of a second source of Neanderthal DNA supported these findings. However, supporters of the multiregional hypothesis point to recent studies indicating non-African nuclear DNA heritage dating to one MYA, although the reliability of these studies have been questioned.

Homo rhodesiensis, and the Gawis cranium
* H. rhodesiensis, estimated to be 300,000–125,000 years old, most current experts believe Rhodesian Man to be within the group of Homo heidelbergensis though other designations such as Archaic Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens rhodesiensis have also been proposed.
* In February 2006 a fossil, the Gawis cranium, was found which might possibly be a species intermediate between H. erectus and H. sapiens or one of many evolutionary dead ends. The skull from Gawis, Ethiopia, is believed to be 500,000–250,000 years old. Only summary details are known, and no peer reviewed studies have been released by the finding team. Gawis man's facial features suggest its being either an intermediate species and an example of a "Bodo man" female.

Homo sapiens
H. sapiens ("sapiens" means wise or intelligent) has lived from about 250,000 years ago to the present. Between 400,000 years ago and the second interglacial period in the Middle Pleistocene, around 250,000 years ago, the trend in cranial expansion and the elaboration of stone tool technologies developed, providing evidence for a transition from H. erectus to H. sapiens. The direct evidence suggests there was a migration of H. erectus out of Africa, then a further speciation of H. sapiens from H. erectus in Africa (there is little evidence that this speciation occurred elsewhere). Then a subsequent migration within and out of Africa eventually replaced the earlier dispersed H. erectus. This migration and origin theory is usually referred to as the single-origin theory. However, the current evidence does not preclude multiregional speciation, either. This is a hotly debated area in paleoanthropology. Current research has established that human beings are genetically highly homogenous, that is the DNA of individuals is more alike than usual for most species, which may have resulted from their relatively recent evolution or the Toba catastrophe. Distinctive genetic characteristics have arisen, however, primarily as the result of small groups of people moving into new environmental circumstances. Such small groups are initially highly inbred, allowing the relatively rapid transmission of traits favorable to the new environment. These adapted traits are a very small component of the Homo sapiens genome and include such outward "racial" characteristics as skin color and nose form in addition to internal characteristics such as the ability to breathe more efficiently in high altitudes. H. sapiens idaltu , from Ethiopia, lived from about 160,000 years ago (proposed subspecies). It is the oldest known anatomically modern human.

Homo floresiensis
H. floresiensis, which lived about 100,000–12,000 years ago has been nicknamed hobbit for its small size, probably a result of insular (island) dwarfism H. floresiensis is intriguing both for its size and its age, being a concrete example of a recent species of the genus Homo that exhibits derived traits not shared with modern humans. In other words, H. floresiensis share a common ancestor with modern humans, but split from the modern human lineage and followed a distinct evolutionary path. The main find was a skeleton believed to be a woman of about 30 years of age. Found in 2003 it has been dated to approximately 18,000 years old. Her brain size was only 380 cm³ (which can be considered small even for a chimpanzee). She was only 1 meter in height. However, there is an ongoing debate over whether H. floresiensis is indeed a separate species. Some scientists presently believe that H. floresiensis was a modern H. sapiens suffering from pathological dwarfism. This hypothesis is supported in part, because the modern humans who live on Flores, the island where the skeleton was found, are pygmies. This coupled with pathological dwarfism could indeed create a hobbit-like human. The other major attack on H. floresiensis is that it was found with tools only associated with H. sapiens

In a billion years we will be something totally different. Hopefully better.

Answer 2

H. Sapiens has been around quite a lot longer than five thousand years; a half a million is closer to the truth. And there is utterly no way of prognosticating what things will be like a billion years from now -- or even a hundred.

Answer 3

Perfection

Answer 4

Perhaps we will finally have those hover cars we were promised years ago :P.

I would like to think that we will have progressed to the point that all the seemingly unsolvable problems today (disease, famine, war, poverty) are no longer an issue and something children....download? in history class and think....wow no way!

Answer 5

well your facts are a little off. Homosapiens have been around for a couple of hundred of thousand of years, not five thousand. But as far as what to expect in a billion, who knows.

Answer 6

well, humanity is so fool that maybe in less that a thousand years we'll be gone