how will the humans of the year 10,000 will look like?...?

Question

..if human race is constantly evolving, in theory, perfecting and adapting itself to the environment, which is also changing. We assume here that the human race has not blasted itself into extinction , that a meteorite has not blown up Earth and that aliens have not eaten us yet.

Answer 1

As you have described, evolution is based on variance within the population allowing adaptation to fill new environmental niche. Now to predict the most plausible adaptations you must first supply us with the "environment" that you see our species needing to adapt to. Fortunately for humans, however, we are the most generalized mammal on the planet and as of such have found a nearly universal sucess throughout most of the environments that we encounter. That said it is difficult to imagine an environment that would be different enough and that we would habituate for long enough to allow natural selection to act upon the effected population for long enough to create any kind of significant visual change in our species. Fact is, we tend to culturally adapt to environments and nullify them as a selective pressure, in terms of reproductive success. At the same time we as a species are truly defeating the few acts of natural selection that were acting upon us with advances in medicine. With this in mind the changes that might occur could be much like your thanksgiving Turkey, a creature who has been put under so much unnatural selection that it no longer is capable of mating due to humans artificially breeding them for nothing else but size. If humans were no longer present to do this service for Turkeys, they would go extinct. Through "unnatural selection" humans are doing very similiar things to themselves. Undoubtedly a woman who goes in for infertility medicines has a greater chance of having children who would require the same, children that have severe enough allergies/asthma that may have killed them in the past will now grow to a reproductive age with the assistance of asthma/allergy medicines will also produce offspring who have higher occurances of asthma/allergies. This is a bit of a concern, seeing as at the same time we are making ourselves more susceptible to asthma and allergies we are also taking actions that are converting the environment that we will have to adapt to, to containing more contaminants. If it gets serious enough those who are persevering with the assistance of medicine may be the first to become too sick to be reproductively successful such that the power of natural selection might overbear unnatural medical selection once again in this area? Some areas where medicine is making slow progress, like cancer and Aids, there will be a continued evolutionary process. Already there have been a few case studies that have shown a truckstop in Africa where the prostitutes, despite an alarming exposure rate, are not catching or dying from Aids suggesting that natural selection has already discovered a variant within one ethnic group that appears to have white blood cells which are not as susceptible to the AIDS virus, much like sickle cell trait does the same red blood cells resistance for Malaria. As this gene now becomes more prominent due to the pressure of AIDS we may also see the advance of a new genetic disorder if a person is born with two recessives, much like two recessive copies of sickle cell results in anemia instead of trait. So if people do begin to die from a worse environment that causes worse Asthma/Cancer/AIDS, undoubtedly natural selection will find many variants within our population which now far exceeds 6 billion people and will come up with the needed solutions to combat these problems so that enough people make it to a reproductive age and then go to the doctor to get their fertility drugs. If there is also enough disruption in the sociopolitical structure such that medicine is no longer readilly available, at least to the poor, then natural selection will also reclaim the realm of fertility and those who can't naturally, won't. So that is what our environment has in store for us...

But what about technology, if it is allowed to persist and becomes an enpowered agent towards our development. If on top of the fertility drugs, people take medical-engineering so far that they also have their fetus' genetically altered to bring out the "preferred" characteristics. Well it sounds great on the surface, this is actually a dangerous game of Russian roulette. First of all, if the procedure becomes too widespread we would in essence be eradicating variability within our gene pool. It is this same variance which is the mobilizer of natural selection that gives us our ability to adapt to new environments. Now lets say a bacteria or virus evolves to exploit a now homogenous niche that our scientists have now placed in EVERYONE. Not a single person will have the variance to counteract that virus/bacteria... whoops. Secondly, if genetic altering is only a thing for the rich, then we might find that if two genetically altered children were to fall from the economic status of their parents that either they could not have children at all as they have so many recessives combining inutero that the fetus is continually rejected, or if a new baby is conceived without the same genetic tinkering that the parents underwent, that the resulting child may have severe genetic defects, again by two recessives that matched up in the new baby for the fact that that recessive with a different dominant in both parents had allowed a benificial trait in their parents genetic engineering procedure. Simply put, genetic engineering may create a circumstance where it becomes a neccesary procedure for genetically engineered people to have healthy offspring and the Human race would be up the creek without a paddle if we somehow lost the ability to continue the procedure, once started.

Anyways, don't get your hopes up on some kind of progressive hierarchial structure existing within evolution that will see us become telepathic, telekenetic and whatever else Marvel comics can throw your way. As much as I appreciated comics in my youth, evolution doesn't work that way! In truth, mutation only accounts for a small fraction of evolutionary change and most of these changes are thrown out with the trash of generational decay. (ie causes it's host to die without reproducing or does not result in any significant reproductive advantage)

So what are we evolving into... What environment are we heading towards and how will our biology enpowered by natural selection and our sociopolitical and medical progress, which cheat the processes of natural selection, shape our evolution, our sucess within this new environment? This is the question. The answer is everything above.

Answer 2

Physically no different than we look today. By surrounding themselves with advanced medicines, agriculture, climate control, and other inventions that change the environment to suit our needs humans have removed the impetus for our own evolution. Sexual selection is unlikely to be a major factor because except for deformed or severely mentally handicapped people virtually everybody in most human societies can find somebody that is willing to mate with them. Also, on an evolutionary timescale 10,000 years is not a long time at all. Humans alive 10,000 years ago were physically identical to modern humans.

That's assuming we haven't all downloaded our minds into robots or something like that by then, of course.

Answer 3

We'll be shorter, uglier, and stupider. The theory does not say we will perfect ourselves, just that we will adapt to our environment. We'll have more radiation, more pollution, more wars, more junk in our food, more computers to waste our time and prevent us from thinking, and a poor educational system. Logically, our bodies will adapt to deal with the poor environment and food sources, intelligence will not be advantageous, and being warlike, rude, and aggressive will be useful traits. I can't wait....

PS: The aliens wouldn't eat us anyway. We won't taste good.

Answer 4

1. That is not enough time for any natural evolution to take place.
2. Evolution ended in humans when we started building wheelchairs and eye glasses. The strong are no longer the ones to get all the women.
3. Now directed genetic engineering is a whole different ball of wax. By the year 10,000 if we do not descend into a theocracy you should be able to get a body to order and have your brain decanted into it for however long you care to use it.

Answer 5

Taller (Women find taller men more attractive, so taller people will have higher reproductive rates. The human race is taller now than a couple of hundred years ago)

Bald/Hairless (Has been happening for a long time)

Immaculate Hygiene (The developed world is becoming increasingly obsessed with hygiene)

Electronic Implants (Used instead of keys to open locked doors that you have clearance for, to detect medical problems and regulate body processes, store personal data, etc)

Answer 6

Well, a few thousand years is not really enough time to change or evolve naturally but I suspect that gene research, plastic surgery, enchancement drugs and implants can alter human beings in ways we can't imagine right now.

In the year 10,000, I might be blue skinned with a horn protruding out of my forhead.

Answer 7

I myself dont think we'll have a human race in 10,000 years time but i do remember watching a program some time ago about what we would look like.they recogned our skeletal structure would get smaller and lighter.i find that hard to believe.every generation seems to be getting taller than the last :-p

Answer 8

My wager is that by 2055 all of us bypass up... on the present fee of the events, i'm tremendously particular its gonna blow around that element. no longer likely because of the fact of human events, maximum possibly led to by pandemics and organic mess ups.

Answer 9

THEY WON'T!
pLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING:


Certainly not ...
A prime reason is because D Towers, over his recent 9 year research, in his work, ‘TWO BIRDS ... ONE STONE!!', discovered, unequivocally, that Man and the snake are precise opposites of one another! ... in ALL aspects - both anatomically and behaviorally!
That is eerie!!!

But once we have recovered from the shock of such a discovery, we immediately realize that only a Master mind could have engineered such, and that random mutation certainly wasn't 'random", if at all!!

The other gravital realization that strikes is that it overwhelmingly supports the Biblical Adam and Eve, wherein it was the snake [serpent] who tempted Eve to oppose God, and set up "opposition in all things' in the first place!

Those who religiously 'hail' 'Biological Evolution of the Species' as some genuine, realistic, form of life source explanation:
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD NOW, AND WORK ON THAT ONE!!


Source(s)
Two Birds ... One Stone!!
by Denis Towers
via Xulonpress.com

Answer 10

they will all look like kobe bryant or serena williams. that seems to be the most popular choice of mates young people prefer these days. i guess that is what it will lead to. why wouldn't it. basketball will rule. and the nba will be a powerful world order like a government. the best will be rewarded appropriately. cars, bling bling and big homes on the ocean or whereever. they will prosper and multiply very quickly. that is what i see.

Answer 11

Humans would be hairless because hair isn't needed for us to survive we wouldn't have tailbones and are pelvis would become much larger and stronger to support our upright stance.