Posted on 04/08/2009 6:19:32 PM PDT by GOPGuide
snip
It's even conceivable, he said, that our genes eventually will change enough to create an entirely new human species, one no longer able to breed with our own species, Homo sapiens.
"Someday in the far distant future, enough genetic changes might have occurred so that future populations could not interbreed with the current one,'' Sussman said in an e-mail message.
snip
It's also the topic of a new book, "The 10,000 Year Explosion,'' by anthropologists Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
"For most of the last century, the received wisdom in the social sciences has been that human evolution stopped a long time ago,'' Harpending said. "Clearly, received wisdom is wrong, and human evolution has continued.''
snip
When he was asked how many genes currently are evolving, Harpending replied: "A lot. Several hundred at least, maybe over a thousand.''
Another anthropologist, John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said, "Our evolution has recently accelerated by around 100-fold.''
A key reason, Hawks said, is the enormous growth of the world's population, which multiplies the size of the gene pool available to launch new varieties.
"Today, beneficial mutation must be happening far more than ever before, since there are more than 6 billion of us,'' Cochran said.
The changes are so rapid that "we could, in the very near future, compare the genes of old people and young people'' to detect newly evolving genes, Cochran said. Skeletons from a few thousand or even a few hundred years ago also might provide evidence of genetic change.
"Human evolution didn't stop when anatomically modern humans appeared or when they expanded out of Africa,'' Harpending said. "It never stopped.''
(Excerpt) Read more at mcclatchydc.com ...
Good grief. This article is a wonderful demonstration of how little anthropologists understand elementary genetics.
“that future populations could not interbreed with the current one...”
Ten-thousand year old people aren’t supposed to sleep with 20-year olds anyway. That’s just gross.
Exactly. If anything we are devolving.
Look at the segments of the population that is procreating far faster than others. The welfare crowd, People stuck in a 600AD time warp. Not encouraging.
Women get implants, plastic surgery to make themselves more attractive. Men do tummy tucks, hair implants, eyelids.
Last I checked there wasn't a silicon gene. Their offspring will not look like the altered parents.
Modern medicine keeps weak specimens alive that in turn have children.
Years ago those weak people wouldn't live long enough to procreate.
Are up evolving or devolving. I vote for the latter.
Ah, I see. This must be why everyone in big cities is evolving into Democrats!
This coming from someone who things *evolutionary legal scholars* is a valid classification?
This flies in the face of the notion that genetic bottlenecks have been behind the evolution of mankind. Broadening the gene pool will cause a reversion to the norm. We’re not all that differentiated now, even after presumably tens of thousands of years in isolation from one another.
The FR atheist/evolutionists must approve. They have not shown up to spam your keyword lists with profanity, make personal attacks, twist and distort, create strawmen, or engage in any of the other methods they use to demonstrate their superlative intelligence /sarc>
From pygmies to giants and from summu wrestlers to jockeys; major differences in stature and size makes to difference; still 100% human.
EEUUWW
How the hell do you have evolution without “selection” for attributes that favor success in life.
It is in fact the least-successful people in this world that are propagating at the fastest rate.
Idiocracy is happening folks. Just enjoy society while it lasts.
In no time at all Barney frank should be making
the evolutionary leap into Ultraman.
Or Johnny Weismuller? These theories and charts get tricky.
Cheers!
The very fact that genetic engineering will be designed by flawed human beings belies contradicts notion that genetically engineered humans will be intellectually superior to those naturally evolved by forces we really have no conception.
Also, in the realm of ideas, modern prosperity encourages idiocy. Because there is a cushion for Leftist politicians not to suffer the immediate consequences of their actions, people believe that that drivel is equally valid. When you become too civilized, you loose key aspects of the will and drive that got you to where you are. You start living off the past and are condemned to inevitable decline. One almost has to believe that a the success & advance of modern socieity also contains the seeds of its destruction.
Ever seen “Gattaca”?
Pingity-ping.
Ain’t it sweet?
Soon, we will be able to fly to the planet Krypton under our own power!
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