• Are humans destined to become a race of fish people?
What’s stopping us from becoming a bunch of cyborgs?
From unlikely theories to things that are already happening, here are 10 ways humans
might evolve in the future.
10 – Getting Taller • Generally speaking, this is already happening.
In almost every part of the world, the average height is taller than they were even just
100 years ago.
• The reason why is simple – taller people are generally considered more attractive,
and therefore find mates easier, and pass down those traits in children.
• Being taller also makes life just a little easier and safer.
Less stepladder accidents and all.
• Of course, this mostly applies to men.
Women are slowly getting a bit shorter and plumper, as that’s the body type that appears
to be having the most children.
9 – No More Wisdom Teeth • Wisdom teeth are already good for nothing
but health problems in most humans.
• In some parts of the world, large sections of the population are already being born without
that pair of third molars.
• Humans jaws have shrunk over time as our food has become more manageable, and now there’s
no room for those molars.
It’s possible we just start not having them, eventually.
• That would save most of us a surgery, at least.
8 – Losing Toes • Your pinky toe is already basically worthless.
The only reason we have five toes is because they’re holdovers from our primate ancestors.
• They developed flexible toes because they use them to grip things.
We humans are barely even able to use our toes to pick up a sock off the ground.
• So from an evolutionary standpoint, there’s no reason for us to have five toes.
And the pinky may be the first to go.
7 – Muscle Weakening • We live in an era where big strong muscles
don’t necessarily make your life easier.
They’re basically a luxury.
We’ve already evolved to have stronger brains and weaker muscles.
• It’s not like people need to be crazy buff to survive anymore.
We have technology to help with the heavy lifting, and survival doesn’t depend on
being able to win in hand-to-hand combat anymore.
• Of course, there’s another side to this.
Humans could lose their muscle mass quickly if we go full Star Trek and become a spacefaring
race.
• Physical strength doesn’t really develop in zero-gravity, and if we ended up on a planet
with lower gravity than Earth, our muscles mass would go with it.
6 – Blended Ethnicity • Coming back to Earth for a second, this
is another evolutionary step that is already happening.
• The reason we have different ethnicities now is because humans adapted to different
parts of the world over several generations, and STAYED there.
• But now we live in a world where it is easy to meet people of other ethnicities,
and muti-racial children are becoming more common.
• Over thousands of years, the lines between ethnicities will eventually blur, since we’re
not locked to specific areas, and worldwide cultures are becoming increasingly diverse.
5 – Cyborgs • One of the most common, if trope-y, theories
about human evolution is that we can just do it to ourselves.
• There are already cybernetic enhancements being used today.
From prosthetic limbs to pacemakers, humans are already proven we can put metal and electronics
into our bodies without much issue.
• The question now is, how far do we take it?
Do we stop at a cool robotic arm?
• Or do we go full Ghost in the Shell, and just upload our brains to the cloud?
4 – Immune Systems Get Weak • Hey, modern medicine is great.
It has allowed people to live full, complete lives, when they would have been unable to
just a century ago.
• That’s exactly the point.
From an evolutionary standpoint, a weak immune system is a death sentence.
If you caught the flu at age 10 and died, you weren’t going to be passing those genes
down to the next generation.
• But modern medicine has made it so that even the sickliest of humans can get by.
That means that, as a species, our immune systems get weaker.
• Of course, this one is up for debate.
Recent studies seem to doubt the idea that immune systems are genetic at all.
It might have far more to do with how you grow up than how you’re born.
3 – Changing Skull Sizes • There are two theories about this: Some
think skulls will get smaller over time, allowing for easier natural birth.
• However, as an increasing number of new mothers rely on the C-Section to give birth,
it’s very possible for large-headed babies to become more common over time.
• Babies with heads that are too large at birth cause complications that can be fatal
for the mother or the child.
That leads to a sort of natural selection in itself, but some doctors believe C-Sections
will eventually be safer – and more preferable – than natural birth.
• This is important, because our brains are already getting bigger.
2 – Fish Features • There’s at least one biological scientist
out there whose research suggests humans could, over thousands of years, develop webbed hands
and feet, and possibly even develop cat-like eyes to see in murky waters.
• It won’t be anytime soon, but there’s a chance we could basically evolve into a
race of mer-people, Waterworld-style.
• The research, which predicted the ways humans might need to adapt to climate change,
lists that as a scenario for how we deal with a world with more water and less land.
• It also discusses the possibility of a new Ice Age, in which humans would likely
become physically bigger, stronger, and hairier. 1 – We Don’t
• The entire premise of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is the doctrine of natural selection.
• That is, the creatures that adapt well to their circumstances live and produce offspring.
The ones that don’t adapt as well die early or are unable to find a mate.
• But as humans, we’ve been able to mostly cover up those fatal shortcomings with medicine
and technology.
• Because of that, natural selection no longer really applies to us in the same way
it does in the wild.
So it’s possible the humans of today are not really going to change too much from the
way we are now.