All good things must come to an end.
Sadly, Homo sapiens’ time on Earth
is no exception.
And someone would surely take our place
as the dominant species.
But who?
Or rather, what?
Some of the earliest species of humans
date back at least 7 million years
Back then, different humanoid species
belonging to the Hominidae family
walked amongst each other.
They evolved, interbred
and way more often than not,
died out.
Our species, Homo sapiens,
arrived on the scene
about 6 million years ago.
But it wasn’t until some point
in the last 15,000 to 40,000 years
that we emerged
as the only living species of humans.
And not long after that,
we had settled on every continent
except for Antarctica.
Our social innovation and tool creation
are some of the factors
you could thank for this.
These skills allowed us
to outcompete other species
like Neanderthals.
And this innovative nature
could be what leads
to our very own demise
when we create a new
superhuman species
that could outlive us all.
According to the author Don Simborg,
our successors, or Homo nouveau,
would look more or less just like you.
The big difference?
These humanoids would be
more like a highly engineered version.
Homo nouveau would be created
through the selective editing of our genes.
Their genes could be manipulated
so that they grow taller,
age slower
or no longer contract certain diseases.
And should these new humans
not interbreed with us,
they could be on their own distinct
evolutionary path.
Thanks to natural selection,
they could start looking
and acting differently
from us Homo sapiens.
Now while this could sound like something
out of a sci-fi film,
it could be closer than you think.
It took modern humans
about 200,000 years to evolve
from our more archaic predecessors.
But Homo nouveau
could come into existence
in a matter of decades.
This could be largely thanks to CRISPR.
And no, that's not the hottest
new kitchen appliance.
It’s an acronym for
clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.
In other words, genetic editing.
Using this method,
you could add,
remove or alter particular locations
in an organism’s DNA.
You could use it to prevent
and treat diseases
by making edits
to somatic cells in your body.
These changes you make
to your own genome
couldn’t be passed on to your children.
But should you start tinkering
with the genetic sequences
of your eggs or sperm cells,
you could be laying out the red carpet
for our successor species.
Next gen CRISPR-created humans
could have genetically modified heights
and muscle masses to go along
with their customized skin,
hair and eye colors.
And over time,
there could be an intersection
of both natural and unnatural selection.
Desirable traits
could emerge as dominant ones.
These new humans
could digest food differently,
be less prone to disease
and be better adapted
to the effects of climate change.
They could withstand
more extreme temperatures,
be less reliant on nutrients and water
or be more resilient to radiation.
This would be a particularly huge advantage
should interplanetary space travel
be common in the future.
But things wouldn’t necessarily
be all peaches and sunshine
for this future species.
Dangers and unexpected challenges
could present themselves
when we play such a godlike role
in our own evolutionary path.
Editing even just one gene
in a single individual
with the hope of achieving a specific result
could have far-reaching
unintended consequences.
And these consequences
could then be inherited
by this person’s children.
And their children’s children.
While it may sound fun to manipulate
our physiological characteristics,
it wouldn’t be so simple
to engineer humans to be more intelligent.
There are thousands of genes
linked to your IQ,
and they rely on
many complex interactions.
Messing around with these genes
could have disastrous outcomes.
Imagine more and more humans
suffering from behavioral conditions
like Tourette’s syndrome
or attention-deficit disorder.
Whether on purpose or accidental,
these could be encoded
by only a few genes.
And since these are hereditary,
they could be passed on.
But then again, as gene editing advances,
you could also see these disorders
eliminated entirely.
These Homo nouveau
could also combine
their genetically modified traits
with cyborg technologies.
They could retrieve information
at lightning speed,
enhance their vision with infrared
to see at night
or become supersoldiers
by hooking themselves up
directly to machines
like fighter jets.
Competing with Homo nouveau
for survival
would be an increasingly difficult situation
for us mere humans.
And eventually, it could be the end of us.
Of course, there's always the chance
that a non-human entity
could surpass us before they do.
Like artificial superintelligence.
But that’s a story for another WHAT IF.