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Asked by 11cjohnson123 to Callum, Gina, Katie, Michelle, Sam on 15 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by wlawler3.
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Callum Johnston answered on 15 Nov 2012:
Well this is a very hot topic in science just now. Some people think we are still evolving and some think our evolution may be slowing down. Because our lives are very different from the way humans used to live we may be getting used to our new surroundings and changing genetically because of it, that would mean we might be evolving. But normally evolution requires two or more groups of the species (humans) to be separated from each other for a long time. Because we can fly around the world and reproduce with people who are very different from us it means that all humans are getting more similar to each other, and this means we are less likely to evolve into a new type of human!
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Michelle Linterman answered on 15 Nov 2012:
Woah, this is a REALLY tricky question. Scientist argue about this all the time, some think evolution has stopped in our modern age, some think it is still going and some even think it is going backwards. I was reading about a scientist who thinks that because we don’t need to use our brain power to find food any more it is actually making us dumber! I hope he is wrong!
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Gina Tse answered on 15 Nov 2012:
Evolution is a process that happens very slowly and takes a long time for you or scientists to see differences. When you look at an evolutionary tree, what you have to remember it has taken millions of years for this to happen and it’s a lot easier to look back in time put different animals in different groups.
Callum is correct in that the ability to travel all over the world and reproduce with other people of different ethnicities it might be possible that in a few thousands maybe tens of thousands years’ time the earth will have just one human race of one ethnicity.
The reason why have different ethnicities is because back before technology and long distance transport, humans rarely travelled far from where they were born. So they were quite isolated from other humans, therefore whilst in their countries of origin they evolved to suit their environment best – this happens over a long time. For example in very hot countries with a lot of sun, people there tend to have darker skin. This protects them from the damaging rays from the sun.A lot of how humans have ended up today has been a result of ‘natural selection’ (look up Charles Darwin) so those who are ‘weaker’ die out so only those with better characteristics will survive. But now in the modern world where medical research and treatment is constantly getting better, more and more people are surviving longer and can go on to reproduce. Giving the ‘gene pool’ more DNA to add to mix.
Long story short, we’re very unlikely to be growing wings or growing extra limbs anytime soon but genetically we’re evolving all the time but not enough to see great changes on the outside!
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Sam Godfrey answered on 16 Nov 2012:
Both the other answers sum this up really well. Personally I believe that evolution is still happening but evolution is such a slow process that we certainly wouldn’t have seen anything obvious happening to us in the hundred years or so since Darwin. Some people think that as we are now so good at building machines and making medicines that the need to evolve is fading. I think it is more likely that we start changing our own genetics, designing our own evolution, rather than it happening naturally.
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Katie Howe answered on 18 Nov 2012:
I believe that we are still evolving but probably much more slowly that we have done in the past. This might be partly because now we have so much technology that we can use that to adapt to our environment and dont need to adapt our bodies so much. But evolution happens so slowly anyway that if it is going even more slowly now than in the past then it might seem as if it has stopped completely!
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