Until the late 19th century, people believed that the only explanation for human origins and the creation of life was through divine origin, that every life on earth was created by an almighty being. Then, all of a sudden, a man named Charles Darwin introduced a new perspective, called "The Theory of Evolution", suggesting that all species, through time, have undergone various changes in order to adapt and survive in their environment, which resulted in them evolving to an entirely different species. As humans, we are of no exception too with later studies suggesting that our earliest ancestor originated from Africa about 300,000 years ago, then continued to undergo changes in their physical and behavioral characteristics to adapt to their environment up to the point where we, the present humans, came to be. But since evolution is a process that never stops, that makes us wonder of what the next phase of human Evolution will be in the future. Here are some of my thoughts.
The process of evolution is very complex, with lots of factors contributing to it, some of which includes environmental pressures, the population size of a species, and what threats it has faced, so the time it takes for a species to evolve can vary from others. That said, it was not as if Evolution is not taking place. For instance, as time goes by, we notice that bug sprays have become less and less effective against mosquitoes and cockroaches as bugs that are exposed to the spray build up an immunity to it, which they can pass through as genetic traits to their offspring. Since mosquitoes and cockroaches are under a constant threat of extinction, their evolution process has become very fast. This is in line with the Natural Selection, where species will develop traits that will help them to survive.
On the other hand, we humans do not face such a threat, which may affect how long it will take for us to reach the next phase of humanity, adding to the fact that we can just produce most of the things that we need. Like, to swim in the water for a long period of time, we can just use oxygen tanks, so we don't need to develop gills similar to fish. That is not to say that we do not have a means to evolve further; it might just take longer if we do it naturally.
What we can do, though, is to go through Artificial Selection to intentionally select traits that will result in a far better human by modifying the genes of the babies before they are born. Through this method, not only can we possibly remove all the defects in the baby, but we may also be able to engineer humans to be resistant to any form of disease. On top of that, we may also find ways to increase our lifespans, which will be vital if we ever proceed with the plans of exploring the universe to find planets that can potentially sustain life. With this, our evolution takes place on the genetic level rather than physically.
At the end of the day, evolution is a very complex process with many factors that can affect it. But as long as the humans of the future continue to live and adapt to whatever environment the future holds for them, they will definitely go through some changes and maybe even become an entirely different species from the present humans, just like how it goes for us, being an entirely different species than chimpanzees and bonobos, which is our closest cousins.
Thank you for reading my post, and see you in the next one!
