Is Human Evolution Today Making Us Dumber and Weaker



Humans are weird.

Well outwardly anyway I mean we share fifty percent of our DNA with a banana but it's our actions and our outwardly appearance that makes us, well, different, maybe different from anything else in the universe. 



Our speech, clothing, brains, the fact that we can invent things separates us from everything else. 

The species that was ever the closest thing to us, the Neanderthals, they were bigger than us, stronger, had bigger brains yet they're gone now and only we remain. 

They spread across Europe 400,000 years ago we only did 45 thousand years ago yet after 5,000 years of coexisting with us
they were gone. 

Climate change, the fact that we had trade networks, that we could innovate our way out of almost any situation that saved us. 

Well we also kind of interbred with them. 

Humanity was different back then humans were bigger life was shorter the world was harsher yet after a mere 40 thousand years we control nearly every aspect of our planet for good and for bad. 

So as we look toward the future how will our descendants look, how will they differ over the next millennia on the next.

Right now we are evolving, we are losing things our ancestors had and doing things our ancestors couldn't. 

For instance our ancestors had bigger jaws than we do that helped them crush through their rough diet of leaves and roots, hence the wisdom tooth. 

It only appears when you reach the end of your teens and it is
designed to help replace other teeth that have worn down.

Today we have utensils to cut our food, our meals are softer and easier to chew and our jaws are much smaller as a result which why wisdom teeth are often impacted when they come in. 

One estimate says that thirty five percent of our population is
born without a wisdom tooth and in the future it will eventually disappear altogether. 

A lot of people nowadays have their wisdom teeth removed because they can negatively impact your mouth, including me, in the future could be gone altogether it won't be a problem. 

And while we may believe that it's our big badass brains that made us smarter than everything else in the animal kingdom our brains have actually been shrinking over the last thirty thousand years.

Neanderthals had bigger brains than us and look what happened to them. 

The average volume of the human brain has decreased from 1500 cubic centimeters to 1350 cubic centimeters which is the equivalent to a chunk the size of a tennis ball. 

There are several different conclusions as to why this is, one group of researchers suspects that our brains getting smaller because we're getting stupider which when you look around at society today it doesn't seem that surprising. 

However historically brain sizes decreased as society gets more complex suggesting that the safety net of modern society negated the correlation between intelligence and survival basically, you don't need that part of your brain that's responsible for hunting and gathering because well in today's society you don't need that.

We have everything here. 

However a more encouraging theory suggests that our brains are getting smaller not because we're getting dumber but because smaller brains are more efficient, the theory suggests that as they shrink our brains are being rewired to work faster to take up less room. 

There's also a theory that smaller brains give us an evolutionary advantage because if you have a smaller brain you're less aggressive which could allow societies to work together to invent and create as opposed to, you know, kill each other.

Originally we all had brown eyes but about 10,000 years ago somebody who lived near the Black Sea, they developed a mutation which turned their brown eyes blue. 

While the reason blue eyes have persisted remains a bit of a mystery one theory is that they act as some sort of paternity test because it is virtually impossible for two blue-eyed mates to create a brown-eyed baby. 

Our blue-eyed male ancestors may have sought a blue-eyed mates of a way of ensuring fidelity, they should have used eye color on the Jerry Springer Show basically. 

So as we look toward the future what kind of changes can we see in humanity coming from way down line.

Well for one thing we'll probably all be bald. 

I mean we've already lost most of our body hair so there's a good chance we'll lose the rest, people love to wear hats right? 

So what's the point in needing hair if you're wearing a hat?

Aso the variety we see in the human species probably won't be around for much longer thanks to globalization.

Humans are mixing more and more multiculturalism is everywhere, humans are expected to evolve into a single ubiquitous ethnic group should the mixing of cultures continue. 

As we continue to mix humans will lose that distinguishing product of their ethnicity and instead take on characteristics from all over the world.

We'll probably also become a race of weaklings as we continue to rely on technology in particular machinery to do our physical labor. 

The less each generation depends on physical strength the more likely it is that as a whole our species will grow weaker.

Before humans walked upright our toes were used for grappling like our hands but you know as monkeys do. 

As we have come to rely less on climbing and more on walking our toes have slowly shrunk to their current size, like little button, eventually evolution will begin to rid us of our smallest toe, that's next to go.

Also humanity may eventually reach a point where we can force evolution on ourselves through augmentation.

Augmented humans are literally over the horizon, whether this is literal self-improvement through bionic limbs for example or through gene selection which has parents choose their child's traits before they're even born, if they want a child with blue eyes are green eyes or whatever. 

Now there are huge moral and ethical implications in this but it could eventually lead to designer babies in which all negative or undesired traits are removed. 

Should this become widespread it could eventually force negative human traits into extinction or even lead to two human races; a superior one on an inferior one. 

The superior one has had negative human traits removed the inferior one maybe couldn't afford to. 

So it's amazing even today the amount of evolution we can see looking around us. 

The amount of diversity in the human race is astounding for example lighter skin allows the penetration of the sun's UV rays, these rays help the body to synthesize vitamin D. 

Darker skin protects the body from absorbing too many UV rays as these can cause cancer or destroy important vitamins and minerals. 

Tight curly hair keeps the hair off the neck and exposes more areas of the scalp and straight hair this helps with cooling and evaporation of sweat.

Straight hair is common in people living in colder climates as it keeps the neck and head warm. 

Eskimos have adapted to extreme cold by retaining layers of fat on their faces for additional warmth. 

Populations in northern Asia and the Arctic tend to have broad flat faces as these reduce the effects of frostbite. 

The epicanthic fold common among northern and eastern asian populations is an adaptation for protecting the eye against the hard, driving snow typical in these regions and also to reduce snow glare. 

Blue eyes are better adapted for vision in regions where there is reduced light as they let in more light than darker colored eyes.

The human species is incredible ever changing and always adapting, get a time machine and go either back or forward in time you would probably meet a very different species of humanity but that's what makes us the most dominant species on the planet, our ability to adapt.









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