Saturday 11 October 2008

Evolution never stops here

Through my continual neglect I've somewhat missed the bandwagon with this one, as I have with many other post-ideas floating around my cranium, but I should offer my two-cents now that I'm an expert on the subject. Prof. Steve Jones from University College London made the statement that humans, as we know them today, have more or less stopped evolving - humans of tomorrow, assuming we survive long enough to tell, will look the same as they do today. This, he claimed, was due to a gradual increase in the mixing of the gene pool between people of differing geographical ancestry, but also because we're having babies earlier; a man's sperm has a tendency to divide with greater fluctuancy at a later age, and therefore, younger fathers tend to produce alike sequences of genetic codes. The latter assertion I have some problems with for obvious reasons. Homo sapiens have been around for 100,000 to 200,000 years, and only in the last few centuries have we seen the lifespan that we've become accustomed to in the western world. One would also be right to assume that, due to our increased global population, mutations within the gene sequence will occur more frequently, which they do. However, Prof, Jones is right to argue that these sorts of genetic developments will likely be quelled as they have little chance of surviving another generation, at once because of Lamarckian sexual evolution, reminding us that mutations must be attractive enough for the opposite sex to want to mate with, but simultaneously because there are now far too many of us for the mutated strain to become prominent and overrule the dominant strains of what has become "normal". It would take two similar people, with alike genetic mutations for the strain to continue, and then for their children to reproduce, and so on (yet one knows exactly where this might lead). All in all, it's quite an interesting stance, but also something we've known for quite some time. Let us not forget that previous Homo species had hundreds of thousands of years to progress, and we're looking at this through the lens of modern times. It goes without question that if we look at ourselves in ten thousand years from now we're likely to notice some very stark differences, from the size of our extremities, to our height, to our skin tone.

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