What do you think humans will look like in a hundred-million years? I mean what kinds of evolution do you think we will undergo?

That's pushing it too long into the future. Try, say, five million. Or less, even. If you've seen Bicentenial Man before, you'd notice our technology doesn't start "improving" into the futuristic look often seen in most scifi movies for three generations from now. We've got a long, long way to go...

Starlab, Im not sure you understood my topic or I dont understand your post , but Im not talking about technology; Im talking about humanity's (spelling?) evolution in the future. Of course it depends on our environment. I mean if we lived in space we'd adapt to that , but what kinds of adaptions would we undergo? Thats what Im asking.

It's impossible to say really. Ask me in a hundred million years. :P

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That's what I'm talking about too...I'm just pointing out that it won't take that long for us to "evolve." Ask Devilmech in 100 million. Ask me in one million.

Well, nature no longer controls our evolution thanks to modern medicine. So I'd say that what we'll look like in 100 million years depends entirely on what kinds of genetic engineering technology emerges.

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Gang,

Okay, I'll take a stab at it. As we are increasing our population faster than our ability to feed our third-world countries and thus we might be faced with a severe dimunition of foodstuff availability, we might need to evolve a way to directly convert sunlight into usable food. Plants certainly do that with photosynthesis. If our bodies could do that we would be more self-sufficient than we are now.

What do we need and how long does evolution take to satisfy that need? We evolved as four-legged creatures. Many of our GI-tract problems arise due to the fact that we are now upright two-legged creatures. We need to have our innards catch up to our outards. Hm. Did I just coin a word?

We use but a small portion of our brains. (Well, with an IQ of 186, I guess my wife uses more than most.) We need to evolve brain structures that allow greater brain-usage.

Donald

Sorry, but I don't think we're going to make it.

And I'm an optomist...well, at least half the time.

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Pre-Quote: 'To survive one has to experiment. When the environment changes, the traditional way of doing things doesn't work.'

Quote:
"It's the outriders, the organisms that seem to be maladjusted before the change, which are the only ones that survive these changes...in that way a species continues."

Carl Sagan

Obviously our evolution will help us adapt to our environment (people on Moon or Mars colonies may look different from people on Earth in the far future). As for something that could happen in the near future, we'll probably loose things that the modern human body has no use for, such as wisdom teeth, and the appendix.

Or they'll become useful again. B)

I think that we will evolve to the point where we can use an apostrophe correctly when naming threads. Call it "grammatical evolution" if you will.

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Climate Change Australia

Well apparently, just above, I had slipped into a temporary pessimist mode. I'm still willing to try the colony on Mars thing in an effort to increase the odds in our favor. Just in case that big asteroid in 2016 doesn't miss us. :P

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Pre-Quote: 'To survive one has to experiment. When the environment changes, the traditional way of doing things doesn't work.'

Quote:
"It's the outriders, the organisms that seem to be maladjusted before the change, which are the only ones that survive these changes...in that way a species continues."

Carl Sagan

Maybe we really won't be there in a 100 million years. We are just one species, and we are so spread out now, that evolution will not take place without wars, of famines. We can use our brains to tackle problems, and aid less intelligent people. So, there is no natural selection. Maybe, in a hundred million years, IF we are still here, we will have changed so much from each other ( cross-breeding) that we won't be able to identify ourselves as the same species. Like dogs now.

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There are a number of interesting turns we as a species may take in the future, and the easiest ways to imagine the possibilities might be by looking at how humans have physically and socially evolved in the past.

First, for natural physical evolution you need isolated pockets of human culture, separated from outside influence for a number of generations, giving genetics the chance to "examine" the surroundings and then adapt. The case of the Hawaiian Rock Wallaby demonstrates that significant evolution can occur in only a handful of generations given the appropriate circumstances. Mars, or any other extraterrestrial human colony may well provide this isolation, especially if we find ourselves sending out deep-space "seed" colonies as suggested in a number of sci-fi stories.

Second, knowing already that humans use our tools and brains to adapt our environments to us, rather than vice versa, you have to examine what tools would be available to future humans. The most obvious is genetic engineering. A recent documentary (on CBS I think) predicted that humans would be regularly supplanting DNA from a number of other creatures with the express purpose of controlling our evelutionary future by 2050. Owls eyes for night vision, chameleon skin that could change from near black to pure white for the purpose of heat reflection or absorbtion. Bodies streamlined for life in the water with webbed hands and feet. When we see the diversity of life on earth, its easy to imagine millions of human variants, perfectly adapted for specific environs.

When humans first expanded outward across the globe we increased the diversity of the species created by isolated adaptation. At some point, we've began melding these races back into a more homogeneous humanity, and will continue to do so as isolated spaces disappear and we are forced by sheer lack of space to intermix human variants. As humanity expands further into space, and once the barriers restricting us to our own solar system are removed, it's likely in my opinion that we'll see an explosion in diversity that will never revert back to a single distinguishable species again, but rather into who knows how many unique species decended from humans.

Who knows, maybe those aliens we're warring with in the future won't be so alien after all - they might just be cousins returning for a sniff at their roots... B)

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Maybe my question was not specific enough...
Well, in these situations what do you think well evolve into?

1 On the moon
2 On mars
3An astroid hits earth and we have to live underground for a million years (probably not that long, but it could happen)

The third one I'm most curious about; with no sun, what would evolve into. What if we lose all of our technology in the process and forget about our past. Of course no one will know unless it happens (and I hope it doesnt). I would just like to know everyones view on this.

On the moon - little or no evolution.
On Mars - incredibly major biological change.
Underground - never gonna happen, unless we are suddenly reproducing like hell. If you are thinking in terms of the Time Machine recent movie, that may just be ONE possibility possibility...

Yeah, Ive seen the Time Machine, though I wasnt thinking about it at the time, its probably where I got the idea...

The average length of time a species exist for is about two to three million years; so in a hundred million years we are likely to have changed very much.

However I can only repeat what has been said before; for all intents and purposes human evolution has finished. Genetic engineering will now take centre stage, and unless humanity loses its civilisation through a mishap we will never know what humanity will evolve into.

Particularly with respect to the Moon, Mars, and other locations in space; humans are likely to require some degree of genetic modification to live anywhere except Earth; and that will affect future evolution profoundly.

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One question to ask yourself is if you wish to partake in the new technological evolution. I certainly do.

Using tools and technology, I can travel at 120km/h for hours on end (in my car). I can survive a bullet shot (with a vest). I can even see at 20/20 (with laser surgery).

I can calculate large sums almost instantly (with a calculator). Etc.

The simple truth is that biological evolution has too slow a time-frame compared to technological.

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Live long enough to see Space!

We can get to space as a species. The above link is information about life-extension (living longer) so that you can personally see a space-based civilization.

The MPrize (a prize to encourage life extension research now contains over 3 million dollars.

I agree with eburacum45 that generic engineering is the new evolution. There is little selection pressure on each generation now that we don't need to compete for mates on a purely physical basis.

Evolution is based on a mutation improving the chances the an organism can transfer genes to the next generation. The longer you live, the more time you have to produce offspring. The more attractive you are to the opposite sex, the more likely it is that you will produce offspring. But these attributes are swamped by the other distractions of modern life. I think there are many more factors these days that determine the number of children, compared with our ancestors.

Genetic engineering can produce effects far faster than evolution and with more ability to control the effects that are produced. But it also generates huge ethical and moral questions. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should.

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Spike
:)

Alright, suppose we do genetically evolve ourselves, what would we evolve ourselves into? Or better yet, what would you evolve yourselves into? I dont know about you guys, but if everyone has the same abilities... I think that takes the "uniqueness" and "novelty" of it away.

It would not be adviseable to overspecialise, or to bind a specialised race f humanity into too tight a genetic range; so yes, there must still be a range of abilities among the engineered races.
Some ideas here...
http://www.orionsarm.com/clades/index.html

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