Are We Still Evolving Research Paper
ARE WE STILL EVOLVING?
Are We Still Evolving?
Kenneth Posley
ITT-Technical Institute
Are We Still Evolving?
The answer to the question at hand is some-what debatable among certain communities and also a bit perplexing to the general population. Undoubtedly we are, with the world’s population at 7 billion people we are apparently evolving because we are still reproducing and at an alarming rate. But something incredibly weird has happened to human evolution. Only 0.1% of the human genome exhibits variation, in other words we are 99.9% genetically identical. Compare any two humans, and they are vastly more similar genetically than, say, a Western and Central African Chimpanzee.
Between 8,500 and 2,500 years ago, humans started behaving differently. Many were abandoning their hunter-gatherer way of life for a more sedentary one in which they had fixed homes and …show more content…
Here I would like to introduce the concept of the "Extended Phenotype", a beautiful concept developed by Richard Dawkins. A phenotype is an observable trait of an organism. So his red hair, your height, or her freckles are all examples of a phenotype. But not only are gene characteristics a phonotype but incidentally the environment we live in. Just as much as a bee 's hive, or a beaver 's dam is an extended phenotype, so too is human society, built by and lived in by humans.
So in conclusion we are on a very fascinating and also incredibly worrying loop in the course of our own evolution. As our extended phenotypes become come ever more complex, it extensively defines the environment we live in So much so we are now being subjected to the selective pressures we ourselves have created. As more and more human generations are born, the very fabric of our nature weakens. We have hyper-dependent on our environment, which can spell disaster.
So what future is in store for our
Are We Still Evolving?
Kenneth Posley
ITT-Technical Institute
Are We Still Evolving?
The answer to the question at hand is some-what debatable among certain communities and also a bit perplexing to the general population. Undoubtedly we are, with the world’s population at 7 billion people we are apparently evolving because we are still reproducing and at an alarming rate. But something incredibly weird has happened to human evolution. Only 0.1% of the human genome exhibits variation, in other words we are 99.9% genetically identical. Compare any two humans, and they are vastly more similar genetically than, say, a Western and Central African Chimpanzee.
Between 8,500 and 2,500 years ago, humans started behaving differently. Many were abandoning their hunter-gatherer way of life for a more sedentary one in which they had fixed homes and …show more content…
Here I would like to introduce the concept of the "Extended Phenotype", a beautiful concept developed by Richard Dawkins. A phenotype is an observable trait of an organism. So his red hair, your height, or her freckles are all examples of a phenotype. But not only are gene characteristics a phonotype but incidentally the environment we live in. Just as much as a bee 's hive, or a beaver 's dam is an extended phenotype, so too is human society, built by and lived in by humans.
So in conclusion we are on a very fascinating and also incredibly worrying loop in the course of our own evolution. As our extended phenotypes become come ever more complex, it extensively defines the environment we live in So much so we are now being subjected to the selective pressures we ourselves have created. As more and more human generations are born, the very fabric of our nature weakens. We have hyper-dependent on our environment, which can spell disaster.
So what future is in store for our