Evolution is the process of how living organisms have changed over time. The theory of evolution is now widely regarded as fact thanks to the work of Charles Darwin who showed how different species diversified based on their needs. There is evidence of evolution all around us in nature. The giraffe is an incredible example as to eat from the tallest trees he needed a larger neck. As different giraffes mated overtime those with the longest necks were able to provide better for the family and so were more successful. Overtime those with larger necks had babies with even longer necks. This is the process of evolution.
Experts argue that the tailbone is a perfect example of human evolution. While we have a bone at the stem of our back that likely once was used for a tail, we no longer have a tail. We have evolved from animals that used to use a tail to swing from trees and to balance but we no longer need a tail in modern society. Some have looked at this and posed questions about our future. In the strange specialized sedentary lifestyle we now live – how will humans evolve?
It is a fair question to ask. When humans were hunter-gatherers we evolved to have incredible endurance, to be athletic, and to survive in the wild. While many of us may like a jog in the park on a Sunday it is not really a survival need. This means that we may slowly lose our ability to run long distances over time (a lot of time). Humans will likely get fatter as they become more sedentary, our eyesight may adapt to become better at looking at screens.
It will likely take a million years to take place and will entirely depend on how our lives change over that time. As we will depend on technology it may not even matter anymore. Technology may replace the randomness of biology and people may start to choose what their babies will look like when they grow up. Imagine being able to alter the DNA of your child to determine its height, eye color, and more in the future.
The other very likely scenario is that humans may go to space. If in a million years the Earth is destroyed and the entire human population lives on Mars, it will likely look very different. If humans were to colonize on Mars the atmosphere would be very different. Experts say that we can start to judge how we would react based on how some animals changed when they ended up on different islands but this is not true. Animals accidentally went to an island with no preplanning. We would be the first species to move the planet and would likely build a system to make the change as easy as possible for us. Still, there would be something that would be different that we could not account for. While we could live in systems where the gravity was adjusted the different gravity on Mars would likely take its toll on humans overtime making our bones weaker and easier to break. This may make Mars humans have stronger bones over time compared to those on Earth – a little like how Superman is stronger than those on Earth too.
Whether we will get superpowers by going to Mars or simply get fatter because technology allows us to live a lazy life remains to be seen. Evolution is something that appears to take place slowly and surely over millions of years yet the exact way it operates is still a mystery to most.
