by Simon Wright

Created on: December 30, 2009

Predicting evolution for any species is a difficult task as it will depend significantly upon the environment in which the species finds itself inhabiting. To put this into perspective, the future physical characteristics and mental capacity of humans might differ greatly depending on whether the planet remains in its current climatic balance or enters another ice age. Under one scenario, life should continue to be comfortable for us as the planet’s alpha predator, whereas the ice age scenario could see us facing a fight to avoid extinction. Evolution will continue one way or the other but it might be the difference between us choosing our evolutionary path or having it chosen for us.

Benign environment – we choose our evolution:

Assuming that our planet remains hospitable to homo sapiens, and that we don’t annihilate ourselves in a nuclear war, then we will almost certainly continue to occupy the position of species dominance. In this setting, we might expect micro evolution to continue through the process of natural selection. As an example of natural selection, women have traditionally chosen males who are taller than them and, over many centuries, this has resulted in humans becoming taller.

As well as becoming taller, humans have become less hairy, less muscular, and have developed bigger brains. Given favorable environmental conditions, we might expect a continuation in these trends but with one significant alteration, namely the fact that technology is likely to play a bigger role in the process of having babies and passing on our genes.

Whilst currently raising important ethical debate, we now have the technical capability to choose a baby’s characteristics in a lab rather than leaving the whole birth thing to random chance. History has shown that once a technical capability exists, it will eventually be utilized so it is probably only a matter of time before parents choose the characteristics that they wish for their children. This might include the absence of health risk factors, so we might see life-spans take another upward turn. There may also be a reduction in diversity as all parents ask for tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed healthy babies. However, any such reduction in diversity might have long-term negative consequences for our species; for example making us more susceptible to the ravages of a particular disease.

Volatile environment – survival of the fittest:

We live in an age when there is great debate on the

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