Spring Break
Modern life's pressures may be hastening human evolution
Robert S. Boyd-MCT Campus
Issue date: 4/17/09 Section: News
WASHINGTON -We're not finished yet.
Even today, scientists say that human beings are continuing to evolve as our genes respond to rapid changes in the world around us.
In fact, the pressures of modern life may be speeding up the pace of human evolution, some anthropologists think.
Their view contradicts the widespread 20th-century assumption that modern medical practice, antibiotics, better diet and other advances would protect people from the perils and stresses that drive evolutionary change.
Nowadays, the idea that "human evolution is a continuing process is widely accepted among anthropologists," said Robert Wald Sussman, the editor of the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.
It's even conceivable, he said, that our genes eventually will change enough to create an entirely new human species, one no longer able to breed with our own species, Homo sapiens.
"Someday in the far distant future, enough genetic changes might have occurred so that future populations could not interbreed with the current one," Sussman said in an e-mail message.
The still-controversial concept of "ongoing evolution" was much discussed recently at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago.
It's also the topic of a new book, "The 10,000 Year Explosion," by anthropologists Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
"For most of the last century, the received wisdom in the social sciences has been that human evolution stopped a long time ago," Harpending said. "Clearly, received wisdom is wrong, and human evolution has continued."
In their book, the Utah anthropologists contend "human evolution has accelerated in the past 10,000 years, rather than slowing or stopping. ... The pace has been so rapid that humans have changed significantly in body and mind over recorded history."
Evolutionary changes result when random mutations or damage to DNA from such factors as radiation, smoking or toxic chemicals create new varieties of genes. Some gene changes are harmful, most have no effect and a few provide advantages that are passed on to future generations. If they're particularly beneficial, they spread throughout the population.
Even today, scientists say that human beings are continuing to evolve as our genes respond to rapid changes in the world around us.
In fact, the pressures of modern life may be speeding up the pace of human evolution, some anthropologists think.
Their view contradicts the widespread 20th-century assumption that modern medical practice, antibiotics, better diet and other advances would protect people from the perils and stresses that drive evolutionary change.
Nowadays, the idea that "human evolution is a continuing process is widely accepted among anthropologists," said Robert Wald Sussman, the editor of the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.
It's even conceivable, he said, that our genes eventually will change enough to create an entirely new human species, one no longer able to breed with our own species, Homo sapiens.
"Someday in the far distant future, enough genetic changes might have occurred so that future populations could not interbreed with the current one," Sussman said in an e-mail message.
The still-controversial concept of "ongoing evolution" was much discussed recently at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago.
It's also the topic of a new book, "The 10,000 Year Explosion," by anthropologists Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
"For most of the last century, the received wisdom in the social sciences has been that human evolution stopped a long time ago," Harpending said. "Clearly, received wisdom is wrong, and human evolution has continued."
In their book, the Utah anthropologists contend "human evolution has accelerated in the past 10,000 years, rather than slowing or stopping. ... The pace has been so rapid that humans have changed significantly in body and mind over recorded history."
Evolutionary changes result when random mutations or damage to DNA from such factors as radiation, smoking or toxic chemicals create new varieties of genes. Some gene changes are harmful, most have no effect and a few provide advantages that are passed on to future generations. If they're particularly beneficial, they spread throughout the population.
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