Is human evolution at an end?

I want to ask you guys if you think that our self-aware intervention has put the brakes on physcial biological evolution? I mean, if you and I (in the western world) don't have any food in the immediate area, we no longer just roll over and die, there are non-evolutionary means to acquire it. If we need to climb a tree, we work together to build a ladder, not hang about for natural selection ot take its course. The contemporary debates on diseases like AIDS and cancer notwithstanding, do you think that we have reached a stage where serious physical alterations will not occur? I'm speaking broadly in the sense that we will perpetually remain 4-limbed, 10 fingered, 2-eyed, upright bi-pedal and humanoid- like, who will eventually synthesise cures for such diseases, which aren't really at extinction level anyway. Or do you think that we will continue evolve drastically between now and several thousand generations in the same way that we did over the previous millenia?

Some nice answers guys, thanks, expecially Louise and Tyler. As an aside, the whole 10% of our brains is not really true, at least the most recent studies would suggest otherwise. Sight and depth perception alone require an appreceable portion of our brain just to function properly, far more than 10%, and that doesn't take into account the countless other things the brain has to do simultaneously.

There's little doubt that humans have seriously stunted their evolutionary growth. As you said, because we don't just "roll over and die," detrimental genes aren't being eliminated from the population like they were at one time in our evolutionary past. In fact, much of our system of medicine works to keep detrimental genes in the gene pool.

On the flip side, though, while we aren't necessarily evolving like we once did, our genetic variation is exploding. Thanks to a combination of medical technology and healthcare, better nutrition, better living conditions, and a global population that is now free to interbreed due to revolutions in transportation and communication, human genetic variation is at a high, and is only going to grow higher.

In the event of some catastrophic occurrence, this variation is likely to ensure that quite a few humans will survive and repopulate. Indeed, the variation might be so great, that the new human population might be virtually indistinguishable from the original population as time progresses.

You're probably quite right in what our future selves will look like, though. Four limbs, ten fingers, two eyes, bipedal. Any changes we do accrue due to our genes probably won't be too exciting. Our appearance will probably be much more drastically altered by culture and technology instead.

evolution ends when a species ends

we're still here so no!!!

Ask me again in 1 million years!

well said.

Not in a physical sense but our organs/immune systems will have to update!

who knows? It could go on forever, when climate change comes about, I'm sure we will have to adapt to that, if we survive!

we are
therefore we are evolving

The answer to your ? is no.

no,

it depends on the choice of who you have children.

Yes, it's pretty much done as far as refining the design. In fact we'll be taking more steps backwards instead of forwards form now on. The weak and diseased are no longer left to die in appreciable numbers, so the capable survivors do not only bread with each other. The only thing left is further mixing of the races (diluting specialized features) and genetic engineering when it matures.

Since we only use 10% of our brains i would guess there is more evolving to come.

VirginSpace has commercial flights to space. After we eventually explore space more anything is possible.

I believe that human race is still evolving. I have seen over many years, how young people seem to be much bigger in height and weight.

lol watch out you'll get all the 'believers'on your case about us evolving further into little people who have rubbish bodies but huge brains!!

Joking aside, i think that the earth is going to take care of all that for us. I hope it doesn't happen, but i think that eventually we will get wiped out by some huge ice age or other drastic climate change that we physically won't be able to do anything about. Things like earthquakes, tornados, volcanos, tsunamis, and to a greater extent, ice ages etc are just completely out of human's control, we can't as yet manipulate the earth to guard against natural disasters.

Either that or Skynet is gonna give us the solution in a few years time... lol

i think we are continuing to evolve as our bodies need to adapt to our poor, high fat, high sugar, high salt diets (well some of us a least) and our changing world, i.e. the possible ice age and rising water thats coming our way. also in time i'm sure that the differences between races will become blurred and we'll all be a lovely light brown colour :)

I heard that the bicycle has put an end to evolution, for us in terms of running. We may go on foot for anything up to about four or 5 miles, any further and we tend to cycle it. The same article said we would wither and atrophy, as we spend all day at keyboards (true!) but this would lengthen our little fingers!

No,
the time frame in human evolution you are specifying is a very short one in comparison to space of the last 50000000 years.... our genetics are always changing with each generation born, and I do agree with a pp which mentioned the fact of the brain capacity we have not being used to it's full potential... however I also question that as we have more "things" to think for us the less thinking we do therefore are in the process of reducing our brain capacities...
We haven't stopped our hunter gatherer lifestyles - we just approach them differently - men feel the need for regular battle so routinely love football, women need to gather so shop a mass generalisation and not everyone loves shopping/football nor is it limited to gender... so are we talking adaption or genetics OR our genetic capabilities to adapt quickly for survival???
so no we haven't stopped evolving - just the last 150 yrs have been a massive time of technological advancement so we've had to adapt - our bodies won't catch up tot he change for years to come so keep hunting/fishing/making whoopie - it's our genetic heritage ;)

The earth is about to shed us like the scab that we are,that's what the global warming is about:

Adaptation may not be along physical appearance lines. I imagine that anyone with an innate resistance to radiation-induced cancers will have a survival advantage. This may then spread in our gene pool. This is also an adaptation.
Remember, also, that most people on Earth still are at risk of dying from preventable diseases, for which only adaptation provides resistance, such as malaria and tuberculosis.
I don't think that we will ever lose the four limbed version of ourselves. This has been around since well before the dinosaurs, I don't think it will change before we become extinct.

.

well natural selection choses the best suited genes for the environment and the rest dies. But in modern world, we have made the world adapt to us instead of the other way round,so what could be the natural selection pressure that choses the better genes? Perhaps some epidemics would wipe out a certain population, but with advances in technology a cure may be found even b4 that happened. i think in terms of physical appearance humans would look similar in the years to come. Perhaps selection goes to things like immunity to diseases, better brains etc. Anyway humans with 11 fingers or etc are rare n the chances of getting wiped out by any selection pressure does not seem to increase (nor decrease).

But at the end of the day, all living species may be wiped out by the increasing temperature due to human pollution instead of the natural forces of selection.

well, everyone is diff, so technally no.

Darwin called it the struggle for existence, later survival of the fittest - all of us are single individuals involved in this pursuit and we continue to struggle and suffer from varying levels of fitness in spite of anything our technology or culture can deliver.

Evolution is unavoidable, it occurs with each new generation; being a member of the human species won't get you out of anything. Just consider, a human female is born with 1 to 2 million eggs; this is where the struggle for existence begins. At puberty, only around 400,000 eggs remain - the result of biological fitness and luck. Throughout her reproductive life span, a woman loses about 1,000 eggs each month. Of these thousand eggs, only one is released and most of these are never fertilized - fitness and luck.

Of the human eggs that are fertilized, miscarriage and spontaneous abortion take 25%, up to 75% if the mother is middle-aged (poor fitness again). Of the babies that are born worldwide, 18% die from pre-term delivery and asphyxia at birth. For the survivors, almost 6 million under the age of 5 die every year from pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria. Before reaching sexuial maturity, children must then survive exposure to dozens of other every-day pathogens and occasional epidemics. Not only are humans fairly poor breeders but the congenitally unfit are quickly weeded-out. For the survivors, genetic disease resistance is vital. Infectious disease has taken more human life than all armed conflicts combined.

And then the healthy survivors, now grown up and at the grocery store, look around and say - I don't see any struggle for existence - we don't seem to be evolving at all.

Evolution is a change in gene frequency in a population over time. This is easily measurable from one generation to the next. What you're talking about - a change to 4-limbed, 10 fingered, 2-eyed, upright bi-pedal and humanoid - is speciation. If the human species went through any such radical shift in body plan, they would no longer be human. But something like this is almost impossible to contemplate, there's just no longer room on earth for our species to rapidly evolve, and something really radical would take hundreds of millions of years with extreme environmental pressures - extinction-level stuff.

It's the environment that drives it all, not our technology, when the environment shifts from good to bad, to really bad in spite of everything we do (or because of what we've done), then you'll see some serious struggling-for-existence and people will no longer ask is human evolution at an end.