In this week’s lecture, it was said that humans never stop changing. This relates to the ongoing evolution and evolutionary processes that change our biological, behavioral, environmental, and cultural traits. Evolution is a process that never stops and can take millions of years to show its effects. However, scientists today are able to look at things like gene flow, natural selection, and mutations to confirm and predict how we are evolving and will continue to in the future.
One biological trait that can be used to examine evolution today is the fact that we are losing our wisdom teeth. Our ancestors used to have much bigger jaws that would help them consume their diet of roots, leaves, and nuts. This led to the wearing down of their teeth which needed to be replaced. Therefore, wisdom teeth, which are a third set of molars, was the genetically advantageous solution. Today we have much smaller jaws, different diet, and utensils which make wisdom teeth not only not needed but also can cause complications when they come in. It is believed that a third of the population is now born without wisdom teeth and some predict that they may disappear altogether.
More evidence that confirms modern day evolution is malaria causing the trait for sickle cell anemia to be advantageous in some cases. Sickle cell disease is caused by a mutation in the gene that has to do with hemoglobin in the blood. It is a recessive disease which means for one to have it both their parents must also have it or be carriers. Carriers often do not suffer the negative effects of the mutation and have actually been found to be resistant to malaria. This has led for high levels of sickle cell disease in parts of the world that has problems with malaria. This fact shows that humans are still evolving in response to their environment.
I find it very interesting that not only can we identify traits and their history to give insight into how we are today, but we can predict how these traits are going to evolve in the future. With new technologies that make it possible to select for certain traits in off spring or change our genetic makeup I would be curious to see how this effects evolution and our predictions. It is not just our own bodies genetic modifications, but also the way we genetically modify food and how that can have long term effects on our bodies. We are not only effecting our own evolution but the evolution of other species around us, especially farm animals. We are at a point in time where we have a lot more control of our evolution and its effects on culture, behavior, and the environment.
Hey there,
The thing that I appreciate about your blog post the most was that you managed to prompt me with another question along with answering the prompt for this week. Something I didn’t really consider was how much evolution/ human development could be shaped, guided, changed, by humans directly. The fact that we are much more advanced than any previous generation, means that our growth is going to continue even beyond the level we are now. Due to this fact and the fact that we have been studying and handling ourselves biologically for many years now, I think the next stage of evolution may be quite natural, but with a human hand that could somehow guide it forward. Which is something that I don’t think we’ve really seen before.
I think the idea of being able to identify the history of traits and predict how they will continue to adapt is a really cool concept. I think we have been able to not only learn so much about how we became how we are today but studying our ancestors but also have gained a lot of insight into how we will continue to change and evolve in our own near future. I like that you mentioned how we have a lot more control over our own evolution now more than we ever did and I think knowing how traits change will offer us the knowledge on how to benefit our species going forward. Hence why we tend to remove wisdom teeth because we no longer have a purpose for them like we did in the past. It makes me wonder what else we have currently from our ancestors that we no longer will need because of new advancements or the drastic different lifestyle we live now compared to then.
Hi Devonshire, I enjoyed reading your blog post and learned a great deal and felt like I could relate to a lot of it. I liked the interesting perspective you brought in about wisdom teeth and think it is a good strong example of us losing a body part that we no longer need. It is interesting to see how our bodies adapt to evolution and a changing diet over time and this is a good way to look at it. I also think it is very important to address the biological differences to understand how we’ve changed over time. I also think your example about sickle cell anemia and how we have evolved in reaction to it is very important to look at as well. Our resistance to disease and biological factors are very important in figuring out our human evolution.
Hi, After reading you post, I got inspired to do more research on the traits that are leaving evolving with us, and some that were useful in prehistoric times, but have limited usage in modern human lifestyle. The common known traits that are limited modern human’s health and have grown in popularity, are lactose and gluten related traits and genes. Lactose free and gluten free are commonly known biological evolving traits, that majority affects the gastrointestinal tract, reason beginning some of population doesn’t have an enzyme that can aid in digestion of specific sugar called lactose commonly present in dairy products and is comparable to the gluten defect in more and more humans. I liked that you didn’t describes commonly known trait and bought some new ones into the discussion. Good Post!