Evolution is something that is a constant; without the ever changing of species over time and different genes adapting and taking over, the word Evolution would lose its entire meaning. Humans especially have evolved much in the recent years, for good and for worse. On one hand, the continuing boom of our technology as it grows makes humans more efficient overall in our everyday lives, allowing us to get more things done in a day, but can have serious negative consequences on our Earth and on future generations of people; who knows what adaptations and mutations that may bring. People may think humans are done evolving and are at their peak, but is sometimes hard to spot as mutations and adaptations in people can take years and happen gradually.
The changes we see in modern day are in my own opinion, more culturally and behavioral more than anything, as there is no major biological changes that we have adapted to in the recent years that help with our bodily functioning. For example, the mechanism of coughing and feeling pain are things that humans have adopted and can not live without. Without these specific things, our species may have been extinct by now, as they help with detecting and defending illnesses.
One way in which humans have evolved in the modern day in terms of culture is the influence of religion. The idea and mix of religions in the world and the ideologies may have separated humankind in some ways. Some think in the more traditional ways in which it is sacred to stay in a certain type of bloodline, marry a certain type of person to have kids with, where one should live among other restricting things. These principles integrated in some cultures have stopped the idea of gene flow among our world population. There is many untapped possibilities of adaptations and genetics that could be produced that are stopped because of some cultural norms… and that could be a good thing. Sometimes the idea of mixing anyone and everyone could bring on more diseases and illnesses and make them easier to spread, both in life and genetically.
Another aspect of ways humans evolve today is again tied to our ever growing technology; the ability to modify our genes. Years ago, our genes were something that everyone had to accept…we would pass on those genes and natural selection would take over when unfavorable genes did not sustain the environment and species would naturally fizzle out and go extinct. Now, in the modern world there is ways to change those undesirable (or make those desirable genes appear)… in some ways. The use of the CRISPR-cas9 allows scientists to change the undesirable sequences with new ones, and that could bring both good and chaos. Speaking ethically, it could ruin the society as a whole as newer and better genes evolve, the idea of a human could completely change in hundreds of years.. it could actually change our species as a whole. On the other hand, species are meant to evolve anyway and this is only a way of speeding up the process and allowing us to choose what we feel are the most desirable traits when thinking about how we want out human race to evolve. It is a tough prompt and definitely one to think about but is why I value the discussion of evolution so much. I now know after taking this course and evaluating lectures and readings that talking about evolution is the first step to changing it.
Hello,
I agree that in our society we are changing more culturally and behaviorally than biologically. We have not seen any major biological changes in quite a few years. I did not consider religion and i think this is very insightful of you to consider that. This has a very interesting effect on a few different aspects of our culture such as crime rates. If people believe that murder and assault is a sin, crime rates could be lower in very religious areas. I agree that gene flow could be stopped by narrow minded people not wanting to mix certain cultures with their own. I also mentioned technology in my blog post. This has effected our daily lives so much in the last few decades.
Thank you!
This class was very interesting to me as well. I also think that modern technology is a big cause of human evolution. I haven’t thought much of the vaccines and antibiotics when I think about the technology, I have mainly been thinking about computers etc. But this is a great example of the evolution humans have gone through. It is great to know that we can combat diseases because of the advancements people have made. When looking at the lifespan of earlier humans you can see that what we are doing is working. When I was writing my blog post, I mainly focused in on the technological aspect, but to look at how we are progressing medically is a very important idea. Over all I learned a lot from this class.