After taking this class as my second anthropology class, I have found myself learning so much about the evolution of humans and their behaviors. These past evolutions from these last two lectures I found especially interesting as this was information that I would not have learned without this class. But for the topic of how humans are currently evolving I believe that humans are still evolving are physically and culturally.
Physically, I believe that we are still seeing growth in humans on an average in height. While this could be an adaptation to our current climate changes, I believe this could be an example of selective breeding choices from females. As we learned about dimorphism, I believe this could be a result of women finding heighted men more attractive. In this infographic we see the growth of humans in just height over 100 years (https://ourworldindata.org/human-height). This growth overtime I feel is a clear example of how humans are evolving physically throughout just these 100 years. I am interesting into seeing how much humans will change by the time we are old. In addition to height and size of humans increase, more evidence of humans evolving physically is through the Olympics. We are constantly seeing world records broken and if humans weren’t evolving we wouldn’t see this trend occurring over the years.
Culturally, I believe that humans are evolving by absorbing other cultures to create these new mixed cultures. For example, in Korea, we see this wave of influence of English in their culture and in their language. They have adapted new words into their every day language. They have adapted these words so much that there was a video released by Asian Boss on YouTube asking Koreans on the street to describe words in Korean without using any English words (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_WPrTiKtAw). I find it interesting that many cultures are constantly adapting and modernizing to others. Additionally, we see a much more diverse culture being sponsored by education. As majority of the world is now learning English as a second language, many schools in English speaking countries also offer other languages as a second language. This adaptation of cultural traits are allowing us humans to be much more in touch with other cultures around the world.
Behaviorally, I believe humans are also evolving in a similar fashion. With the rise of the internet, we are starting to see major behavioral changes within our growing population. My volleyball club coach who is now 72 has always complained about how the new youth are obsessed with instant gratification. This instant gratification he talks about, he blames on technology being very instant and one can get anything at the click of the button. With the internet, I feel as though we also see a change in how we humans interact with one another. We are much less confrontational and don’t typically interact with people outside of our social media circle. I find it interesting in how behaviorally we change by not the genetic way of our DNA but an adaptation that we humans have made with this invention of the internet.
Hi, great blog post! I find the physical attributes that you chose really interesting, like height and especially how you linked it with female preferences of taller males. That isn’t something I had thought of as far as female preference on male traits. I’m also very interested in how humans will evolve over time, physically. I really enjoy how you said, “humans are evolving by absorbing other cultures to create these new mixed cultures.” It’s a great way to describe how culture is changing and evolving today. I agree with your coach about instant gratification and the relation to the internet. It is interesting to see how the behaviors change even across generations. I also strongly agree with your opinion on being less confrontational and the interactions that younger generations have with people outside of the internet and social media.
Hello, James! I agree with your opening paragraph about how this class has provided us so much more information than what we’ve learned before! I also enjoyed your example of how humans are still evolving (as we speak). Your take on men’s height is interesting to me because I never thought about it like that. It does seem that generations are getting taller and taller now and it could totally be due to the fact that women are more interested in reproducing with tall men! I like that you included the link to that video of the man on the Korean streets. It’s so interesting that other cultures are adapting the English language so much considering language has always been such a barrier between cultural groups.
Hey James! Awesome work on this week’s blog post. I also chose to cover how humans are evolving though a cultural lens but decided not to cover how we are physically evolving. First Di say you did a great job describing the questions that come up when it comes to modern day evolution physically. You brought up dating and the constant breaking of Olympic world records as evidence of evolution and I thought those were interesting examples and shows some out of the box thinking. I would push back a bit and say that evolution may be occurring on a longer timeline than you say but the examples were interesting none the less. I think you made great points about the mixing of culture sin the modern day along with the impact of the internet on how we interact with one another. Great job and I hope you enjoyed the course as much as I did.
Hi James! Your post was very interesting and relatable. You talked about how increase in average human height could be an adaptation to climate change. I believe climate change has led to many adaptations in humans. We learned earlier that early humans were able to adapt to the climate and survive, while other species died. We also see adaptation in modern humans. For instance, eskimos have short tibia so that they can survive in the extreme cold environment. While in warmer climates, organisms have long legs. Long legs are an adaptation to the warm environment. So, humans are able to adapt and evolve. This increases our chances of survival as compared to other organisms. You also talked about cultural adaptation in new generation of modern humans. I also believe that we have changed the way of communication. We communicated through texting and social media even when we are living in the same house.
Hey James!
I agree that I got so much interest about the study of anthropology after taking this second anthropology class. I really like how you found the infographic of the growth of humans in just height over 100 years, and I think this clearly represent the evolution of modern humans. I think the change might be influenced from the nutrition we deserve today are way better than ever. The cultural aspect of evolution you mentioned was extremely interesting to me, and, as a Korean, I am going to have to agree on that. English linguistic influence is pretty big in Korea and spend a lot of money and resources like you said, but we are still very behind in the English speaking ability among OECD countries unfortunately even though kids now in Korea are having totally different opportunities like English kindergarten. Hope it gets better in next decades.
Great Post!
your mentioning of how the internet has effected us reminded me of my own experience with reading! As a child, I read so many books eery year, but now, I barely even finish any books I start if I start a book. I think this is casued by that instant gratification found on the internet, especially on twitter and facebook. Their post are so short, and succinct, and provide that little rush of satisfaction, that it makes less sense to read a long book. Also, I have the urge to look at m phone because of that possibility of satisfaction latent in me unlocking my phone – it is like a lotto ticket. This actually seems to be our culture involving in a way that is in accord with parts of our psychology that were beneficial in a previous setting; in this culture, now though, we find ourselves thrown into the drive for dopamine with an infinite of sources of it which have little actual benefit on most metrics.