What will the next evolution of humans be

Questions should be scientific enquiries about everyday phenomena, and both questions and answers should be concise. We reserve the right to edit items for clarity and style. Please include a postal address, daytime telephone number and email address. New Scientist Ltd retains total editorial control over the published content and reserves all rights to reuse question and answer material that has been submitted by readers in any medium or in any format. Francis Blake London, UK In order for there to be a genuinely separate species of human — one that could no longer successfully interbreed with Homo sapiens , which is a key definition of a separate species — two conditions would need to be met.

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Back to top. Areas of light skin colour are reproducing at lower rates. Therefore, Hodgson predicts, skin colour from a global perspective will get darker. And what about space? If humans do end up colonising Mars, what would we evolve to look like? With lower gravity, the muscles of our bodies could change structure. Perhaps we will have longer arms and legs.

In a colder, Ice-Age type climate, could we even become even chubbier, with insulating body hair, like our Neanderthal relatives? Worldwide there are roughly two new mutations for every one of the 3. Which is pretty amazing - and makes it unlikely we will look the same in a million years. He highlighted sexual selection through mate choice as one key driver. Miller added that artificial selection using genetic technologies will likely accentuate these changes in the future.

So I think there will actually be a leveling effect, where both the poor and the rich are going to be able to have the best kids they can genetically. A philosophy known as transhumanism sees humans taking charge of their evolution and transcending their biological limitations via technology. In essence, the old-fashioned evolution of On the Origin of Species may be beside the point: The future may belong to unnatural selection.

Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, said Darwinian evolution "is happening on a very slow time scale now relative to other things that are leading to changes in the human condition"—cloning, genetic enhancement, robotics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology, for starters. Transhumanism raises a spectacular array of possibilities, from supersoldiers and new breeds of athletes to immortal beings who, having had their brains scanned atom by atom, transfer their minds to computers.

In addition to living forever, "uploaded" beings would be able to "travel at the speed of light as an information pattern," download themselves into robots for the occasional stroll through the real world, think faster when running on advanced operating systems, and cut their food budget down to zero, Bostrom imagines in his paper "The Transhumanist FAQ. Whereas the current human generational cycle takes some 20 years, a digitalized individual could replicate themselves in seconds or minutes, Bostrom said.

Despite up to 30, years of partial isolation among populations in places such as Australia and Papua New Guinea, human speciation did not occur, he noted.

But if, in the far distant future, habitable planets beyond our solar system were colonized by Earth migrants, that could provide the necessary isolation for new human species to evolve.

But, he added, "if you think about it, a small group of people went on a one-way voyage to [the Americas] 14, years ago, and then when new people [Europeans] showed up years ago, they were still the same species.

All rights reserved. Of course copying yourself isn't without complications, Bostrom acknowledges. Who is married to your spouse? Share Tweet Email. Why it's so hard to treat pain in infants.