By Ross Pomeroy
Everything around us seems to be changing at breakneck speed. Twenty years ago, smartphones were niche products. Twenty years before that, computers were clunky behemoths. Forty years before that, far more Americans traveled by train than by plane. Forty years before that, cars were just starting to supplant horses.
Over the past couple millennia, a mere blip of Earth’s history, humans have manifestly reshaped the planet – from the physical to the biological. The ground, the oceans, the air, the flora, the fauna – nothing is as it was. And yet, despite this radical transformation, it can seem like we ourselves haven’t changed much at all…
But that’s an illusion.
“Humans are still evolving,” Dr. Scott Solomon, an Associate Teaching Professor at Rice University specializing in ecology, evolutionary biology, and scientific communication, wrote in his forthcoming book Becoming Martian: How Living in Space Will Change Our Bodies and Minds.
Sure, over the last 10,000 or so years, our physical alterations have been relatively muted compared to the changes seen in society and on our planet. Essentially, we’ve shrunk a bit, and our jaws have weakened. But even a little change is still change, and it begs a question: “In the far-flung future, what will happen to us, evolutionarily speaking?”
It’s a question that Solomon considered in his 2016 book, Future Humans: Inside the Science of Our Continuing Evolution. He surmised that our ultimate evolutionary fate could follow one of three basic trajectories.
The first is a standstill – our species will remain roughly as it currently is. But Solomon thinks this is unlikely.
“So far, in the 3.7-billion-year history of life on Earth this has not happened to a single species… All species change, some faster than others, but there is no species alive today that has not undergone changes throughout its existence.”
Our second possible fate is extinction. Though the chances of this may seem remote to our brains biased to optimism, the odds are far higher than any of us would like to admit. Extinction, after all, is the norm on Earth – 99 percent of all the species that have ever lived ultimately died out.
“There are an uncomfortably high number of plausible ways this could happen,” Solomon wrote, “including another giant asteroid impact, a super-volcano eruption, nuclear war, catastrophic climate change, the spread of a devastating pandemic, or our sun exploding in a supernova.”
The third possible fate for humanity, which Solomon explored in depth in Becoming Martian, is that at least part of humanity will evolve into a different species. A decade ago, Solomon deemed this path improbable. Humans today are so interconnected that no population could be siloed enough to speciate.
But now, he thinks the chances have risen considerably. Why? Because the world’s richest men are plowing their hefty fortunes into making humans interplanetary. What once seemed science fiction is growing closer to reality with the launch of every large rocket. If a group of humans could colonize another world – Mars, for example – and cease to breed with Earthlings altogether, it may take only ten generations before they grow genetically distinct enough to no longer be considered humans, but rather Martians.
“If we do manage to spread out and survive on planets scattered across our solar system and others, we should expect to evolve, adapt, and speciate everywhere we go,” Solomon wrote.
Like the cornucopia of different creatures inhabiting Charles Darwin’s beloved Galapagos Islands, humans dwelling on different bodies within the solar system could similarly evolve “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful.”
This article was originally published by RealClearScience and made available via RealClearWire.
Given declining birth rates, might extinction be a more logical pathway?
That’s assuming a linear trend. The more likely possibility is that birth rates have fallen in response to overcrowding. Populations will shrink and stabilise at a lower level before rising again.
Overcrowding would play some role but it’s probably minor compared to other, mainly economic and cultural, factors.
For example, the most populist nation with severe overcrowding in major cities and regions is India, and its population is still increasing. The same could be said for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
At the other end of the scale, Italy is an example of a country that is not overcrowded and like most western countries, it’s population is in decline.
India’s birthrate is already below replacement level.
The population density of India is 497 persons per sq km, which is less than the Netherlands (548). Do you consider the Netherlands “severely overcrowded”? What about Malta (1716 persons per sq km)? Singapore (7227)?
How about Monaco, where the population density is 19,044 persons per sq km and there are exactly 2 sq km of land in the country? Monaco has ZERO arable land, unlike India. Its main industries are finance and banking.
What over crowding?
The overcrowding that everyone ignores because it’s politically inconvenient, or because they look at national average population density and assume it’s a meaningful assessment. England (as opposed to the entire UK) is one of the most densely populated territories on the planet, with the absolute majority of its population living in dense urban or fairly dense suburban environments. It has a similar population density to Japan and South Korea, with a similar – though less extreme – population distribution. It also has one of the lower native birth rates on the planet.
The places with the lowest birth rates are generally the most crowded. Cities are the most visible example of this effect; birthrates in cities are nearly non-existent. They almost universally maintain their population by constant immigration from outside.
The UK would have had a negative population growth since the 90s, if not for the constant importation of migrants from the third world. That constant importation is making the problem worse by artificially inducing more crowding on an already overcrowded island. Without it, the British population would have reduced at a relatively manageable rate and would likely have begun to stabilise some time from now to the mid century.
Message proposes “or because they look at national average population density and assume it’s a meaningful” is wrong but does not explain (well) why.
A good answer requires a definition of “overcrowding“.
How does Russia fit into your idea?
Define “overcrowding” and how you came to that definition.
It is likely that species “success” leads to regulation of the species’s expansion by limitations on natural resource utilization….a LINEAR correlation….Then add in disease, political unrest, competency at potentially destructive technologies, and a few other seemingly minor issues BUT that are inherently capable of EXPONENTIAL influence….et voila!….the seeds of extinction are inherent in any species expansion….and seems to be the case based on Earth’s few billion years…
Reply might not belong at DM’s comment. All commentary so far fails to define how evolution works – survival of the fittest for reproduction.Something inferior has to -not survive- in order for changes to be categorized as evolution. In present day human culture wealth and control of resources seems inversely proportional to reproduction rates. IF someone wants to call changes in human biology after about 1800 “evolution” then they need to carefully define what they mean by the word “evolution”. In human culture it is not a contest for survival of the fittest in any nation on earth.
Edit: I picked the number 1800 out of the air. Like 1.5C it just seemed like a convenient number.
What about evolving to the lowest common denominator, as documented in the movie “Idiocracy?” Reading some of the publications of the climate changinistas, I think we may already be there.
When I have to witness the climate activists in action…I’m reminded of the first few minutes of the film
“2001 – A Space Odyssey”…and wonder wherever the activists evolved from…
Those first few minutes blew my mind. Watched at a drive in theater- uh- “somewhat” under the influence. The cave men sitting in their cave on the African savanna as the dawn began- their eyes moving left and right. Totally freaked me out. Still my favorite film of all time. Then later, a caveman uses a club to smash a skull and throws it up in the air and it becomes a space bus bringing people to the mother ship. Almost every scene was mind blowing.
They weren’t really cavemen, they were early hominids. What we think of as cavemen are more like Neanderthals.
And they didn’t use a club, they used a bone as a club. One could call it the first use of tools, spurred on by the monolith.
Yes, you were under the influence. 🙂
Does a “club” need to be made of a specific material to be called a club?
And what about “club soda”? Yeah, what about that?
Don’t forget that Homo Sapiens are the latest in a long line of hominids, and the only surviving species following the extinction of Neanderthals and Denisovans amongst others, with whom H. Sapiens interbred.
The last option is imo the least probable one – by a billion miles for as many reasons .
Be it the impossible distances,
the astronomic costs,
the fact that noone with a brain and money would change a beach with hookers,ferraris,a yacht and pink champagne on ice for a life in a tin can.
And everything that awaits you after a journey of tens of years of darkness
that will drive you insane and that you won’t survive is a place 1000s times worse than earth,
as you can only move in a special suit and everything you need has to be manufactured on earth and transported.
Therefore option 4 is the answer and it is quite the opposite of Mr Solomons evolution.
Devolution – while evolution in space never happened and never will, devolution is the future,
when we reduce Mr Solomons transhumanistic approach, that also the elites are pushing,
to a more realistic scenario.
With comfort comes softness, with softness weakness.
We become weaker, slower, less agile, the more we distance ourselves from our original environment and become dependent to tech
and when we push this scenario further, we will get to a point where physical modification will become standard – and while some of those modifications and implants will make us overall stronger
our bodies will become weaker as the modifications will do most of the job.
Just as calculators and smartphones and now AI have dumbed down our brains
these modifications will weaken our bodies.
And as we have removed the darwinistic process from society there is no way to turn it around.
And things would only worsen in space.
A hostile, abnormal environment, lack of gravity that will decrease the density of the bones
– and those ships will be populated with people with traditionally low reproduction rates.
Space as absolutely abnormal habitat for life is the best way to make humanity go extinct.
Earth on the other hand.
Just seal the Gotthard tunnel.
A huge system with 280miles of pipe,
and you will have a huge storage place with enough uncontaminated air to breath to sit out any disaster.
But with such a simple and boring thing you can’t sell any books and make yourself look like a visionary.
So, you’re saying “No” to life in a tin can but, “Yes” to life in a concrete pipe?
Even a large pipe will have to accommodate a large number of people so, you’ll need to find a way to make that uncontaminated air. Otherwise, it will get used up pretty quickly. You’ll also need a lot of food and water. Waste disposal can be a problem in any closed environment. Seems like you’ll be faced with most of the same problems as space travel, except for gravity and radiation.
Even then, you’ll have issues that arise in captive populations; people tend to go a bit crazy. Remember what happened in Biosphere 2?
Better to just say “Que sera sera” and hope you’ve already died of old age by the time the end comes.
As an interested observer you should be aware of the difference between life in a tin can of a few cubic meters at -270 degrees C with extremely limited ressources and no way out,
compared to several square miles of a tube with a diameter of 15 meters with an estimated 10 degrees on average(=absolutely survivable without heating) that you can modify in size and enhance with massive outdoor windows + the huge comfort to leave it any time you want in hazmats suits or whatever .
( all the these things combined including outdoor vehicles and a dome that emulates the sky = outdoor feeling and a connected Biosphere 3 park with 30* the size of B2 will still cost a fraction of a fraction of the space trip – and you can go out and search for ressources in the cities and ruins).
And btw – this was a COMPARISON.
Therefore the number of people inside the pipe will be identical to the one on the space ship.
At a max of 1000 people(broken up into 4 zones in case of epidemics or emergencies,
You can store per meter probably 30 tons of food (water can be recycled or used from lower uncontaminated glacier or groundwater levels there) = 36.500 days of food per meter and person =
per kilometer you can store a 100 years of food for the 1000(if my math is correct) .
Add to this 10 meters for psychodrugs to keep the population calm and things should go well.
And a tiny edit to the evolutioniary stuff :
Evolution is to a certain degree relative, therefore it doesn’t really matter if some kind of devolution happens as long as perception, discipline and attitude don’t drop too much.
We’re already there. Remove modern-day tech, and we go back to the population levels of the early 1800’s. If we’re lucky.
A thousand generations of people who sit on couches will end with the same gene pool as a thousand generations of people trained for olympic marathons unless breeding is connected to skillful couch sitting or skillful marathoning.
If everyone reproduces based on other factors, then it does not matter whether they run or not. Maybe runners change faster than sitters because the training would expose their dna to more solar radiation.
With the type of sun we have, it won’t evolve to a supernova. It will probably sometime expand to a red giant and fry the inner planets including Earth a few billion years from now, and then end as a red dwarf.
And then a Human, hologram, android, and evolved cat will do what they do.
I’m taking many years to creep through that book.
… foretelling a real-estate boom around Uranus
[anatomical pun intended, as an aide-memoire]
During this phase, the moons of Jupiter will be habitable.
Being made of frozen gas, I think evaporation is more likely
Yep, “our sun exploding in a supernova” is one of two supposedly possible extinction causes he listed which we can certainly rule out. The other is “catastrophic climate change.”
While mile high glaciers should not end humanity since we’ve already survived it before it might end civilization as we know it. Personally I believe we’ll adapt our civilization but who knows. all those hockey playing Canucks just might invade the US and win so we’ll be eating at Tim Horton’s and saying Sorry. Not sure I quite call that civilization as we know it.
It will not end as a red dwarf. A red dwarf is a small star and it stays a small star until it burns out in a few trillion years.
After the red giant phase, our sun will shrink down to a white dwarf, which is little more than a very hot ball of carbon. No more fusion. When it cools enough to no longer glow, it will just be an extinct star.
The human race on Earth is on course to populate the universe with their robots. The robots will have the DNA of selected species including us to insure our existence. We aren’t going the way of the dodo birds.
The libturds that have been running the show in recent years are going to be left in the dust!
Pedantic but… that’s a “we” in the same way as our favorite sports team is “we”. The actual “we” will be dead and burred.
“There are an uncomfortably high number of plausible ways this could happen,” Solomon wrote, “including another giant asteroid impact, a super-volcano eruption, nuclear war, catastrophic climate change, the spread of a devastating pandemic, or our sun exploding in a supernova.”
Possibly, except for ‘catastrophic climate change’, as that makes no sense, as there is no singular Earth climate. Even if we use the Köppen climate classification or Holdridge life zone classification it is not possible to classify a single Earth climate. In addition humans live and thrive in all the 30 or so distinct climate regions with humidity ranging from completely Arid to very wet and temperatures ranging from -86C to +50 and we are also able to live under the sea and out in space. Our ancestors experience of climate change events were usually things like extended droughts or loss of summer sunshine due to volcanic events. In the last 200 years we have developed enormous amounts of knowledge and resilience allowing us to withstand large scale events related to shifting climates and weather patterns. Even a massive comet coming our way could be steered away. The super volcano may be the real challenge but perhaps we may find a way of venting volcanic pressure if we have to.
Most species that go extinct, go extinct by evolving into something else, not by just dying out.
It is not clear that our predecessor species went extinct. There are Denisovan genes in some of us and Neanderthal in most. Were they just adsorbed?
A few scientists think ETs are humans from the future. Googled this:
Well, so-called UFOs are beings, they’re objects that can’t be immediately identified. Masters takes a giant, illogical leap.
I meant to say “UFOs aren’t beings…”
And if any of these had a milligram of brain, they would understand that the practical difficulties of time travel make it almost completely impossible:
1. A moving Earth
2. A moving solar system
3. A moving galaxy.
4. A rotating Earth, causing massive momentum differences between times of day and geographical location.
Even if we could work out how to solve these (and I have figured out a potential way), the obvious problems of event paradoxes is not surmountable.
Gravity is the determining factor.
I believe humans will move out into space, where most of them will live in huge, rotating habitats whose rotation will supply the equivalent of one Earth gravity in the habitats.
I do think that if people were to live on Mars for generations, that they would adapt to that world, and that gravity.
But I think most space-based humans will live on large habitats that mimic the Earth. They will also evolve, but closer to the speed with which that happens on Earth.
In the distant future, there’s no telling what it’s going to look like, but I do think the human species will be there.
We need to get off this planet first. As you say, billionaires are paving the way.
Billionaire Jeff Bezos was a student of Gerard K. O’Neill at MIT, who advocated for the creation of large, human habitats in space. His student, Jeff, is turning his dreams into reality, or at least, is trying to do so.
Someday there will be billions of humans in space, imo.
“I do think that if people were to live on Mars for generations, that they would adapt to that world, and that gravity.”
Seems like that would only happen if natural selection actually took place; if those who could not cope died off, and those who showed the best ability passed along their genes. But you’d need a large breeding population for that, wouldn’t you?
You would need a large population and a lot of time.
i don’t put much thought into living on Mars because I never thought it was the future and living in an orbital habitat is much easier and healthier.
We could put an orbiting habitat around Mars. Maybe turn the moons of Mars into habitats.
There are lots of possibilities.
And when the Sun starts expanding, humans can move their habitats farther out in the Solar System.
Would love to see how things work out. I guess that’s too much to ask. 🙂
What matters is not surviving, it is breeding. Those who are the healthiest will usually have the best chance at breeding.
Yes to the JA comment! Giraffe necks don’t get long by evolutionary theory because the good leaves are higher. Giraffe necks don’t get long by evolutionary theory because the giraffes with short necks can’t reach the leaves – so they starve to death!
I suspect that the gravity level in spinning colonies will be closer to 2/3rds to 3/4ths Earth’s gravity.
“ it begs a question: “In the far-flung future, what will happen to us, evolutionarily speaking?””
Raises the question, not begs. The latter is a logical fallacy.
As to human evolution. I don’t think we are evolving. We change our environment to suit our needs (heating, air conditioning, clothing, food from anywhere in the world at any time), we don’t need to adapt to our environments any more.
Thank heavens for Jeff who still tilts at his windmills despite the lost cause which is the English tongue.
I will admit that as soon as I read that malapropism, I puff up with pride that I am not like these ill-educated rubes. /sarc
I sort of agree and disagree. Absolutely our mastery of technology shields us from many of the forces that might otherwise lead to mortality and failure to propagate our genes.
On the other hand, technology and lack of adversity is having some negative impacts as well. It can propagate unfit genes and with social trends to delayed childbirth (if ever), we may end up propagating dysfunctional genes where conception depends on artificial means. (Especially if our malignant big pharma gangsters arrange for it through fake ‘vaccines’ that are actually gene therapy without informed consent).
I guess it depends on your definition of evolution. For sure we are impacted differently by natural selection than in the past. But does the outcome of that mean that we’ve evolved or just been bred to select or deselect certain pre-existing traits? If technology leads to artificial mutations in DNA that would be a kind of artificial evolution.
One of my thoughts on why diagnosis such as diabetes and autism is on the rise is because people with those genes are now living long enough to spread their DNA to the next generation via modern medicine. Yes I know as medicine improves the ability to detect diseases has increased also.
On the other hand lower birth rate also has to do with education. My family has health issues including: heart disease, autoimmune disease, alzheimers, high cholesterol, weird allergies all run in the family. My sister and I both made the conscious decision to not continue on our bad gene lineage much to the chagrin of our parents. I have heart disease, she has the family autoimmune disease and of course we don’t know if we will get alzheimers or not. Dad died of his heart disease and his youngest brother had early onset of alzheimers and has already passed on. Oldest brother we all thought would pass away first due to heart disease and obesity is the last one living.
Total extinction of the human race would be very difficult. We live on virtually the entire surface and have advanced technology. That separates us from the 99% of species that eventually died out.
Catastrophic climate change (at least of the imaginary manmade variety), and the sun exploding in a supernova are both impossible, and natural climate change due to an expanding red giant is many hundreds of millions of years away.
While a large asteroid could potentially wipe out most of us, we would almost certainly have an accurate idea of where the impact would occur, early enough to position bunkers in locations most likely to be survivable by at least a significant remnant. And if not, then random bunkers would still allow some survivors.
As for nuclear war or supervolcano eruptions, similar arguments apply, but because we assume we’re safe until suddenly we’re not, arguably there might not be as focused an effort to assure survival.
Probably the most plausible risk is a bioweapon that gets created without any antidote/countermeasures.
I doubt that we’ll see anything more than something akin to Antarctic research stations on Mars or anywhere else in the solar system.
Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it’s cold as hell.
Not to mention, the idea of terraforming Mars, if it’s even possible, would likely take tens to hundreds of thousands of years.
Yeah terraforming even if we had ‘unlimited cheap’ fusion power and billions of AI robots seems a massive stretch. (Suspending disbelief that commercially viable fusion would ever be feasible, let alone abundant and cheap, which I’m certain it won’t be in the lifetime of anyone now alive).
Judging from the Climatist movement, we seem to have devolved from a species that solves problems to one that invents “problems” to “solve”.
There are at least two wildcards in the mix. First, it is likely that in the near future we will be able to edit and control our own DNA. We are close to it now. Perspective parents may be able to arrange for their children to have genes for greater intelligence, better looking bodies, select their children’s hair color, eye color, skin color, and temperament. Maybe. Second, in the near future we might have a direct brain to computer interface (like the neuro-link) which could revolutionize our future if human brains and artificial intelligence are fused together.
Well, it has been quite a few years, but I’m sure I went to high school with the guy in the lede picture
That’s not possible. He was my roommate at Mount Hermon.
First, the sun will evolve into a red giant. Not a supernova. The red giant sun will swallow Earth, unless future humans change Earth orbit.
Second, “manifestly reshaped the planet“? What – is Earth now an oblate cube? Any time someone says humans are xyzing “the planet” my propaganda meter pins. The planet is fine.
Third, humans are the only known culturally obligate species. Humans are more adaptable than any other species, ever. Culturally obligate means knowledge transmission generationally, and technology; scientists, engineers, and skilled technical people. There’s no reason to think the extinction trajectory of other species applies similarly to humans.
Fourth, the option unconsidered is the most obvious. Humans take control of their own evolution. It is very obvious that we are presently in the early stages of doing exactly that. We’ve mapped our genome. We know it’s an evolutionary kludge. Lots of cross-talk.
But if we proceed cautiously along what is clearly a very fraught path (mRNA gene treatments; synthetic viruses; hubristic CRISPRosis) but one with great promise.
So, I see only two futures. The bad is that we cause our own extinction by way of synthetic diseases, i.e., by way of a towering arrogating stupidity.
The good is that we take eventual control of our own evolution and deliberatively and slowly but surely, achieve self-transcendence.
And, of course, spread through the galaxy. Even without lightspeed, colonizing and hopping through Oort clouds seems a possible route to the stars.
So, after a few generations on Mars, humans will evolve into little green men, with antennas coming out of their forehead?
I just can’t believe you can go from one species (cannot interbreed) to another in only 10 generations by random mutations. Not possible it seems to me.
New species do not “evolve”. That has never been proved. Microevolution of a few phenotypical characteristics is not a new species.
Great Danes and Chihuahuas would have a barrier to inter-breeding in the wild. Reproductive isolation makes them separate species by the standard definition.
I would say that Prof. Solomon has too much time on his hands.
The natives of North and South America were separated from their European/African/Asian cousins for some 20 to 30 thousand years, and they did not become a different species.
I suspect that in 1000 years, travel between Earth and Mars will be as common as travel between N. America and Europe is today.
Humans will separate over social media. I thought horseshoe crabs haven’t evolved in millions of years
So if two groups of human are separated long enough to have distinctly different genes, then one of those groups is no longer human? Got it.
Aside from that, the idea of humans colonizing other worlds, while it is appealing, is also pure fantasy. We’re not going anywhere – at least, we’re not going to survive the trip if we try. We can’t even summon enough willpower to attempt a round-trip to the Moon happen, never mind Mars or outside the solar system.
And practically, we won’t leave the solar system. We’re not going to discover some loophole in relativity that will make FTL possible. There’s no loophole in quantum mechanics that allows for anti-gravity. There are no mass-effect relays left behind by precursor aliens. Interstellar space is just as deadly to machines as it is to people.
I don’t like siding with eco-loons on anything, but they’re right about one thing. There is no Planet B. And there never will be.
I never presume precocious limits on future knowledge.
I suggest a delightful read, Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men.
Humans will evolve into digital bots and still seek Mayflower exits away from the control freaks.