Reading this question of the stack exchange got me thinking. I believe human evolution is an ongoing process and will not stop. Are there any predictions/theories about the phenotypes and genotypes of humans in the future? and how they may differ in a few thousand years compared to present day?
I remember watching a youtube video and in the video the user predicts that there will be two branches of human species; a short dwarf like species and a much taller species. I'm still skeptical about this claim. Is there any evidence to back it up?
One could argue that modern medicine is preventing natural selection. How will this effect human evolution?
Answer
Its pretty much impossible to predict what will happen in the evolution of species. Evolution is a parallel search with millions (or in the case of humans 8+ billion) of threads. Our adaptive capacities have never been fully understood and will always surprise us I think.
Of course that doesn't stop people from trying! The prediction you mention is based on one man's ideas of dominant selection pressures on humanity now... for a men's TV show. In Dr Curry's scenario, technology users, and economic disparity, producing Eloi and Morlock like dimorphism as in the HGWells book "Time Machine". This seems like hogwash to me. All socioeconomic classes try to find high quality partners and height and attractiveness will be hard to stamp out in a large segment of humanity.
Economic elites breed slowly and even if they will try to skim the evolutionary cream of humanity off the top, there will be plenty of beautiful, tall and smart people who will lack economic opportunity in my opinion.
There have been more serious, IMHO, questions about whether medical technology, which lets the sick recover and may even compensate for genetically problematic traits. There are no inoffensive examples I can think of so I'll take male pattern hair loss - apologies. If medicine allows all men (and women) to grow a thick shock of hair regardless of our genes then the baldness traits might spread through the species. Sure it could happen, but then most bald and balding people end up having children now anyway.
In fact since civilization has started feeding the hungry, making the hunting of wild beasts less important, causing the shrinkage of the male physique (we used to be much more muscular), inventing medicine and schools where smarts can be selected for, and giving us all more choice when it comes to mates, evolution has accelerated for human beings. The authors specifically cite social factors as being more important in our evolution now.
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