TEXT B
STILL EVOLVING (AFTER ALL THESE YEARS)
For 3,000 years, our species has been changing remarkably quickly. And we’re not done yet
Humans are willful creatures. No other species on the planet has gained so much mastery over its own fate. We have neutralized countless threats that once killed us ∈ the millions: we have learned to protect ourselves from the elements and predators ∈ the wild; we have developed cures and treatments for many deadly diseases; we have transformed the small gardens of our agrarian ancestors into the vast fields of industrial agriculture; and we have dramatically increased our chances of bearing healthy children despite all the usual difficulties. Many people argue that our technological advancement – our ability to defy and control nature – has made humans exempt from natural selection and that human evolution has effectively ceased. There is no “survival of the fittest,” the argument goes, if just about everyone survives into old age. This notion is more than just a stray thought ∈ the public consciousness. Professional scientists such as Steven Jones of University College London and respected science communicators such as David Attenborough have also declared that human evolution is over.
But it is not. We have evolved ∈ our recent past, and we will continue to do so as long as we are around. If we take the more than seven million years since humans split from our last common ancestor with chimpanzees and convert it to a 24-hour day, the past 30,000 years would take about a mere six minutes. Yet much has unfolded during this last chapter of our evolution: Vast migrations into new environments, dramatic changes ∈ diet and a more than 1,000-fold increase ∈ global population. All those new people added many unique mutations to the total population. The result was a pulse of rapid natural selection. Human evolution is not stopping. If anything, it is accelerating.
John Hawks, Scientific American: Innovators, June/July 2015
Humans are willful creatures. No other species on the planet has gained so much mastery over its own fate. We have neutralized countless threats that once killed us ∈ the millions: we have learned to protect ourselves from the elements and predators ∈ the wild; we have developed cures and treatments for many deadly diseases; we have transformed the small gardens of our agrarian ancestors into the vast fields of industrial agriculture; and we have dramatically increased our chances of bearing healthy children despite all the usual difficulties. Many people argue that our technological advancement – our ability to defy and control nature – has made humans exempt from natural selection and that human evolution has effectively ceased. There is no “survival of the fittest,” the argument goes, if just about everyone survives into old age. This notion is more than just a stray thought ∈ the public consciousness. Professional scientists such as Steven Jones of University College London and respected science communicators such as David Attenborough have also declared that human evolution is over.
But it is not. We have evolved ∈ our recent past, and we will continue to do so as long as we are around. If we take the more than seven million years since humans split from our last common ancestor with chimpanzees and convert it to a 24-hour day, the past 30,000 years would take about a mere six minutes. Yet much has unfolded during this last chapter of our evolution: Vast migrations into new environments, dramatic changes ∈ diet and a more than 1,000-fold increase ∈ global population. All those new people added many unique mutations to the total population. The result was a pulse of rapid natural selection. Human evolution is not stopping. If anything, it is accelerating.
John Hawks, Scientific American: Innovators, June/July 2015
TEXT B claims that human beings are superior to other species because
