The Human Species is Rapidly Evolving

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maybe kids need chew toys like dogs as they grow up to keep their mouths in tip top shape. Grrrrrrr.

I had a recent implant fall out of my head. Gonna get it replaced for free. But according to that article my ancestors would have needed implants at all.

Dad knew some guy who would play with his toy bulldog in his back yard by playing tug of war with a leash in the dogs mouth. And the dog would clamp and pull so hard that he could lift the leash into the air and swing the little dog around over his own head like the dog was a lasso. And then he would release the leash and let the dog go flying through the air. And the dog would eagerly run back with the leash for more. Maybe we should do with our children!

Swinging a bulldog, kind of reminds me of Baby Dynamics Yoga



It might potentially improve a couple of the child's senses:

The sixth sense is called proprioception, the perception of body position, which is important for balance and agility in movement. The seventh sense is vestibular, which is the perception of our body in relation to gravitational force and acceleration.

Why do we have wisdom teeth?

Third molars, or wisdom teeth, were once very useful to our ancestors. Because prehistoric man’s diet of hard-to-chew plants and uncooked meat required powerful chewing muscles, our ancestors’ jaws were large enough to fit 32 teeth, not just 28. Now that humans have evolved a better means of chewing and digesting our food, we no longer have large jaws, so we simply have no need or no room for wisdom teeth. Many scientists believe humans are currently evolving third molar hypodontia, or the lack of wisdom teeth, due to their inability to develop in the first place.

How many people have wisdom teeth?

About 20-25% of the human population is born with 1 to 3 wisdom teeth, and 35% is born without any wisdom teeth at all.

Source: How Many Wisdom Teeth Do You Have?

The human body continues to evolve in intriguing ways. More and more adults have a median artery in their forearms. Or, more accurately, they have retained the median artery. It is the main vessel that supplies blood to the forearm and hand in the womb, but usually disappears once the radial and ulnar arteries develop.

Since the 18th century, anatomists have been studying its existence in adults, and the new study suggests it could soon become the norm. “The prevalence was around 10% in people born in the mid-1880s compared to 30% in those born in the late 20th century, so that’s a significant increase in a fairly short period of time, when it comes to evolution”.

A third artery causes no problems and offers real benefits, says Henneberg, who is also a member of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. It increases overall blood supply and can be used as a replacement in surgical procedures in other parts of the human body.

Source: Evolution arms us with an extra artery

The researchers cite other intriguing examples of human anatomy changing over time, including the increasing absence of wisdom teeth, prevalence of the fabella (a small bone in the back of the knee joint) increasing over time, and the thyroidea ima artery (a branch of the aortic arch) decreasing then disappearing completely by the end of the 20th century.

Do you think different ethnicities may branch into different species? It's really possible...

^Nope....that will never happen. The conditions were riper for this to happen in prehistoric days----because there was more isolation of populations from other populations in those days.

Nowadays, "the world is a small place." People are becoming more homogenized now than in the past in everything: language, ethos, etc. A Greek can be said to be less different to a Spaniard, say, than 100 years ago. A Bantu less different to a Zulu---or to a European.

Therefore, the trend is towards our species consisting of people who are more similar than others than previously.

The tend is towards "less specialization" rather than "more specialization."

Even if global civilization collapsed and we returned to a pre industrial dark ages there would STILL be too much genetic drift to keep people on different continents from splitting of into different species. It takes thousands of generations of isolation to branch off into becoming a different species. So even if we returned to transoceanic trade via sailing ships and lose our airlines there would still be too much travel and too much genetic movement to keep any group isolated enough to branch into another species.

Going into the speculative world of science fiction, however...

Assume humans survive for a very long time and assume we spread out to other stellar systems (two big assumptions!), but further assume interstellar travel doesn't support much travel between colonies (seems likely) then maybe homo sapiens could eventually spawn different species on different planets.

Interesting idea. ^.