Will We Look Different in 100 Million Years

[leon]

Today I was walking down the street, and in my usual singular state was just looking at all the different people hurrying by, some tall, slim, large, old, young, and of either sex.

Yep, we sure all look different, and that is all good, then a thought crossed my mind, probably a strange thought, but however a thought and it went like this.

Us, the Human species, have either evolved, as it has been suggested, or there was divine intervention, and we were created.

So, I'm only going with the evolution side of this theory. ;)

If we evolved from the waters of the deep as it is sometimes stated, and we have evolved to the level we are at now, dose that mean that in another period of some million years we, or the human form will look different, as evolution continues. :shrug:

Leon :thumbsup:

[garyp]

In the time scales we are talking about I wonder how many hundreds/thousands of years It would be before all the earths resources are used up or we blow ourselves up and we have to jump ship to other parts of the universe to survive.


on the question of will we look different I would say no as I come from the creationist veiwpoint which is a whole other debate.

[Ian Robinson]

100million years is a long time .... I don't think humanity will be recognisable in 100million and will likely have developed new traits such depending on where our decendents are living then (and I don't limit that to terrestrial and only on the earth , presuming we don't go the way the neanderthals.

The planet wont be recognisable either as a new mega continent will be near surrounded by oceans .

[PeterM]

I don't think you will have to wait a 500 or 1000 years let alone 100 million years to see unimaginable changes to the human species, physically and intellectually. The next steps in the evolution of our species are happening now, to where we will eventually merge with our technologies. Perhaps the only thing that may stop this happening will be an unforseen impact on our planet - literally, simply because we don't fund research at a level equal to the outcomes of the threat. I have no doubt we will much sooner than later conquer diseases known and unknown and that wars will become nothing more than local skirmishes that will also become less and less frequent as democracy fails us and one world government (call it what you will) has to take control and, in light of the current financial disaster and the looming derivatives time bomb catastrophe leaving potentially billions starving this may have to happen within the next 50 years. Anyways when humans do eventually and inevitably merge with our technologies I have no doubt we will not go through much of the nonsense that we now do.
PeterM

[Jen]

Well we have botox now :lol: so we are not scaley wrinkly creatures like dinosaurs no more :lol::lol:
(ok i will go and hide now)

:scared3:

[leon]

Peter I tend to agree with your theory, it makes some sense so to speak, and Jen, :confuse3:well how do I answer that one, :lol:

Leon :thumbsup:

[PeterM]

Very clever Jen! "Scaley wrinkley dinosaurs" now you know why my picture isn't in my posts..
PeterM

[Jen]

:lol::lol::lol::P


:lol::lol: c'mon now Peter dont be shy show us ya mug :rofl:

[Jen]

Oh and not to mention the hair removal technics they have these days :lol: aka no more gorillas :rofl:

[xelasnave]

We will probably have very short legs...maybe replaced by wheels even.
Most humans will have USB ports and external hard drives.

If we are still here of course.

Evolution is the exception extinction is the rule.
alex

[Jen]

:eyepop::eyepop: well that counts me out for the future already then i already have short legs arhhhhhhhh :doh:

[xelasnave]

No no Jen ... you are one of the new breed of human ...check your toes are not growing castors.

alex

[leinad]

Wow. One heck of a question Leon.
I can easily get lost in imagination with this thought. :screwy:

Check this out:
http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/1996/publications/technical/pubs/plesiosaurs.pdf (http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/index/)

Interesting paper on the past 100 million years.

I think though that evolution beyond our age of being can no longer evolve too far physically further due to naturre but by synthetic manipulation.

:whistle:

[jjjnettie]

Just look at the changes in the last few hundred years!
While visiting numerous castles, pubs and houses in the UK, you can't help but be struck by the tops of the door jams. I mean, struck by how low the doors are.
I reckon that by average, we've grown in stature by at least a foot.

Looking forward though on a sadder note, I feel that we may go back to being the malnourished, undersized people from our past. Our global population is exploding, we're building housing estates on our prime coastal farmland, ( where do they grow the food now? the desert?) we're poisoning the air we breathe, the water we drink and the land we grow our food on.
What chance does the human race have of survival little own evolving?

[KenGee]

Evolution is very unpredictable, at the moment humanity has very little selection pressure on it. So we will see a great deal of genetic variation. If at some point we do see a selection event, say environmental then when will see some rather dramatic change. As others have said though you have to throw our tech into the mix, we will be tempted to have a fiddle ourselves.
100 millions years is a long time though, go back that amount and mammals were just coming to be. Alex is right most species only last around 5 million years, so odds are we will not be here. A more interesting question is how much change will we cope with before we consider ourselves a new species? If you met a Neanderthal on the street you might just think he was a stocky person, if you met Lucy well....

[Ian Robinson]

Oops .... sounds like me.....:D

One fine SF I read , The Forever War , dealt with this , shorter time frame , only a few hundred thousand years - humanity became sexless and asexual and there were only in general two types , a male and female (and nearlly all humanity were clones of just two perfect humans) , the gene pool still there in "less evolved planetary colonies / civilisations" who still engaged in more primitive behaviours who were tolerated because they were considered quaint and as an insurance policy if the clones developed a genetic problem - they , just choose a replacement perfect human and clone him or her .

[Tandum]

There is an excellent mini series from the BBC hosted by Baldrick (ex blackadder) Terry Robinson I think, called Catastrophe (http://www.mininova.org/search/?search=Catastrophe). The show tracks the history of the planet from day one.

Earth was hit early on by another planet which produced the moon and gave us a spin, plus the moon was a lot closer than now, which made huge tides, which dragged minerals into the sea to create slim which made O2 from carbonmonoxide as a by product.

A super volcano under siberia collapsed and over the next 200 thousand years it changed the greenhouse gas content and the earth became a snowcone. The oceans died and that showed that there is a tipping point. Apparently in the deep ocean, there is solid methane, frozen because of the depth pressure and temp into a solid. A 5 degree terestrial shift will melt it, it releases, snowballing global warming and the earth becomes a snowball due to lack of sun almost overnight.

They estimate we have output as much dioxide in 200 years as the siberia incident did in 200 thousand years which caused the initial flip. Science reveals all.

We won't make it to 100 million years, the planet will kill us in an instant. Evolution .... the coachroaches win :)

[Jen]

:lol::lol::lol: lol Alex well i didnt think of it that way ;)

[Kal]

We have decoded the human genome, and within the next century or two we will most likely be able to understand and create almost any lifeform imaginable, removing defects before conception and activating genes to improve our physiology or mental capacity. However, while our technology races ahead at this pace, or morality lags way behind, and pressure from particularly religous groups will preventy this technology from being used. Wether we break though this social barrier and embrace this interventive evolution within the next thousand years, or destroy our civilisation though war is still something I am not sure of.

[Ric]

It would be fascinating to step 100 million years into the future and see the changes.

Given the time span I'd say there is a good chance that we would have met other civilisations and there would also be a good chance of some interbreeding going on.

[jungle11]

I think natural evolution will go out the window, we'll do it ourselves. Perhaps we'll reach a day and a technology where some of us no longer want the limits imposed by being a physical being. Sounds crazy, but 100 million years - perhaps we'll imprint ourselves somehow in the structure of the universe.

Sorry:P

[xelasnave]

dont be sorry..you have not hurt anyone...it is your view so whats the worry...

I think history tells us we simply wont be here...unless we can blow up some of those things that go splat on a planet.

Maybe we are the choosen ones and will become part of the universe...hang on we are part of the universe and on most folks account the universe exists for us and was indeed created for us....I hope they are right... why not... I could get up each day with that under my belt.

alex

[PeterM]

I am with you on these thoughts Greg, and I am betting it will be much sooner than most of us can imagine. Kal also hits the nail on the head with vested interest groups trying to stop the inevitable, but they won't be able to. Evan, the splat bit worries me to. We are about to spend who knows how many billions on "saving" the world from alleged man made CO2 emmissions that (in my opinion) will go down the same path as the acid rain scaremongering did - all the forests should have been gone by now I think? Yet one impactor could wipe out billions maybe all of us, we need a massive global response to this now. But as there doesn't seem to be any immediate profits for anyone in finding these potential impactors, I guess we will do it on a shoe string budget. The way I see it is the buzz words for the alleged CO2 GW are - do it for future generations - for our kids and theirs, well if we are so serious about that where is the money for what would be an immediate massive global changing event and why aren't the public concerned, do they really know?
PeterM

[DJDD]

well, if i am around in 100 million years (who knows, technology might allow this sooner than we think), i will have:

- wings
- 8 eyes, a pair per side
- 12 tentacles, because I am a friendly guy :P
- gills and webbed feet/hands

i think that covers most bases except space travel without a suit or space ship.

:lol:

(bored beyond belief today- not sure why, really busy...)

[jungle11]

I'll line up for a pair of cat's eyes. Think of the stargazing potential!:eyepop:

[jungle11]

I'm still wondering - love question like this.

Say we cononize the galaxy at some point - 100 million years from now we could have diverged into hundreds of thousands of completely different species.
Well perhaps not completely different - but you catch my drift.:)

[Zuts]

100 million years is an inordinate amount of time, enough for dinosuars to evolve and die out and enough for humans to arise.

If we look the same in 100 million years it will only be because we chose to look that way.

Cheers
Paul

[jungle11]

Agreed paul - when i said not completely different, I was just thinking perhaps looking at the different species - you might be able to conclude using their DNA that they were all derived from an original species (i.e. us)

[rider]

I know I will.

[jungle11]

:lol::lol::lol:

What's your secret - no wait..you'd have to kill me right?;)

[Ian Robinson]

Even if humanity never conquers interstellar distances , we'll colonise several moons and at least one planet in our solar system , so there will be environmental conditions that favour evolutionary changes just from thinner atmospheres (even if we manage to pretty much terraform these) , colder conditions, and lower gravity.
With migration of a lot of humanity coastal strips and pressures to utilise the oceans or even colonise them , we may also evolve a marine version of humanity too.

[Shnoz]

Maybe humans won't be the only sentient beings on Earth in a few million years. Maybe elephants or dolphins will catch up.:D

[Ian Robinson]

More likely to be another primate , but only if humanity disappears from the picture and doesn't drive them to extinction first.

Already two sentinent and different beings - man and woman.

[Jen]

:lol::lol::lol:

[GrahamL]

Dream on !! .. you lower order primates arn't ever going to amount to much .

[jungle11]

:lol:

YOU BLEW IT UP....DAMN YOU....DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL

[Babalyon 5]

I think like most here, with talk of technology and solar system colonization.
It is these two things that lead me to my belief that humans will become the machine, and humans will become the aliens.:rolleyes:

[xelasnave]

I am more concerned with how we will look in ten years... I will be over 70 and no doubt will detect changes.

alex

[Glenhuon]

The female of our species will have developed one ear that resembles a mobile hands free docking system :)

Bill

[JohnG]

Your probably right on that one, Bill :lol:.

With the amount of garbage clogging the Human Gene Pool, I would be surprised if it lasted 100 years let alone 100 million........

Cheers

John G

[Jen]

:poke::poke: watch out Bill or males in the future will have frypans stuck on there heads :rofl::rofl::rofl::thumbsup:

:lol::lol::lol:
:D

[jungle11]

hehe...I think we were all waiting for that:lol:

[Gargoyle_Steve]

What will we look like in 100 million years?

" Dust " :lol:

[astroron]

When I first saw this post I though of this article but couldn't think of where I had seen it:rolleyes:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6057734.stm
It gives a completely different view of most of the thoughts posted on this matter:eyepop: