We're evolving faster
Look out, future, because here we come: scientists say the speed of human evolution increased rapidly during the last 40,000 years -- and it's only going to get faster.
The findings, published today by a team of U.S. anthropologists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, overturn the theory that modern life's relative ease has slowed or even stopped human adaptation. Selective pressures are still at work; they just happen to be different than those faced by our distant ancestors.
"We're more different from people 5,000 years ago than they were from Neanderthals," said study co-author and University of Utah anthropologist Henry Harpending.
So apparently the easy life doesn't mean we're not evolving, just that we're evolving in different directions. Of course, as the article notes, evolution doesn't always mean progress, just change, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, and there's no guarantee that the changes taking place are actually good ones.
"Evolution is a double-edged sword," he said. "What evolution cares about is that I have more offspring. If you can do it by charming and manipulating, and I'm a hardworking farmer that's going to feed the kids ten years down the road, then you're going to win.
Great, so we're all likely to evolve into the Bush administration.
