In history, people have attempted to explain the earth and humans’ position in it. A lot of people from various eras, religions, and races have uttered tales to describe, with magnificence and wonder, the roots and presence of human beings, Earth, animals, the universe, and the stars.Globalization, as well as our extremely dynamic present knowledge economy, has disintegrated belief in conventional root tales. However, the fact is that the present scientific understanding entails that people could not describe our roots and growth.

The Premise

What we understand has been that this huge explosion formed this universe 13.8 billion years previously – the initial of the range of important occurrences in the human chronicle. Also, we can tell what occurred after a fragment of a nanosecond following that instant.At that moment, our universe had even been tinier compared to an atom. It is difficult for our minds to understand some things, such as atoms, sizes; however, you could put millions of atoms in the point of an “i” with ease.Everything, from time, space and matter, started from that point.

The Big Bang

To start with, we had energy only, which immediately divided into various forces, like electromagnetism and gravity. In a split second, the simple matter appeared, and after it was complicated formations, while neutrons and protons – very tiny particles – combine to form nuclei. Anything occurred within minutes; however, with the cooling of this universe, everything impeded further.  The universe started out as something unthinkably small, with every matter and energy that is in our universe presently gathered to that, and it has been increasing since then.

The Formation Of Everything From The Unthinkable

Stars just came into existence 100000000 years following the huge explosion, at the time matter and gravity offered the goldilocks circumstances for any star to create.After a big star disappears, gravity crushes a star's essence with great strength, and a star shatters with immense energy.

The Emergence of Stars

This world was created by the buildup of debris-roughly 4,500,000,000 years previouslyWe are owed to the Sun for three things: energy, light, and heatThe creation of the globe has been a chaotic outcome of star formation, which happens in parts of space full of plumes of chemical substances.Near to the rays, where the creation of rocky planets such as Mars, Venus, and Earth took place, was a part filled with chemical substances such as iron, oxygen, and aluminium.

Our Solar System

<ul><li>Mild temperatures are important to existence, and the World possesses in-built systems that sustain them.</li><li>Rain comprises carbon, which ultimately finds its path to this World's cloak, the place it is kept for a long time.</li><li>Decreased carbon signifies less CO2 and this signifies colder temperatures.</li><li>During the cold period, less rain pours, this signifies that the kept carbon is less. CO2 degrees accumulate and things become warmer.</li><li>And when it gets really hot, more rain happens and everything cooled back down.</li></ul>

The Bedrock Of Life

<ul><li>Photosynthesis had been a powerful blessing for the initial, one-celled existence that assisted to trigger a biological innovation.</li><li>The progressive revolution of photosynthesis indicated the initial energy success in life history.</li><li>Unexpectedly, the energy was nearly infinite, and prokaryotes could multiply and spread. - 3000000000 years ago, oxygen levels in the atmosphere increased intensely, and the quantity of life in the oceans rose to nearly 10% of present grades.</li></ul>

Photosynthesis

<ul><li>Development and the annihilation of dinosaurs assisted the large structures of existence to grow that would ultimately produce mankind</li><li>Fungi, plants, and animals evolved and moved to land from oceans.</li><li>The appearance of existence on land caused expansion.</li><li>Life developed to be more clever due to advancement.</li><li>Adaptation increased information processing since information increased information.</li></ul>

Early Life On Earth

<ul><li>According to the criteria of our universe, we are really young.</li><li>In only the past 6000000 years (know that our universe is at the age of 13800000000, and initial huge living organisms came 600000000 years previously), we people have made our own means, growing independently from primates.</li><li>The language ability allowed the difficulty and accuracy of the shared info that showed to become revolutionary since it allowed training together - the buildup and transferring of one person's knowledge to another person and from one generation to another.</li></ul>

From Apes To Humans

<ul><li>The practice of agriculture developed in reaction to population densities.</li><li>Initially, humans were hesitant cultivators.</li><li>As village societies turned out to be the standard lifestyle, communities had to make novel principles and conduct, and humans started working further as one</li></ul>

Agriculture

<ul><li>With the development of agriculture, it produced surpluses that allowed the growth of more difficult agrarian communities</li><li>Surplus food from farming signified that they had an excess of humans in time at hand since not everybody had to labour the ground.</li><li>At the time individuals do not have to use their entire time for agriculture, they possess time to produce and trade pots for instance.</li></ul>

The Growth Of Trade

<ul><li>In just 100 years, people have accomplished huge advancements as data and concepts travelled across seas and were interchanged faster than any time previously</li><li>Fossil fuels' energy provided communities with further energy compared to what is offered by agriculture and transformed human life.</li></ul>

Fossil Fuels

<ul><li>Since World War II, we've seen the extreme rise of financial advancement in history, caused largely by technological advancements and fossil fuels</li><li>Economic advancement signifies that the experience of people is currently totally different from the ones our ancestors had</li><li>One disadvantage to economic growth is a huge inequality, proven most strongly by the fact that presently; 45000000 individuals are enslaved</li><li>Biodiversity is falling forever, with figures of extermination presently 100s of times quicker than that of the past millions of years</li></ul>

The Last Seventy Years

<ul><li>The following days are for us to create.</li><li>In the long term, The World would be sterile and ultimately the Sun would consume it</li><li>We are getting close to the biodiversity boundary, and we are getting nearer to the boundaries for climate change.</li><li>John Stuart Mill, the 19th-century economist, chose the notion of a tomorrow with no continuous development.</li><li>Attaining a world that could survive is an aim worth targeting, it would signify that human communities can exist for thousands, perhaps a lot of centuries to come.</li></ul>

The Future Of Earth

Lets go right at the start of everythijng.

This New York Times bestseller "elegantly weaves evidence and insights . . . into a single, accessible historical narrative" (Bill Gates) and presents a captivating history of the universe -- from the Big Bang to dinosaurs to mass globalization and beyond. Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the big bang through the present day -- and even into the remote future? How would looking at the full span of time change the way we perceive the universe, the earth, and our very existence? These were the questions David Christian set out to answer when he created the field of "Big History," the most exciting new approach to understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we are going. In Origin Story, Christian takes readers on a wild ride through the entire 13.8 billion years we've come to know as "history." By focusing on defining events (thresholds), major trends, and profound questions about our origins, Christian exposes the hidden threads that tie everything together -- from the creation of the planet to the advent of agriculture, nuclear war, and beyond. With stunning insights into the origin of the universe, the beginning of life, the emergence of humans, and what the future might bring, Origin Story boldly reframes our place in the cosmos.

Stashed ideas

Origin Story

We can all agree that, on balance, and taking everything into account, love is a wonderful thing. For many, it is the point of life. It infiltrates every fibre of our being and every aspect of our daily lives. It is the most important factor in our mental and physical health, our longevity and our life satisfaction. And regardless of who the object of our love is – lover or friend, dog or god – these effects are largely underpinned, in the first instance, by the set of addictive neurochemicals supporting the bonds we create: oxytocin, dopamine, beta-endorphin and serotonin.

Love Is The Drug

This suite of chemicals makes us feel euphoric and calm, they draw us towards those we love, and reward us for investing in our relationships, even when the going gets tough. Love feels wonderful but ultimately it is a form of biological bribery, a cunning evolutionary trick to make sure we cooperate and those all-important genes continue down the generations. The joy it brings is wonderful but is merely a side-effect. Its goal is to ensure our survival, and for this reason happiness is not always its end point. Alongside its joys, there exists a dark side.

And The Happiness Of It Is A Side-effect

It’s about using chemical bribery to make sure we stick around, cooperate and invest in each other, and particularly in the survival-critical relationships we have with our lovers, children and close friends. This is an evolutionary control of which we are hardly aware, and it brings many positive benefits.

Love Is Ultimately About Control

The addictive nature of these chemicals, and our visceral need for them, means that love also has a dark side. It can be used as a tool of exploitation, manipulation and abuse. Indeed, in part what may separate human love from the love experienced by other animals is that we can use love to manipulate and control others. Arguably our greatest and most intense life experience can be used against us, sometimes leading us to continue relationships with negative consequences in direct opposition to our survival.

We Love To Survive, But We Don’t Always Survive The Love

Anna Machin, evolutionary anthropologist, and author of Why We Love: The New Science Behind our Closest Relationships asks her subjects to consider whether love can ever be negative. The vast majority say no for, if love has a darker side, it is not love, and this is an interesting point to contemplate. But if they do acknowledge the possibility of love having a less sunny side, their go-to example is jealousy.

We Love Love Too Much To Bad-mouth It

Jealousy is an emotion and, as with all emotions, it evolved to protect us, to alert us to a potential benefit or threat. It works its magic at three levels: the emotional, the cognitive and the behavioural. Physiology also throws its hat into the ring making you feel nauseous, faint or flushed.

The Multilevel Magic Of Jealousy

When we feel jealousy, it is generally urging us to do one of three things: to cut off the rival, to prevent our partner’s defection by redoubling our efforts, or to cut our losses and leave the relationship. All have evolved to make sure we balance the costs and benefits of the relationship. Investing time, energy and reproductive effort in the wrong partner is seriously damaging to your reproductive legacy and chances of survival.

Why Do We Feel Jealousy

The answer very much depends on our gender.Men and women experience jealousy with the same intensity. However, there is a stark difference when it comes to what causes each to be jealous. One of the pioneers of human mating research is the American evolutionary psychologist David Buss and, in his book The Evolution of Desire (1994), he details numerous experiments that have highlighted this gender difference.

What Do We Perceive To Be A Jealousy-inducing Threat?

In one study, in which subjects were asked to read different scenarios detailing incidences of sexual and emotional infidelity, 83% of women found the emotional scenario the most jealousy-inducing, whereas only 40% of men found this to be of concern. In contrast, 60% of men found sexual infidelity difficult to deal with, compared with a significantly smaller percentage of women: 17%.

Sexual Involvement Vs Emotional Involvement

The reason for this difference sits with the different resources that men and women bring to the mating game. Broadly, men bring their resources and protection; women bring their womb. If a woman is sexually unfaithful and becomes pregnant with another man’s child, she has withdrawn the opportunity from her partner to father a child with her for at least nine months. Hence, he is the most concerned about sexual infidelity.

Resources And Risks

In contrast, women are more concerned about emotional infidelity because this suggests that, if their partner does make a rival pregnant and becomes emotionally involved with her, his partner risks having to share his protection and resources with another, meaning that her children receive less of the pie.

Emotional intelligence sits at the core of healthy relationships. To truly deliver the benefits of the relationship to our partner, we must understand and meet their emotional needs as they must understand and meet ours. But, as with love, this skill has a darker side because to understand someone’s emotional needs presents the possibility that you can use that intelligence to control them. While we may all admit to using this skill for the wrong reasons every now and again – perhaps to get that holiday destination we prefer – for some, it is their go-to mechanism in their relationships.

Tricks And Trumps

The most adept proponents of this skill are those who possess the Dark Triad of personality traits: Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism. The first relies on using emotional intelligence to manipulate others, the second to toy with other’s feelings, and the third to denigrate others with the aim of glorifying oneself.

When Intelligence (Perception) Becomes Intelligence (Information

For these people, characterised by exploitative, manipulative and callous personalities, emotional intelligence is the route to a set of mate-retention behaviours that certainly meet their goals but are less than beneficial to those whom they profess to love. Indeed, research has shown that a relationship with such a person leaves you open to a significantly greater risk that your love will be returned with abuse.

The Enemy Within And The Enemy Without

Research has shown that having a Dark Triad personality, whether you were a man or a woman, significantly increased the likelihood that ‘“cost-inflicting mate-retention behaviours” were your go-to mechanism when trying to retain your partner. These are behaviours that level an emotional, physical, practical and/or psychological cost on the partner such as physical or emotional abuse, coercive control or controlling access to food or money.

Love Or Cost-Inflicting Mate-Retention Behaviour?

Interestingly, however, these individuals did not employ this tactic all the time. There was nuance in their behaviour. Costly behaviours were peppered with rare incidences of gift giving or caretaking, so-called beneficial mate-retention behaviours. Why? Because the unpredictability of their behaviour caused psychological destabilisation in their partner and enabled them to assert further control through a practice we now identify as gaslighting.

Control On Control

It is hard to imagine that, having experienced such a litany of abuse, anyone could believe that love remained within their relationship. But here the power of the lived experience, of allowing everyone to have their ideas about love becomes clearer. Because, while we have many scientific tools to explore love objectively, at the end of the day, there is always an element of our experience of love that is subjective, that another cannot touch. This is no more powerfully evidenced than by the testimony of those who have experienced intimate partner violence.

As Many Loves As People On This Earth

Love is the focus of so much science, philosophy and literary rumination because we struggle to define it, to predict its next move. Thanks to our biology and the reproductive mandate of evolution, love has long controlled us. But what if we could control love? What if a magic potion existed that could induce us, or another, to fall in love or even wipe away the memories of a failed relationship?

What If We Could Conjure Up Love?

Today we know enough about the chemistry of love for the elixir to be within our grasp. And we don’t have to look very far for our first candidate: synthetic oxytocin, used right now as an induction drug in labour. We know from extensive research in social neuroscience that artificial oxytocin also increases prosociality, trust and cooperation. Oxytocin, as released by the brain when we are attracted to someone, is vital for the first stages of love because it quiets the fear centre of your brain and lowers your inhibitions to forming new relationships.

Love Elixir 1: Oxytocin

The other possibility is MDMA or ecstasy, which mimics the neurochemical of long-term love, beta-endorphin. Recreational users of ecstasy report that it makes them feel boundless love for their fellow clubbers and increases their empathy. Researchers in the US have reported encouraging results when MDMA was used in marriage therapy to increase empathy, allowing participants to gain further insight into each other’s needs and find common ground.

Love Elixir 2: MDMA

Both of these sound like promising candidates but there are still issues to iron out and ethical discussions to have. How effective they are is highly context dependent. Based on their genetics, some people do exactly what is predicted of them. Boundaries are lowered and love sensations abound. But for a significant minority, particularly when it comes to oxytocin, people do exactly the opposite of what we would expect. For some, a dose of oxytocin, while increasing bonds with those they perceive to be in their in-group, increases feelings of ethnocentrism – racism – toward the out-group.

Love Drugs And Side-Effects

MDMA has other issues. For some people, it simply does not work. But the bigger problem is that the effects endure only while usage continues; anecdotal evidence suggests that, if you stop, the feelings of love and empathy disappear. This raises questions of practicality and ethical issues surrounding power imbalance. If you commenced a relationship while taking MDMA, would you have to continue? What if you were in a relationship with someone who had taken MDMA and you didn’t know? What would happen if they stopped? And could someone be induced to take MDMA against their will?

The ethical conversation around love drugs is complex. On one side are those who argue that taking a love drug is no more controversial than an antidepressant. Both alter your brain chemistry and, given the strong relationship between love and good mental and physical health, surely it is important that we use all the tools at our disposal to help people succeed? But maybe an anecdote from the <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526145413/">book </a>Love Is the Drug (2020) by Brian Earp and Julian Savulescu will give you pause. They describe SSRI prescriptions used to suppress the sexual urges of young male yeshiva students, to ensure that they comply with Jewish orthodox religious law – no sex before marriage, and definitely no homosexuality.

Evolution saw fit to give us love to ensure we would continue to form and maintain the cooperative relationships that are our route to personal and, most crucially, genetic survival. It can be the source of euphoric happiness, calm contentment and much-needed security, but this is not its point. Love is merely the sweet treat handed to you by your babysitter to make sure the goal is achieved. Combine the ultimate evolutionary aim of love with our visceral need for it and the quick intelligence of our brains, and you have the recipe for a darker side to emerge. Some of this darker side is adaptive but, for those who experience it, it rarely ends well. At the very least there is pain – physical, psychological, financial – and, at the most, there is death, and the grief of those we leave behind.

Maybe it is time to rewrite the stories we tell ourselves about love because the danger on the horizon is not the dragon that needs to be slain by the knight to save the beautiful princess but the presence of some who mean to use its powers for their gain and our considerable loss. Like all of us, love is a complex beast: only by embracing it in its entirety do we truly understand it, and ourselves. And this means understanding its evolutionary story, the good and the bad.

Love Is A Complex Beast

Love is both a wonderful thing and a cunning evolutionary trick to control us. A dangerous cocktail in the wrong hands. 

Love is both a wonderful thing and a cunning evolutionary trick to control us. A dangerous cocktail in the wrong hands

Tainted Love: Why Love Is Trick *And* Treat

Reader Question: "If humans don’t die out in a climate apocalypse or asteroid impact in the next 10,000 years, are we likely to evolve further into a more advanced species than what we are at the moment?" Harry Bonas, 57, NigeriaHumanity is the unlikely result of 4 billion years of evolution.From self-replicating molecules in Archean seas, to eyeless fish in the Cambrian deep, to mammals scurrying from dinosaurs in the dark, and then, finally, improbably, ourselves – evolution shaped us.

Background

It’s hard to predict the future. The world will probably change in ways we can’t imagine. But we can make educated guesses. Paradoxically, the best way to predict the future is probably looking back at the past, and assuming past trends will continue going forward. This suggests some surprising things about our future.

How To Make Predictions?

Organisms reproduced imperfectly.Mistakes made when copying genes sometimes made them better fit to their environments, so those genes tended to get passed on.More reproduction followed, and more mistakes, the process repeating over billions of generations.Finally, Homo sapiens appeared. But we aren’t the end of that story. Evolution won’t stop with us, and <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126952-400-review-the-10000-year-explosion-by-gregory-cochran-and-henry-harpending/">we might even be evolving faster than ever</a>.

Introduction 

We will likely live longer and become taller, as well as more lightly built. We’ll probably be less aggressive and more agreeable, but have smaller brains. A bit like a golden retriever, we’ll be friendly and jolly, but maybe not that interesting. At least, that’s one possible future. But to understand why I think that’s likely, we need to look at biology.

Introduction cont.

Some scientists have argued that civilisation’s rise <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2007/dec/15/genetics.evolution">ended natural selection</a>.It’s true that selective pressures that dominated in the past (<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.20415">predators</a>, famine, plague, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DTDFOFG/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">warfare</a>) have mostly disappeared.<ul><li>Starvation and famine were largely ended by <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003QP4BJM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">high-yield crops, fertilisers </a>and family planning.</li><li>Violence and war are less common than ever, despite modern militaries with nuclear weapons, or maybe <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes-ebook/dp/B008TRU7SQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=81PRQTJ0LOPH&keywords=making%20of%20the%20atomic%20bomb&qid=1644311120&s=digital-text&sprefix=making%20of%20the%20atomic%20bom%2Cdigital-text%2C264&sr=1-1">because of them</a>.</li><li>The lions, wolves and cats that hunted us in the dark are endangered or extinct.</li><li>Plagues that killed millions (Black Death, cholera) were tamed by vaccines, antibiotics and clean water.</li></ul>

I. The end of natural selection?

No; other things just drive it now.Evolution isn’t so much about survival of the fittest as reproduction of the fittest. Even if nature is less likely to murder us, we still need to find partners and raise children, so sexual selection now plays a bigger role in our evolution.And if nature doesn’t control our evolution anymore, the unnatural environment we’ve created – culture, technology, cities – produces new selective pressures very unlike those we faced in the ice age.We’re poorly adapted to this modern world; it follows that we’ll have to adapt.

Did Evolution Stop?

As our diets changed to include grains and dairy, we evolved genes to help us <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ng2123">digest starch </a> and <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-genom-091416-035340">milk</a>.When dense cities created conditions for disease to spread, mutations for <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/100/25/15276.short">disease resistance spread</a> too.And for some reason, <a href="https://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/519504">our brains have got smaller</a>. Unnatural environments create unnatural selection.

The Process Has Already Started

We’re also facing new selective pressures, such as reduced mortality. Studying the past doesn’t help here, but we can see how other species responded to similar pressures.Evolution in domestic animals may be especially relevant – arguably we’re becoming a kind of domesticated ape, but curiously, <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/early-humans-domesticated-themselves-new-genetic-evidence-suggests?utm_campaign=SciMag&utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Facebook">one domesticated by ourselves </a>.

New Selective Pressures

Computers also provide an entirely new selective pressure.As <a href="https://www.statista.com/chart/20822/way-of-meeting-partner-heterosexual-us-couples/#:%7E:text=Surveys%20carried%20out%20and%20analyzed,2%20percent%20to%2039%20percent.">more and more matches are made on smartphones</a>, we are delegating decisions about what the next generation looks like to computer algorithms, who recommend our potential matches just like our playlists.This might sound like dark science fiction, but it’s already happening. It’s hard to know where this leads, but I wonder if it’s entirely wise to turn over the future of our species to iPhones, the internet and the companies behind them.

Computers as a Selection Pressure

Humans will almost certainly evolve to live much longer.Life cycles evolve in response to mortality rates; when they are high, animals must reproduce young, or might not reproduce at all.There’s no advantage to evolving mutations that prevent ageing or cancer – you won’t live long enough to use them.When mortality rates are low, the opposite is true.It’s useful to have adaptations that extend lifespan, and fertility, giving you more time to reproduce. That’s why animals with few predators (that live on islands, in the deep ocean, or are simply big) mature late and evolve longer lifespans.

II. Lifespan

Even before civilisation, people were unique among apes in having low mortality and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/evan.1360010406">long lives</a>.Hunter-gatherers armed with spears and bows could defend against predators; <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513800000660?casa_token=flfN2IIm4GMAAAAA%3A4wiyTcAbi4_ekhP3nx7AOBVKyWpHM-Yco6uu5x8jCVzhBp-4XhE7TNLbN_JLG29lpvrsp_sw2g">food sharing </a>prevented starvation.So we evolved delayed sexual maturity, and long lifespans – <a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2352-1">up to 70 years </a>.Still, child mortality was high – <a href="https://escholarship.org/content/qt2zb2v4x9/qt2zb2v4x9.pdf">approaching 50% </a>or <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1651-2227.2011.02573.x?casa_token=y-YSz5W2IRIAAAAA%3A4sZ98kY2GLRSs35WMNzJr_WqDQrxDqTuqwyIUYSe9N8Y6fx0XoYSAHCDxyrDqYyYuCl2apKeQErOUSc">more </a>by age 15. Average life expectancy was just <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1651-2227.2011.02573.x?casa_token=y-YSz5W2IRIAAAAA%3A4sZ98kY2GLRSs35WMNzJr_WqDQrxDqTuqwyIUYSe9N8Y6fx0XoYSAHCDxyrDqYyYuCl2apKeQErOUSc">35 years </a>. Even after the rise of civilisation, child mortality stayed high until the 19th century, while life expectancy went down – <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy">to 30 years </a>– due to plagues and famines.

Application of Lifespan To The Human Context

In the past 200 years, better nutrition, medicine and hygiene reduced youth mortality to <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/youth-mortality-rate">under 1% </a> in most developed nations and soared life expectancy to at least <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy#:%7E:text=The%20United%20Nations%20estimate%20a,life%20expectancy%20of%2072.3%20years.">70 years worldwide</a>This is due to improved health, not evolution, but they set the stage for evolution to extend our lifespanNow, there’s little need to reproduce early. If anything, the years of training needed to be a doctor, CEO, or carpenter incentivise putting it offGiven that more people live to <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy#:%7E:text=The%20United%20Nations%20estimate%20a,life%20expectancy%20of%2072.3%20years.">100 </a><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2895458/"> years</a> (<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00070-1">record is 122</a>), there’s reason to think our genes could evolve until the average person routinely lives 100 years or more

Better Medicine and Nutrition

Animals often evolve larger size over time; it’s a trend seen in <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/113/13/3447">tyrannosaurs</a>, whales, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/paleobiology/article/abs/fossil-horses-from-eohippus-hyracotherium-to-equus-scaling-copes-law-and-the-evolution-of-body-size/9965A8A02408FBECB70D012A54930EA2">horses</a> and primates– including hominins.Early hominins e.g. <a href="https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-habilis">Homo habilis </a>were small, four to five feet tall.Later hominins e.g. <a href="https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-erectus">Homo erectus</a> grew taller. Why we got big is unclear- it is partly driven by improved nutrition, but <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2015.0211">genes seem to be evolving too </a>.In part, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/667694">mortality may drive size evolutio</a>n; growth takes time, so longer lives mean more time to grow. But human females also <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/35003107">prefer</a> <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/sbp/sbp/1996/00000024/00000002/art00005">tall males </a>. So both lower mortality and sexual preferences will likely cause humans to get taller.

III. Size, and strength

As we’ve grown taller, we’ve become more gracile.Over the past 2 million years, our skeletons became more lightly built as we relied less on brute force, and more on tools and weapons.As farming forced us to settle down, our lives became more sedentary, so our bone density decreased.Modern jobs increasingly require working with people, words and code – they take brains, not muscle.We spend more time behind desks, keyboards and steering wheels, and so these trends will likely continue.

More Gracile Structure

Our ancestors had to slaughter antelopes and dig roots; later they tilled and reaped in the fields. For manual laborers e.g. farmers, fisherman, lumberjacks – machinery such as tractors, hydraulics and chainsaws now shoulder a lot of the work.As physical strength becomes less necessary, our muscles will keep shrinking.

Change in Physical Labour

Our jaws and teeth also got smaller.Early, plant-eating hominins had huge molars and mandibles for grinding fibrous vegetables.As we shifted to meat, then started cooking food, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature16972">jaws and teeth shrank</a>.Modern processed food, e.g. chicken nuggets, Big Macs, and cookie dough ice cream, needs even less chewing, so jaws will keep shrinking, and we’ll likely lose our wisdom teeth.

Jaws and Teeth

After people left Africa 100,000 years ago, humanity’s far-flung tribes became isolated by deserts, oceans, mountains, glaciers and sheer distance.In various parts of the world, different selective pressures – different climates, lifestyles and beauty standards – caused our appearance to evolve in different ways. Tribes evolved distinctive skin colour, eyes, hair and facial features.

IV. Beauty

With civilisation’s rise and new technologies, these populations were linked again.Wars of conquest, empire building, colonisation and trade – including trade of other humans – all shifted populations, which interbred. Today, road, rail and aircraft link us too.Bushmen would walk 40 miles to find a partner; we’ll go 4,000 miles.We’re increasingly one, worldwide population – freely mixing. That will create a world of hybrids – light brown skinned, dark-haired, Afro-Euro-Australo-Americo-Asians, their skin colour and facial features tending toward a global average.

A World of Hybrids

Sexual selection will further accelerate the evolution of our appearance.With most forms of natural selection no longer operating, mate choice will play a larger role.Humans might become more attractive, but more uniform in appearance. Globalised media may also create more uniform standards of beauty, pushing all humans towards a single ideal.Sex differences, however, could be exaggerated if the ideal is masculine-looking men and feminine-looking women.

More Attractive, Uniform Humans

Last, our brains and minds, our most distinctively human feature, will evolve, perhaps dramatically.Over the past 6 million years, hominin <a href="https://humanorigins.si.edu/human-characteristics/brains">brain size roughly tripled</a>, suggesting selection for big brains driven by tool use, complex societies and language.It might seem inevitable that this trend will continue, but it probably won’t.Instead, <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.742639/full">our brains are getting smaller</a>. In Europe, brain size peaked <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41464021">10,000—20,000 years ago, just before we invented farming</a>. Then, brains got smaller.Modern humans have brains smaller than our ancient predecessors, or even medieval people. It’s unclear why.

V. Intelligence 

It could be that fat and protein were scarce once we moved to farming, making it more costly to grow and maintain large brains. Brains are also energetically expensive by burning ~20% of our daily calories.In agricultural tribes with frequent famine, a big brain may be a liability. Maybe hunter life was demanding in ways farming isn’t; in civilisation, you don’t need to outwit lions, etc.Making and using bows and spears also requires fine motor control, coordination, the ability to track animals ; maybe the parts of our brains used for those things got smaller when we stopped hunting.

Why Brain Size Has Decreased?

Or maybe living in a large society of specialists demands less brainpower than living in a tribe of generalists.Stone-age people mastered many skills – hunting, tracking, foraging for plants, making herbal medicines and poisons, crafting tools, waging war, making music and magic.Modern humans perform fewer, more specialised roles as part of vast social networks, exploiting division of labour. In a civilisation, we specialise on a trade, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3300">then rely on others for everything else</a>.

Specialists Demand Less Skills and Brainpower

No: <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnana.2014.00046/full">elephants</a> and <a href="https://phys.org/news/2010-03-smart-killer-whales-orcas-2nd-biggest.html">orcas</a> have bigger brains than us, and Einstein’s brain was <a href="https://phys.org/news/2005-01-einsteins-brain.html">smaller than average</a>.Neanderthals had brains comparable to ours, but <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2013.0168">more of the brain was devoted to sight and control of the body</a>, suggesting less capacity for things like language and tool use.So how much the loss of brain mass affects overall intelligence is unclear. Maybe we lost certain abilities, while enhancing others that are more relevant to modern life.It’s possible that we’ve maintained processing power by having fewer, smaller neurons. Still, I worry about what that missing 10% of my grey matter did.

Is Brain Size Everything?

Curiously, domestic animals also <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23264664">evolved smaller brains </a>. Sheep lost 24% of their brain mass after domestication; for cows, it’s 26%; dogs, 30%.This raises an unsettling possibility. Maybe being more willing to passively go with the flow, even thinking less like a domesticated animal, has been bred into us, like it was for them.

Linking Brain Size to Domesticated Animals...

Changing social patterns will change personalities.Humans live in much larger groups than other apes, but in today’s world people living in vast cities of millions.In the past, our relationships were necessarily few, and often lifelong, but now we inhabit seas of people, moving often for work, and in the process forming thousands of relationships, many fleeting and, increasingly, virtual.This world will push us to become more outgoing, open and tolerant.Yet, navigating such vast social networks may also require we become more willing to adapt ourselves to them – to be more conformist.

VI. Personality

Perhaps because of this, increasing numbers of people suffer from psychological issues such as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/06/health/lonliness-aging-health-effects.html">loneliness</a>, anxiety and depression. Many turn to alcohol and other substances to cope.Selection against vulnerability to these conditions might improve our mental health, and make us happier as a species.But that could come at a price. Many great geniuses had their demons; leaders like Abraham Lincoln fought with depression, as did scientists such as Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. Some, like Vincent Van Gogh, took their own lives. Others, like Jimi Hendrix, were destroyed by substance abuse.

Social Patterns and Mental Health

A disturbing thought is that troubled minds will be removed from the gene pool – but potentially at the cost of eliminating the sort of spark that created visionary leaders, great writers, artists and musicians.Future humans might be better adjusted – but less fun to party with and less likely to launch a scientific revolution — stable, happy and boring.

There were once <a href="https://theconversation.com/were-other-humans-the-first-victims-of-the-sixth-mass-extinction-126638">nine human species</a>, now it’s just us. But could new human species evolve?For that to happen, we’d need isolated populations subject to distinct selective pressures. Distance no longer isolates us, but reproductive isolation could theoretically be achieved by selective mating.If people were culturally segregated – marrying based on religion, class, caste, or even politics – distinct populations, even species, might evolve.

VII. New species?

In the past, religion and lifestyle have sometimes produced genetically distinct groups, as seen in for example in the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3032072">Jewish </a>and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC31389">Gypsy </a>populations.Today, politics also divides us; but could it divide us genetically? Liberals now move to be near other liberals, and <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0225405">conservatives to be near conservatives</a>; many on the left <a href="https://time.com/5896607/dating-political-ideology/">won’t date Trump supporters</a> and vice versa.Could this create two species, with instinctively different views? Probably not. Still, to the extent culture divides us, it could drive evolution in different ways.

It has partially happened already...

So far, I’ve mostly taken a historical perspective, looking back. But in some ways, the future might be radically unlike the past. Evolution itself has evolvedOne of the more extreme possibilities is directed evolution, where we actively control our species’ evolutionWe already breed ourselves when we choose partners with appearances and personalities we like. For thousands of years, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3083418/">hunters arranged marriages</a> to seek good hunters for their daughters, or grooms at least were generally <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-004-1014-8">expected to seek approval</a>Similar traditions survive elsewhere today- In other words, we breed our own children

VIII. Strange new possibilities

Going forward, we’ll do this with far more knowledge of what we’re doing and more control over the genes of our descendants.We can already screen ourselves and <a href="https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/embryo-screening-and-the-ethics-of-human-60561/#:%7E:text=Also%20known%20as%20embryo%20screening,forced%20to%20make%20the%20difficult">embryos for genetic diseases</a>.We could potentially choose embryos for desirable genes, as we do with crops.Direct editing of the DNA of a human embryo has been <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00673-1">proven to be possible </a> — but seems morally abhorrent, effectively turning children into subjects of medical experimentation.And yet, if such technologies were proven safe, I could imagine a future where you’d be a bad parent not  to give your children the best genes possible.

Altering Our Children's Genome

Discussions of human evolution are usually backward looking, as if the greatest triumphs and challenges were in the distant past.But as technology and culture enter a period of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari-ebook/dp/B00ICN066A/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2QHPQXXL0YKXN&keywords=sapiens&qid=1645456786&sprefix=sapiens%2Caps%2C124&sr=8-1">accelerating change</a>, our genes will too.Arguably, the most interesting parts of evolution aren’t life’s origins, dinosaurs, or Neanderthals, but what’s happening right now, our present – and our future.

Conclusion

This has been one of my most favourite long-reads yet! As an A-Level biology student, I really resonated with the explanations and was able to understand how different aspects, some surprising, can possibly tie in to our development as a whole. It is a big question that surprisingly isn't asked enough- instead of our lifestyles, how will we change in the future?

Arguably, the most interesting parts of evolution aren’t dinosaurs or Neanderthals, but what’s happening right now – and our future.

My stuff

Future evolution: from looks to brains and personality, how will humans change in the next 10,000 years?

In the past, researchers have used accounts of near-death experiences to answer what awaits us when we die. The subjective experiences had common themes. A bright light, out-of-body experiences, and encounters with deceased loved ones. However, researchers recently stumbled upon the account of an 87-year-old patient that suffered a fatal heart attack while undergoing brain scans. This recording can shed light on what's happening in our brain just before death.

Near-death accounts

Researchers measured 900 seconds of brain activity around the time of death of the 87-year-old patient. The man's brain waves in the 30 seconds before and after his heart stopped beating were similar to when we recall memories, dreams or meditate. Before the patient's heart stopped, there were immense changes in gamma oscillations, responsible for high-cognitive functions such as focusing and dreaming. Theta oscillations were also observed, which is the state between wakefulness and sleep. These brain oscillations continued for 30 seconds after the patient's heart stopped.

The brain activity of an 87-year-old patient

A man’s sudden death during a routine brain scan has given researchers a glimpse of the dying human brain.

What’s Happening in Your Brain Moments Before Death?

It is the integration of:<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Best research</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Clinical expertise</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Patient values</li></ul>It is used to stay current and involves the process of self-directed lifelong learning.

What is Evidence Based Medicine

It improves quality care through determining:<ul><li>Practices that work and promoting them</li><li>Practices that are ineffective and eliminating them</li></ul>It helps health care professionals to find, appraise and use new research in their clinical practice.

Why use evidence based medicine

<ol><li>Formulate answerable questions</li><li>Find the evidence needed</li><li>Critically appraise evidence</li><li>Apply the research </li><li>Evaluate the results</li></ol>

5 step EBM model

Use the PICO format to structure questions:<ul><li>P -> Identify the patient or problem</li><li>I -> What intervention do you want to try</li><li>C -> What other alternative intervention are you comparing yours to?</li><li>O -> How will you measure the outcome? Ex. time spent in hospital</li></ul>An example of a PICO-question: <ul><li>P - In baby with viral bronchiolitis at the age of four months</li><li>I - does giving corticosteroids</li><li>C - compared to not administering corticosteroids</li><li>O - better clinical score and make the length of the hospital stay shorter?</li></ul>

Step 1: Formulate answerable clinical questions

Traditional sources like textbooks are usually out-of-date and too disorganized. Experts can be consulted. Secondary sources that can be used are "Archimedes", "Clinical evidence" and "BestBets". They give reliable summaries of evidence. You can also consult online electronic bibliographic databases. They search thousands of journals in a short time.

Step 2: Finding the evidence

<ol><li>Formulate a question using the PICO format.</li><li>Generate keywords - use the PICO format to generate a keyword for the problem, intervention, comparison and outcome.</li><li>Chose a bibliographic database:</li></ol><ul><li>Cochrane has systematic reviews</li><li>Medline is administrated by die National Library of Medicine in the USA. The version, PUBMED, is available cost-free.</li><li>Secondary sources named under step 2 can also be used</li></ul>4. Conduct the search using the boolean operators "AND" or "OR"<ul><li>AND = only articles containing both terms</li><li>OR = articles containing either term</li></ul>If too many papers are found, use PUBMED to limit the results.

Basic Search Principles

3 main areas to appraise:<ul><li>Validity</li><li>Importance</li><li>Applicability to patient</li></ul>The Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP) can be used to appraise research articles.

Step 3: Appraising the evidence

Consider the following:<ul><li>Can evidence be applied to the specific patient?</li><li>What is patient's personal values and circumstances?</li><li>What are the efficiency and risks of the treatment?</li><li>What is the cost and availability of the treatment?</li></ul>

Step 4: Apply the evidence

<ul><li>Evaluate your approach frequently</li><li>Do you need to improve any of the first 4 steps?</li><li>Is your approach a rational and acceptable management strategy?</li><li>Is EBM improving patient care?</li></ul>

Origin Story

Tainted Love: Why Love Is Trick And Treat

Future evolution: from looks to brains and personality, how will humans change in the next 10,000 years?

What’s Happening in Your Brain Moments Before Death?

Principles of evidence based medicine

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