Will humans ever divide into different species?
It could happen, given enough time and separation, but it will take a lot of both. One scenario would be if one group humans colonized another planet and never came back to Earth. After hundreds of thousands of years (probably more like a million) they would most likely have become a similar, but separate species from the rest of the peoples on earth. And in the mean time, the people left on Earth could have evolved too. But, it’s not something you can predict with any certainty.
At the current rate we are going, I’d say no. As technology becomes more advanced, environmental difference between regions (and even planets, in the far future) will likely have little impact on how we live our daily lives. But as stated before, there is really no way we can say anything for certain.
I agree with the first poster, than it would take something akin to separate colonies on different planets. However, there was an article about this on the BBC not too long ago. Oliver Curry, an evolutionary theorist at the London School of Economics, made the controversial claim that within a 100,000 years, humanity will have split into two sub-species – an attractive, intelligent “elite”, and a squat, dim-witted “underclass”. He claims that the split will be engineered by a more selective choice of mates. The article is very interesting, link below.
I agree with the second post. The environment has less effect because of technological advances. However, human beings are always evolving and adapting to their conditions whether culturally constructed or natural. Many of the selective factors on our evolution are cultural. If one has a lower tolerance to pollution that person may not make it to breeding age because of cancer or other diseases. This is how the population is gradually evolving to meet human selective pressures. I think that another example is the imprisonment of criminals and the mentally ill. Both of these groups are isolated from society, effectively limiting reproduction by these individuals. In effect, we are domesticating ourselves by selecting against aggressive or mentally abnormal behavior. There is also the idea that cross continent crossing of human genetics relies entirely on modern transportation. If this transportation ceased to exist, world gene pools would develop based on current continental populations and divergent evolution would begin.
I couldn’t find the article online anymore, but it was similar to what hovers mentioned. It was an article explaining that in the future, advancements in medicine and technology would create two different types of humans. One type would be genetically perfect, immune to disease, while another type would “resist” these advancements for personal or religious reasons. This in effect would create a new type of human.
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