Un-Natural Selection: Human Evolution's Next Steps
But natural selection takes time — sometimes millions or even hundreds of millions of years. Humans have only been around for tens of thousands of years, but we are changing the world so much that genetic evolution simply can't keep up.
Millions of years ago, the natural environment was shaping us into the species we are now. Today, we create our own environments, and that has its consequences.
John Hawks, an anthropologist and geneticist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, says we've created a lifestyle that is at odds with the one natural selection provided us with. Consider, for example, what ate when we were hunter gatherers, long before we started farming.
"We adapted to a diet that was much more balanced in terms of lean meat, in terms of high fiber vegetables. And by de-accentuating those aspects of our former diet, we've created a new environment that humans aren't real suited to," Hawks says.