A Different Kind Of Evolution

How humans could split into two distinct species thanks to our use of modern technologies

Until extremely recently, all of nature experienced the same basic forces of evolution. Organisms adapt to enable themselves to cope slightly better with the challenges posed by the environment in which they live. Over generations, random mutations are sorted by means of natural selection so that any mutations that confer a slight additional benefit are on average conserved while mutations that diminish adaptiveness are on average prone to falling out of the gene pool. Extinctions happen when external changes are so rapid and so significant that creatures don’t have sufficient time for this lengthy process to operate. For nearly four billion years this is how life evolved.

Then along came humans.

Since the largely accidental development of agriculture at the end of the last Ice Age some 13,000 years ago (that was made possible by changes in the genes of certain grasses) we humans have been extricating ourselves from many of the selection pressures operating on all other organisms and substituting home-made selection pressures in their place. As the pace of technological advancement has dramatically accelerated over the last few hundred years, we’re reaching the point where most of the selection…