Ask HN: Any chances that evolution changed us in the past 2000 years? 2000 is an arbitrary number here. I just wonder if we still evolve as a species. Is there any modern research regarding this? At what point scientists will say that Homo Sapiens is a thing of a past and will call us something else. |
Yes.
There are a lot of not very easy to spot mutations, so it's easy to identify some mutations that have big health effects. For example:
* Mutation to aloud drinking milk while you are an adult: approximately 4000 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance#Causes
* More/Less alcohol tolerance: I can't find the estimated date of the change, and also it's not a single mutation. The article says something like 6000-12000 year, but for me it's not clear that this is a new mutation or just that the "best" version of the gene become more popular. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_dehydrogenase
> At what point scientists will say that Homo Sapiens is a thing of a past and will call us something else.
That's a very difficult question, because there is no clear border between two species. In soma cases like whales vs hippopotamus, they are very different, the common ancestor is so old and most of the intermediate steps are extinct so it's easy co identify each of them. (In case you are wondering, yes, hippos and whales are very related.)
In other cases, it's more difficult to separate species. Some animals are different enough to be classified as different species, but there are more animals in between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
It's impossible to know when a future scientist will draw the (arbitrary) line to classify our decedents as a new specie, but we can look at the number of species we divided our ancestors since we split from chimpanzees 4.000.000 year ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution#History_of_stu... It's still a difficult question, the classification is somewhat arbitrary, and change from time to time, and not everyone agree, but let's say between 5 and 10 species.
So let's say as a rough calculation that we need to wait something like 500.000 or 1.000.000 years for a new specie. This is only an approximated number, don't think it is very accurate, but don't expect it to be soon.