• Question: How much have human beings evolved in the past hundred years.

    Asked by Maggie_for_the_win to Daniel, Hannah, Maggie, Ry, Scott on 10 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Maggie Lieu

      Maggie Lieu answered on 10 Nov 2017:

      Since humans have been around for at least 6000 years, 100 years isn’t that long for us to evolve. But one thing for sure is that we’ve grown smarter, and are building new things all the time. Planes have only been around 100 years, computers and mobile phones around 40 years, and the internet only 27 (it’s the same age as me!) So in terms of technology, we have evolved a lot!

    • Photo: Ry Cutter

      Ry Cutter answered on 10 Nov 2017:

      We haven’t changed a bit (small lie, we’re apparently losing our wisdom teeth and our pinky toes!).
      In the grand scheme we aren’t changing very fast now, because we have medicine and all the technology people aren’t dying as much. This means there is no special trick to surviving as a human so no particular traits are passed on. Like Maggie said, instead of physically evolving we are now technologically evolving!
      There’s actually something called Moore’s law, it says that technology will improve by double every two years. It seems to be true! When I was little my dad used to brag about how much memory his floppy disk would hold (2 mega bytes). Ten years later I had a memory stick that can hold almost 3000 times that, and now I have a memory stick that can hold 1000000 times that!
      Also, when I was born only a few people had a mobile phone. Now ,I don’t know anybody who doesn’t have one… I feel old now.
      Great question,
      Ryan

    • Photo: Hannah Middleton

      Hannah Middleton answered on 10 Nov 2017:

      Evolution can take many many generations to happen, so in just the last hundred years humans have not changed much at all. Humans do have a lot more technology and knowledge now, which has enabled medical breakthroughs and increased the average lifespan of people.

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