Is human evolution speeding up?

Researchers say people are evolving more rapidly than in the distant past.

By Randolph E. Schmid

updated 5:05 p.m. ET, Mon., Dec. 10, 2007
WASHINGTON - Science-fiction writers have suggested a future Earth populated by a blend of all races into a common human form. In real life, the reverse seems to be happening.

People are evolving more rapidly than in the distant past, with residents of various continents becoming increasingly different from one another, researchers say.

“I was raised with the belief that modern humans showed up 40,000 to 50,000 years ago and haven’t changed,” explained Henry C. Harpending, an anthropologist at the University of Utah.“The opposite seems to be true.”

“Our species is not static,” Harpending added in a telephone interview.

That doesn’t mean we should expect major changes in a few generations, though. Evolution on that scale occurs over thousands, even millions of years.

Harpending and colleagues looked at the DNA of humans and that of chimpanzees, our closest relatives, they report in this week’s online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

If evolution had been proceeding steadily at the current rate since humans and chimps separated 6 million years ago, there should be 160 times more differences than the researchers found.

That indicates that human evolution had been slower in the distant past, Harpending explained.

“Rapid population growth has been coupled with vast changes in cultures and ecology, creating new opportunities for adaptation,” the study says. “The past 10,000 years have seen rapid skeletal and dental evolution in human populations, as well as the appearance of many new genetic responses to diet and disease.”

And they found that different changes are occurring in Africans, Asians and Europeans.

Signs of acceleration
Most anthropologists agree that humans first evolved in Africa and then spread to other areas, and the lighter skin color of Europeans and Asians is generally attributed to selection to allow more absorption of vitamin D in colder climate where there is less sun.

The increase in human population from millions to billions in the last 10,000 years accelerated the rate of evolution because “we were in new environments to which we needed to adapt,” Harpending adds. “And with a larger population, more mutations occurred.”

In another example, the researchers noted that in China and most of Africa, few people can digest fresh milk into adulthood. Yet in Sweden and Denmark, the gene that makes the milk-digesting enzyme lactase remains active, so almost everyone can drink fresh milk, explaining why dairy farming is more common in Europe than in the Mediterranean and Africa, Harpending says.

The researchers studied 3.9 million gene snippets from 270 people in four populations: Han Chinese, Japanese, Africa’s Yoruba tribe and Utah Mormons who traced their ancestry to northern Europe. The samples were collected through the International HapMap Consortium.

Richard Potts, director of the human origins program at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, said he thinks the researchers reasoning regarding rapid adaptive change is plausible.


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The study mainly points to an overall expansion in the human population over the past 40,000 years to explain the genetic data.

“Yet the archaeological record also shows that humans increasingly divided themselves into distinct cultures and migrating groups — factors that seem to play only a small role in their analysis. Dividing the human population into finer units and their movement into new regions — the Arctic, Oceania, tropical forests, just to name some — may have also forced quicker adaptive evolution in our species,” Potts said.

Potts, who was not part of the research team, added that he liked the report “because it points to how genetic data can be used to test a variety of ideas about recent human adaptation.”

Intelligence and natural selection?
Two years ago Harpending and colleague Gregory M. Cochran published a study arguing that above-average intelligence in Ashkenazi Jews — those of northern European heritage — resulted from natural selection in medieval Europe, where they were pressured into jobs as financiers, traders, managers and tax collectors.

Those who were smarter succeeded, grew wealthy and had bigger families to pass on their genes, they suggested. That evolution also is linked to genetic diseases such as Tay-Sachs and Gaucher in Jews.

The new study was funded by the Department of Energy, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Aging, the Unz Foundation, the University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin.

Interesting read

I disagree I came from ape

Interesting correlation of Jews and evolving intelligence.

Sounds loaded and spun to create controversy.

So, here we go.

Suppose your family tree was broadcast throughout time and culture as demeaning and rebellious and as obstinately aware of self willed determination.

Add to that, that your spiritual beliefs had been overshadowed and that your cultural heritage is prejudiced as lacking of a clear basis for worship of God and fellowship with all of mankind on an equitable footing, and you may too feel alienated, isolated and held in derisive and demeaning contempt by the balance of humanity seeing you as less than wholesome and honest in your beliefs and customs and traditions.

Further, you face an onslaught of advisement and sympathy attempting to dissuade you of your shortcomings and weaknesses that prevent you from knowing truth and the will of God.

Would you focus inwardly or redefine your role in society?

Would you find yourself focused on establishing your individual credibility and worth in light of enhanced threats to your survival as a unique person and or culture?

Could you see yourself as demanding of inherent aptitude to assimilate diverse cultures and express your quality of life with extreme focus and prejudice amidst those harsh perceptions?

What identity would you have that is honorable among men seeing that your spiritual morals and values are threatened and manipulated by those embracing an apparent affinity for chastising your history and culture as a mythical whimsy and folly?

Are any of these questions of viable perspective or merely conjectural opinion?

Does it seem to matter when heaping intolerant badges on your cultural community is a well trod enigmatic perspective that is apprehended as an expected affront at all to you as an ethnically labelled Jewish person?

To the Jewish people, there may be nothing new under the sun except personal endeavor and sacrifice for the protection and survival of their hopes and aspirations as a people awaiting vindication of their legitimacy and worth.

And to that end, they may determine to excel at overcoming their perceived adversity with the greatest defence possible and in one that is found availing the acquisition of material wealth in this world that has no perceptible weapon formed against it possessing any greater civil immunity from harm and detriment.

Scientific endeavor can be profitable and unclaimed as a discipline of endeavor and means to an end that can be of great use to any individual with cutting edge foresight and comprehension.

Frontiers are the borders of where a competent defence is best entertained.

The same can be said of the Arts and Finance. Or anything else for that matter.

Education and knowledge are important to the attentive and attended to as such.

The same can be said for certain Asian cultures and be quite evidently observed in individuals of Asian heritage as well.

But in the end, it may be quite disengenuous to suggest that evolutionary advantage is unique to one group as an natural adaptation.



Perhaps we are merely observing only cultural devotion to the self governance of disciplined behavior and the opportunities afforded those that adhere to striving to succeed, survive and thrive through their understanding of their respective environments , and not of any of ones' genetic predisposition.

Pursuing branding of diverse groups of people within any culture is best left to the marketing of each group and not to the casual observer.

It would smack of gossip and serve no purpose to brand anothers endeavor when one ought more to be consumed with the branding of ones own offerings.

How insightful indeed to witness such characterizations borne of an inconclusive and unapparent need or desire.


JMO on the studies that pursue such triviality.

wouldee wrote:



although this is an old observation...a whole book was written about jews by Mark Twain incidentally. it is an interesting read and quite serious it is dated but charming. it grew out of a magazine article he wrote in the 19th century. there are online versions but i'm not sure if they are abridged or from the magazine article. the book title is "concerning the jews".