Human species 'may split in two'

[applegrove]

Human species 'may split in two'
Humanity may split into an elite and an underclass, says Dr Curry
BBC NEWS

"Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.
Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said - before a decline due to dependence on technology.

People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

.......SNIP"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6057734.stm

[applegrove]

1. ....

:popcorn:

[Fredda Weinberg]

2. The definition of a species

To be distinct, two species would have to be incapable of interbreeding. People can choose whom they like, but that doesn't make us biologically incompatible.

[Duer 157099]

3. But the "dim-witted underclass" has already emerged,

and is controlling this country!

[applegrove]

7. I was waiting for that. Let's see how many people agree with you and I.

[Duer 157099]

14. eh, too many literalists here

but at least some of us got the drift :D

[cosmik debris]

4. It may already be happening

Suppose you were born in Podunk USA and your IQ was above average. It is most likely that you would ultimately move to a city and remove your above average genes from the Podunk gene pool. Thus the small remote backwater towns get dumber and the cities get smarter.

Or that is what the theory says.

[Cronus Protagonist]

6. Maybe that person would go to college, be a lawyer, whatever and...

Come back to be a big fish in a small, familiar sea. Which happens more often?

Just a thought.

:evilgrin:

[applegrove]

8. I didn't know that. Not my experience of small towns. Seem to be

a whole pile of dumb folk in cities. IMHO.

[NMMNG]

15. There are "dumb folk" everywhere

And, unfortunately, there are mean folk everywhere too.

[applegrove]

19. Agreed. There are lots of supporters of * in cities. Lots and lots of

them.

[applegrove]

27. I was refering to people with education who support and follow the likes

of *. They exist in cities and the countryside. They are everywhere..iin smaller numbers for sure in cities. But still. Some very priviledged and educated people should know better than to follow a mean cult. But they fall for it. In cities and in towns and the country. Naive perhaps more than dumb. Naive is the right word.

[BruceMcF]

37. Yeah, but he's confusing marriage and evolution.

For the specied to split, there has to be isolation as breeding populations. Not as marrying populations, but as breeding populations.

So making it explicit, it argues that this class system will involve lower class women never having the children of upper class men, and conversely.

Not after the emergence of the two species, but in order for the two species to be able to emerge in the first place.

And that, my deer friends, is just silly. As Bambi's mom said when they warned her not to go out grazing that day.

[unblock]

5. predicting the selective forces over the next 100,000 years

is about as easy to do as predicting the weather 100,000 saturdays from now.

i don't care what his credentials are, this is pure speculation, and not very interesting speculation at that.

[applegrove]

9. But it fits in so well with these political times. Come on... treat the

article in the sardonic fashion in which I posted it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. 'Sardonic'? You mean you don't actually believe it?

I don't either.

The 'author' (well, consultant for a TV channel) did his PhD "on the evolution of human moral sentiments", so I'm not sure if I'd trust him on the subject of biological evolution. Here's the take from the "Bad Science" column in The Guardian:

The strange evolution of PR

For example, Dr Curry seems to think that geographical and social mobility is a new thing, and that this will produce uniformly coffee coloured humans in 1,000 years. Oliver has perhaps not been to Brazil, where black African, white European and Amerindian have lived side by side and bred together for centuries. The Brazilians have not gone coffee coloured; they show a wide range of skin pigmentation. This is because skin pigmentation seems to be coded for by a small number of genes and probably doesn't blend and even out as Oliver suggests.

What about his other ideas? Like the one that ultimately, through extreme socioeconomic divisions, humans will divide into two species: one tall, thin, symmetrical, intelligent and creative; the other short, stocky, asymmetrical, grubby, and not as bright?

Dividing into species requires fairly strong pressures, like geographical divisions: even then, the Tasmanian aboriginals, who were isolated for 10,000 years, can still have children perfectly easily with white Europeans.

"Sympatric speciation", a division into species where the two groups live in the same place, as Curry is proposing, is even tougher. It would require that socioeconomic divides were absolute, although history shows attractive, impoverished females and wealthy, ugly men can be remarkably resourceful in love.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/story/0,,1928027,00.html

As he says, Bravo is 'a bikini and fast-car "men's TV channel"'. And The Sun (biggest selling UK tabloid) headlined this "All men will have big willies".

Quite apart from the ugly-but-wealthy and attractive-but-poor link, the basic question is: why only 2 subspecies? While 'desirable' (which can be a subjective judgement, and culturally-based, though some things like a clear skin indicative of a good immune system seem universal) people may tend to have desirable partners, the rest of us tend to go with what we can get, or what turns up at the right time, in terms of personality just as much as looks. Someone averagely desirable might get someone slightly better, the same, or slightly worse than them - in which case the next generation will also have lots of fairly average people. There's no reason for a single dividing line to open up.

In reality, if there were to be divisions in the human race, it would be more likely to be along religious lines - since there's a definite tendency to pick partners based on that, and then pass the religion (or lack) down to your descendants.

Overall, I think, just as "Bad Science" says, Curry has simply scored a PR victory here, getting his name in a remarkable amount of papers with a load of almost meaningless tosh.

[applegrove]

18. I posted this with popcorn. I knew someone would pick up the red state

blue state issue. And some would discuss how realistic it is to speculate so far in advance. Personally I wonder what the assumptions are in order for two distinct species to appear - obviously with one of them robustus: not using technology so much..and one very well fed and perhaps using technology all the time?

So - what are this man's assumptions? That the world the neocons paint is going to occur? Kill or be eaten (or become a shorter have not with no technology). Two sets of people who never mix (sounds like one of them will be slaves). How does this occur? I'm with you in that the world would have to be very, very different than it is today for such a split to occur.

Thanks for all your info. I don't think Brazil has been multimix Brazil for long enough to say that a universal coffee color will not be the result in thousands of years. Remember scientists give "natural blonds" only about 200 years and then they are gone from the planet. And of course there will be some variation. But we are allowed to hope for universal color which may stop some disease and perhaps some racism (only to be replaced by the obvious conflict that would have to exist in order for homo sapien sapiens to split into two if this guy is right).

I don't agree with this person. But I don't know anthropology enough to say why or what would occur. I just thought it was interesting and wondered if it would mean to the DU what it meant to me: "what is this person trying to say by saying there will be two types of humans in the future?. What are his assumptions?".

[soothsayer]

10. us heavier types are going to defeat those weakened anorexic

barfing types. Hell, we may eat 'em.

[applegrove]

11. I'm a robustus type. But I like being tall. Anyway..no descendants from

my line.

[MercutioATC]

12. Google "Idiocracy".....

Looks like a great statement on our times. I'll have to waid for the DVD release, but I can't wait to see it.

[applegrove]

13. I'll have to look out for that movie. Thanks

[bemildred]

17. This is ignorant drivel. nt

[applegrove]

20. Didn't think a hypothesis 10,000 years in the future was pure science.

I just thought it might be interesting to think about the assumptions. Because we are divided today in ways not seen for 135 years. Just an excercise. BBC thought it made for an interesting tidbit! Was never meant to be anything more.

[bemildred]

21. The assumptions are wrong.

All the evidence suggests that the male half of ruling elites have no interest at all in maintaining "reproductive isolation" from the proles, and that the female half will not manage reproduction at replacement levels without the introduction of "new blood", so the notion that this will lead to speciation is ignorant.

One may well see a massive culling of the human species in the coming years, but for speciation you will have to look for some other mechanism.

Ruling elites have always, as far back as one cares to go, tried to pretend that they are another species from those that work to support society, to grow food and make things, and they have always been full of shit on the subject.

Edit: no offense intended to you personally, this is just what I think of this sort of "speculation".

[applegrove]

22. Cool. I got it off Arts & Letters Daily. I think they put it up for

entertainment purposes. They do that sometimes.

Did you read the article that talked about farming and how people suffered more disease as they went from hunter gatherers to farmers...so it wasn't a better lifestyle..or healthier...but it probably came about because some people got rich off farming (the owners). If you can go back 30,000 to 2000 years ago and see consistantly that hunter gatherers did not so well as farmers..but just about every culture made the switch to farming..you really have to wonder how good humanity has been to humanity.

But this is a very "thin" article. Yes I agree.

[bemildred]

23. It's been a long time now, but I think the "agrarian revolution" was

most likely forced by the success of the hunter-gatherer way of life, they ran up against the ecological limits of that way of life, and in a most wonderful way, figured out how to change the rules. The notion that spending 14 hours a day doing anything could be either attractive or good for your health is ridiculous. It must have been compelled. The upshot was that the vast majority of us were condemned to work ourselves to death in order that our numbers might grow, and that a tiny, self-appointed minority might preserve the original human birthright of leisure and self-indulgence.

Hanging out with animals exposes you to health risks, Jared Diamond makes the point in "Guns, Germs, and Steel", that Europeans had an advantage because of centuries of culling for resistance to disease and alcohol. Not that we did not pick up a variety of nasty illnesses from the colonies too.

[applegrove]

24. Yes. And so too farming reinforced having a growing population as

women could be "fat" (carbohydrates) while nursing..thus get pregnant much sooner than as hunters and gatherers.

Still - this equality thing has only been about 200 years...or perhaps yes only 100 years in the West. You really have to wonder at times if it is not over in the minds of some politicians on the right. I'd like to know what their assumptions are so I could combat them.

[bemildred]

25. I think the "equality thing" has always been much in dispute.

The end of the story remains to be told. I am not that optimistic, I think entirely new forms of political organization are required, and it is not at all clear what they might look like. It seems clear enough to me that the present forms of "democracy" are political fictions, shows put on to obtain support for what is, underneath it all, the same old self-appointed ruling elites. It is true that some countries seem to do a much better job of it than we do here (USA), and that is a good thing, but it does not seem at all clear that we will be able to generalize that to the entire planet, or overcome the obstructionist policies coming from the USA and elsewhere.

[applegrove]

26. Yup. When you think about it..this equality thing has been around

for really a decade or so.

I'm begining to believe the man who says there will be a split in humans. We are a nasty lot humanity...

[Unvanguard]

28. What "ecological limits of that way of life"?

It seems to me that a more likely explanation is that those societies which adapted agriculture were better capable of slaughtering and enslaving their competitors.

Hunter-gatherer societies had survived sustainably for tens of thousands of years, and pretty much all the modern examples of their destruction have come about through external forces, not internal unsustainability.

(Have you read Diamond's discussion of this topic in The Third Chimpanzee?)

[bemildred]

30. Well. the premise of that idea would be population growth

such that the hunter-gatherer approach would not provide sufficient food, and that there was no convenient place for the excess to move to. Thus the interest in ways to increase the food supply.

It is certainly true that the agrarian societies were (usually) able to kick the "primitives" ass militarily, they had more troops, because they had more food, but the question was: "Why would a hunter-gatherer type of person want to be an agrarian slave instead?" What motivated all the collective activity to build the hydraulic systems that supported agriculture, and all that digging in the dirt? The answer is hunger, a fellow that was able to obtain plenty of food without much work would not become industrious out of boredom, and he would be looking for the exits if someone tried to make him.

Ancient history is littered with slave revolts, and it is worth noting that horse mounted pastoral societies retained the power to kick the city dwellers ass and conquer them until quite recently. One of the factors that kept the Helots in their place was the fact that there was nowhere else they could go. The other, of course, was military force, the threat of violence.

Edit: No, I have not read that one yet, but I would expect to get around to it eventually.

[Unvanguard]

33. Oh, you were referencing population growth.

I'm rather skeptical of that explanation, chiefly because there are methods of controlling population growth open to hunter-gatherer societies (infanticide and natural birth control, for instance) that their modern equivalents have been shown to use. Why would they have let the problem grow to the point where enslaving themselves was necessary?

Furthermore, hunter-gathering is pretty much the only social model that can survive in Earth's most inhospitable areas; it isn't as if it is incapable of dealing with scarcity.

We sometimes forget the timeframe involved here - for the vast majority of homo sapiens' existence, and for the entirety of its immediate precedents, hunter-gathering was the dominant social model, and it survived in much of the world until extremely recently. It is very far from unsustainable; certainly it beats our current rush to ecological catastrophe in that respect.

As you say, a social model like agriculture could only have been imposed by necessity, but like most other examples of social "progress" - industrial capitalism being the most recent example - I would argue that the "necessity" in this case was artificial. Again, that is what pretty much all the recorded examples of hunter-gatherer societies being destroyed indicate.

I'll grant, though, that this process could hardly have occurred without enough population growth for a degree of resource scarcity to enter into the equation; otherwise, domination by agriculturalist hierarchies would have been impossible.

[applegrove]

35. Maybe with holywood starlets and women eating no startch these days..

maybe the opposite will take place? Cause I don't think the hunter-gatherers could get enough starch in their diets to get pregnant if they were still breastfeeding. Thus the control over their population.

Isn't it all so interesting.

And disgusting if you think of the infantacide that was practiced well up until the victorian age.

[bemildred]

36. Well enough.

Nothing I disagree with there. There are plenty of village and hunter-gatherer cultures that show far better longevity and stability than any "advanced" culture can yet claim. But all you need is one culture with too many people and one or two "genius" innovators to invent irrigation and farming/herding and off you go. And there are plenty of examples of "primitive" cultures that got in trouble from having too many people. It is no accident that agrarian culture is seen to start in "rich" ecosystems, not "poor" ones.

[applegrove]

31. I think that is your answer. The hunter/gatherers got slaughtered or

enslaved by the more populous farmer based civilizations.

[Unvanguard]

34. Yes. Thus civilization began.

And all the "horrors and misfortunes" that we have endured since.

Can we get rid of them without getting rid of that first step (and the benefits it has finally brought us, after thousands of years)? That is an open question.

(Not that we can get rid of that "first step," in all likelihood - we seem to have trapped ourselves.)

[BruceMcF]

29. So he's looking 300,000 years ahead ....

... and it seems people are restricted to the planet earth.

The evolutionary biologists I have read argue that isolation of a relatively small breeding population for a sufficiently long period of time under conditions substantially different than those faced the by main population are prime conditions for development of a new species.

Arguing that a class system will develop that is so strong that upper class males will refrain from sexual contact with the lower class females ... which is what is required for his theory ... that does not seem to match any historical examples I can think of.

On the other hand, if we don't ever develop "warp" drive, then horizontal separation across space is a far more plausible scenario.

Anyway, the pretty, simple people on the surface were preyed on by the ugly, squat, more technologically advanced species living underground, so it seems that the he's even got his HG Wells confused.

[applegrove]

32. Good points!

[ThomCat]

38. An economist guessing what Biology will be like in 100k years.

Right, because economists are ever right about anything. :eyes:

[dback]

39. Sounds like Elves vs. Orcs

Where do the Hobbits fit into things?

[enki23]

40. fucking dumbass

.