Human Evolution Accelerating

Very interesting. [Link]

Time was, teachers used to tell their students that accelerating cultural evolution – the alphabet, the wheel, movable type, the steam engine, the computer, whatever – meant human biological evolution wasn’t important any more. It was too slow.

A blockbuster paper published online today by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences turns that old story on its head.

Cultural evolution diversifies the physical environments where humans live, creating a multitude of places where useful mutations can thrive. And greatly increased population density means ever more bodies where mutations may be selected for usefulness.

The result, says Greg Cochran, one of the authors, is that human biological evolution has accelerated, to perhaps 100 times as fast as in prehistory. (And that’s before we had the genetic tools to modify it on purpose.)

Lactose tolerance is only 8000 years old. Evolution in action.