October 28, 2007
Our Wellsian Future Posted by Alexander Burns at 01:05 PM EST There’s a new report from the London School of Economics that might give half of everyone’s descendants cause for alarm. According to Oliver Curry, an evolutionary theorist, “Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years’ time. . . . 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.” Those curious to know more about the “genetic upper class” can read, in this BBC article, that “men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, look athletic, and have squarer jaws, deeper voices, and bigger penises. Women, on the other hand, will develop lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, [and] glossy hair.” Leaving aside the question of what Pantene and Victoria’s Secret would do in such a future, not to mention all the “male enhancement” spammers, this prediction is just flat-out ridiculous. As the BBC points out, it’s really just a rehash of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine, except with the London School of Economics behind it. But Wells’s book wasn’t supposed to be a scientific prediction, and in any case we now know enough to resist taking such projections too seriously. Curry’s underlying assumption, that “sexual selection . . . was likely to create more and more genetic inequality,” runs contrary to most everything we know about evolution. Sexual selection leads to the development or exaggeration of specific animal features—the male mandrill’s colorful face, for example—but if there’s been any instance of a species electively dividing itself through sexual choice, I’m certainly not aware of it. Even if there were, it seems pretty dicey for Curry to assume that humans 100,000 years in the future will favor the same physical characteristics our pop culture glorifies today. If there is anything of intellectual interest in Curry’s theories, it is probably his emphatic assertion that humans are still subject to evolutionary pressures. One of the major debates in evolutionary science is over the question of whether humans still face natural selection, or whether technology and culture have moved us beyond that point. Curry—who, incidentally, is not trained as a scientist—seems to have made up his mind on this question. Indeed, he apparently thinks technology will serve as an evolutionary force of its own. This is an intriguing notion, but I’ll wait for someone else to articulate it before taking it seriously.
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