Evolution Of Humans In The Last Hundred Years.

Now, im still a young (very young to some) scientist... well wanna-be as of right now, but ive come up with a little theory I would like some opinions on. I still hear the ol' religious claim against evolution "why cant we see it happening now?" BS. Well the normal argument against this (and one I use aswell) is of course evolution A.) takes a very long time to make drastic changes and B.) Doesnt always make improvments and sometimes the evolved systems make seem pointless and thus go unnoticed. But I have noticed a little trend in the last 100-1000 years. If no one has yet to notice, human beings seem to be much more physicaly attractive but less built for how we used to live. (Im talking about non-Americans of course. We seem to be devolving. Smaller brain capicties XD) We can also notice this is not just a cause of the cosmetic industry on current fashion. We can see small adjustments in human beings skeletal structures in the face, chest, hands, feet and some other areas. Again, im only 16 and have no real science backround untill about a year ago, but I want to hear others thoughts on this aswell to see the arguments for/against it. Again, please excuse my spelling. Im smarter than I spell haha

 

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Stay in school, you need a better education. Can you provide any links to back up what you say?

 

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What evidence do you have the people today are more physically attractive than someone who lived in 1011 A.D. ? It is only in the last one hundred and fifty years we have had the opportunity to record peoples appearance in a reasonably objective way.

So let us restrict ourselves to the last one hundred years. What evidence do you have that people today are more attractive than they were in 1911? Are you basing this on what you find attractive? If so, do you recognise the huge cultural bias concerning attractiveness?

In short, I doubt your premise is valid.

Perhaps you clarify what you mean by 'how we used to live'; identify what features we have lost that a) were beneficial to that life style and b) make as seem more attractive with them gone.

Who exactly is doing this seeing? In other words what evidence do you have that this is so?

Don't view these questions as being critical of you. I am questioning your idea, because that is what is done in science. If you can demonstrate all or part of your thesis is backed up by solid evidence your idea advances; if not, then it should be abandoned and you move on to the next idea.

 

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troll. That was real helpful and insightful. Go back to school. You need to learn the scientific method.

 

I'd think it is you that needs to learn that, you did not once provide any proof as to your statements, so where's your "scientific method" in stating facts that don't exist, or that you can't provide. :shrug:

 

Thank you for questioning and not trolling

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Again, this is more of just a thought than a theory. I need to do more research and further devolpe it.
When I say attractive I mean more physical built and skeltel systems becoming more perfected. This is more of a personal observation that has been shared by my mentor. I've also gone to UCF collage and some of the science students were interested in my idea.
Being in school right now, i have very limited time so I have to cut my response short right now but ill be back on tomorrow possibly with a little more information and have my thoughts more together.

 

Im not stating facts. Mearly an observation that I wanted to share with my community.

 

In order to base anything like a theory you need to have some facts to use to prove that your theory can be seen as "useful". Without providing any facts about whatever it is you are talking about it is only opinions you are discussing not scientific theories.

 

Then fine. I admit this is merley an opinioated observation I wanted to bounce off to my fellow scientific community.

 

And that theory can't stand a chance of being accepted because there's nothing to support it without any facts to back up what your opinions are.

 

Although it pains me to agree with cosmictraveller, in this instance he is correct, if somewhat rude.

You have had a thought - people are getting more attractive. You now need to investigate that thought and gather some evidence. A good starting point would be to define what you mean by attractive and suggest how this might be quantitaively assessed. Then, there may already be research out there that would support your contention - or equally useful, something that would shoot it down in flames.

Move forward from the thought to the action.

 

Yes, they do seem to be much better now, don't they.

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I have no opinion either way but I have seen mention of each generation getting taller.My cousins are taller than their parents so maybe that's a change over the last 50 yrs.

Also just throwing this out there,could it be since humans don't do hard manual labor like in the near past,that possibly could cause changes to the human body? Even jobs today we consider back breaking work have much technology to help us out,that wasn't available in the past.

Just thoughts like the OP.:shrug:

 

I believe some form of physical evolution has taken place on this earth.

 

You've already failed to define "attractive" - so can you define "perfected"?

No troll intended, it's just that both of these are incredibly subjective.

 

Exactly so. And they do not relate in any clear cut objective way to evolution, which is what the thread purports to be about.

There is no evidence that this has anything to do with evolution and miles of evidence that it has everything to do with nutrition.

 

I've become much more intelligent.
At first I was only able to crawl around the floor, and other people had to feed me.
Now I'm an important contributor to sciforums.

 

In the past hundred years we, as sentient beings, were able to contain mad cow and swine flu. (By contrast, Reagan did not suppress AIDS and look at where that got us.)

There will be 100 more outbreaks for the rest of the century, our job as sentient, self-righteous people is to control and contain them...

The #1 thing we will learn is two fold: just as much as we are able to contain we are equally unable to control. In 2101 we'll still have the common cold.

I am preferential to DNA therapy- a science yet to be deveoped. The science of immortality.

This is the pre-golden age of DNA modification.

 

Possible human changes over history is probably a fertile area for research. The first problem is getting accurate and objective measurements of human features for scientific comparisons. The second problem is separating those differences which are due to environmental factors (like diet and exercise) from those that are genetic.

However, I am not aware of any systematic research effort in this field, so don't be discouraged. It is likely that some important discoveries are there to be made.

 

Since modern human appeared, about 195.000 years ago, can not highlights any genetic change.