The next step in human evolution: Race will be a defunct concept

Scientists and social commentators who have seen the future are betting on better times for our species. That said, our long-term evolution hinges on the iffy chances that our environment will sustain us.

The evidence that humans are evolving is not in our thumbs, as one might expect. It's in our teeth.

Francis Thackeray, a professor with the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, taps a model of a prehistoric skull. The teeth are huge and flat, like a 20 cent piece. "And no cavities!" Thackeray exclaims. "Our ancestors would sit in trees and eat for most of the day, mostly fruit and vegetables, sometimes termites for a protein fix." No added sugar, obviously.

Those wide, flat, troublesome wisdom teeth are nearly extinct, and Thackeray says this is a good indicator of how human beings have evolved. They could also offer a clue to how we will evolve further.

"There are already teenagers whose third molars, or wisdom teeth, don't erupt at all. We don't need them because we process our foods now through cooking, and of course we eat softer foods, which are less necessary to chew."

If the juicing and smoothie movement catches on, will it mean we don't need teeth at all? Thackeray guffaws, baring his own chompers. "I don't see that in the very near future. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to lose the wisdom teeth."

Futurists, and the layman, aren't too interested in teeth. What will happen to our brains, our bodies, our seemingly expanding minds?

Race will be a defunct concept

Some fanciful futurists think our eyes will grow larger and start to blink sideways in due course - to accommodate new dimensions of light and darkness in a world of advanced space travel and life on other planets.

Another school reckons we will split into two sub-species: one tall and sharp-witted, another short and, er, not.

But before we dump the height-disadvantaged in the stupid bin, serious scientists emphasise that predicting evolution is a murky game, based on "possibilities".

And our hyperactive post-millennial thumbs are not an example of evolutionary change.

Thumbs have been opposable and wonderfully useful for aeons - we've just been using them more in the past two decades.

In Japan, young people have taken to using their thumbs to ring door bells and to point with, both actions that would traditionally be performed with the index finger, reports a study by Motorola.

Is that evolution?

"Adaptation," says Wits scientist Dr Ian McKay. "Evolution is about mutations of the entire human species.

"We don't all live on an island together where we can change something, like ingesting juice only and eliminating the need for teeth over many years.

"We adapt to losing limbs by using prosthetics, and to bad eyesight by wearing spectacles."

So perhaps we won't have to blink sideways, but simply wear fancier specs on our adventures in space.

McKay and others believe racial categories are on the way out. "When we test DNA, we find that very few people can trace their genes to a single family strain. Mixing of genes means that eventually, we will start to look the same."

One indicator of this is US census figures from 2012, which showed that the number of biracial children born had almost doubled since the previous decade.

Matthew Buckland, founder of technology trends site memeburn.com, says many languages will soon be extinct. "Most niche languages will disappear, leaving three or four main Earth languages," he says.

The theory that we will become better looking is about our growing tendency to reproduce more selectively, as a result of birth control, improving gender equality and declining fertility rates.

By nature, human beings find symmetrical faces and strong features appealing.

We'll live longer and have less children

Brussels-based evolutionary anthropologist Cadell Last is bolder than many of his peers in spelling out his forecasts - some of which he expects to materialise as soon as 2050.

Last's theories are largely based on our extending life spans and changes in reproduction.

"Children born in 2015 will experience the next step in evolution. They may live to 100 or 115. Trans-humanism, which is about introducing technology into our biology, is happening, and will extend our life span. It is not just about extending life, but rejuvenating the biology so that we enjoy our lives in good health." Think Will Smith's character in I, Robot.

"It is hard to say what a transformed superhuman species will be up to, but I'm extremely optimistic about this," Last says.

Buckland says technology will replace defunct body parts. "Effectively, if we keep our brains and minds healthy, we could replace our entire bodies a few times over," he says. Ageing faces extinction.

Diseases such as measles, Alzheimer's and even forms of cancer are set to disappear in the next few decades.

Last writes: "Human life history throughout our species' evolution can be thought of as one long trend towards delayed sexual maturation and biological reproduction i.e. from 'living fast and dying young' to 'living slow and dying old'."

He explains this in a Skype chat, making lists with his fingers. "If we do achieve radical life extension, overpopulation won't be a problem. People are taking themselves out of the biological pool. It has already happened since the '60s. Humans, en masse, have shaken up our life history pattern.

"We are not marrying and having children. In the developed world, a birth rate of 1.5 children is already in place in Canada and Germany, lower in Japan.

"Now we have generations who spend that time focusing on their passions - art, writing, science. They are not mutually exclusive, but having children does impact on how dedicated to a cause you can be," he says.

And when we do have children, they will be "designed".

"Parents can pick and choose what traits and genes they want in their children," says Buckland.

We'll be superhuman versions of ourselves

Last's other field of interest is cultural evolution. This is more about how we will use technology and how children are learning and developing differently to adults of today.

While advancing tech does not directly make children smarter, it does (or can) change how they learn and how much they learn, which should result in more advanced thinking.

Our senses will become sharper. "Right now, we have a limited range of sensory ability: we know there is light we don't see in parts of the universe because of sensory access. With evolution and natural selection, we will be able to perceive the universe, perceive each other better," says Last.

Buckland says: "Every generation will eventually be smarter than the next, as they will grow up and subsume the latest technological advancements. They have at their disposal more information, at their fingertips, that has become easier to find."

And downloading brain programs, Matrix-style, is a reality.

"We will rely on technology increasingly to augment us, and make us 'superbeings'. This will also spark a backlash saying we are losing our human essence and uniqueness. To err is to be human, they will say, and we are increasingly losing our humanity," Buckland says.

"Our digital experiences will be fully augmented. Most people will see the world through a type of digital heads-up display via digital contact lenses or implants directly into our brains.

"Almost everything will be chipped and connected to the net. Everything is smart, from the shirt on your back, to your table, to the container that holds your food. The tech will be that cheap and ubiquitous. Every appliance and most things we own will be connected and talking to each other," says Buckland.

"There will be no wires, anywhere. Seeing a wire will be like seeing a typewriter - a signifier of an old era. Battery life will last 50 times longer than present day, and to charge a battery will take three seconds rather than three hours. Computers will cost next to nothing and will be fully sensing. This will give the appearance of artificial intelligence," he says. But this is not around the corner - perhaps beyond 2050.

Buckland says he believes medical science will benefit most. "We will self-diagnose health issues with advanced home scanners, probably connected to your tablet, and most doctor's visits and medical operations will happen remotely, meaning we have the pick of any doctor in the world, and medical care becomes more affordable."

Technology will impact government

Last says the days of religious organisations and governments are numbered, giving way to the global brain.

"The internet allows us to be one large distributed organisation, with no hierarchy. They will be free thinking with no centralised leadership. This informs both government and religion. People will flock away from authority, finding their own minds and ideas."

This is already apparent in both advantageous and possibly dangerous ways: crowdfunding of art and tech projects allows people to choose the concepts they want to support, while the anti-vaccination movement could see a resurgence of diseases which were previously eliminated.

Buckland reckons technology will make democracies work better. "Government becomes more democratic and fluid as we vote via our phones. Because it is so easy, quick and cheap to do so, government increasingly defers to its citizens in snap, digital referendums throughout the year. Government becomes better and politicians are truly held to account because they know that citizens can voice their displeasure and feedback collectively, much faster," he says.

"A challenge for new generations will be to ensure that they also engage their critical thinking skills to solve problems internally and originally, rather than only finding the answer 'out there' via the world's brain, a.k.a. the internet," Buckland says.

Save the planet, save ourselves?

Last concedes that his theories are based on some major maybes. World economic stability and the big one - whether our environment will sustain us much longer. Neither variable is looking good.

Thackeray says he believes we will become extinct. He says the sixth wave of extinction the world has seen will happen before we have a minute to evolve.

The Earth will surprise us, and this is what concerns Greenpeace's Dr Paul Johnston.

The environmental group's principal scientist, based at the University of Exeter in the UK, says human beings are "unaware of our own ignorance" of possible tipping points.

"If we don't do something about our environment, the result is not looking particularly rosy. As a result, there will be unpleasant surprises out there and we really can't say when or how climate change will impact us," says Johnston.

He says adaptations to climate change will affect human beings before evolution does.

"First of all, parts of the world will be uninhabitable by humans. Extreme temperatures, flooded coastal zones from rising sea levels, movements in vegetation, will affect where we can inhabit the Earth."

There will be less snow, but more and harsher forms of precipitation. Extreme heat will lead to a spike in skin cancer and hurt susceptible people in the same way as extreme cold. Projections show drought as well as flooding.

"For now, it is almost pleasant. Spring is coming earlier and earlier in the UK, vegetation will flourish before it becomes unsustainable. But there is a subtle dimension of changing weather patterns, like the effect on disease-causing insects. It will eliminate some insects but at the same time, disease that disappeared from the UK centuries ago, like malaria, could return."

Johnston says cutting our carbon emissions will buy time for future evolution - and he says there is still time . "The evolution of mankind, I believe, starts with people thinking about this and then acting on it."

Which is why Buckland predicts solar power will become the world's largest energy source. "The technology for harvesting solar will be so advanced that most cities will almost be completely off the grid. Cars will run on a mixture of electricity and solar, and it will be an unusual thing to drive your car, as opposed to the car driving itself for you," he says.

How our diet will evolve

We know that protein helped the caveman's brain development: they learnt to make tools and fire and it wasn't much longer until the iPad came along.

"We studied the carbon in the teeth of fossils we found in Sterkfontein for many years and it tells us a lot about the paleo diet," says Thackeray. "We discovered that Australopithecus africanus was not only eating plant food but protein, too. We scavenged, and then we learnt to hunt. Protein, as we know, is incredibly healthy and nutritious to the brain and it became evident in they way they lived. In earlier phases of human existence, you didn't find evidence of stone tools and arrows, snares or hunting," Thackeray says.

Pulitzer-winning author John McQuaid says he believes food has the biggest impact on how we will evolve.

He writes in Tasty: The Art and Science of What We Eat: "Taste and smell are the key drivers of evolution. That's how we learned to hunt and eat protein to survive. Billions of years ago, primitive life forms needed to sense what was going on around them, and to chase it down and to devour it."

"It hasn't stopped. Flavour is a cultural force. There seems to be an arms race to bombard our senses with more spicy, rich, intense flavours. Our behaviour is getting more complex, competitive, improving," he says.

"Here is how flavour can affect our evolution. Soylent is a super nutrient milk shake that was created to fulfil all our nutritional needs. The problem is it doesn't taste great. So will that satisfy our hunger? Probably not. It also won't affect food production and distribution, which is at its peak right now.

"We have more access to variety than ever before - because we want it."

Again, this is dependent on the Earth being able to sustain us. Insects might solve the protein problem. Chef René Redzepi of acclaimed Copenhagen restaurant Noma, rated the best in the world, has long served wood ants and fermented grasshoppers in his gourmet dishes.

In future, food shortages may see insects moving onto supermarket shelves, replacing chicken and beef as a mass source of protein.

Buckland is optimistic about food. "Most food will be genetically engineered to taste delicious and be really good for us.

"Food in the city comes from 'farm skyscrapers' in the city, meaning food becomes more available and cheaper as it does not need to be transported from farms and is cultivated in more controlled environments."

Last says: "The thing about prediction is that the human species is, by nature, unpredictable. We know where the moon is going to be next week, but what human beings will do is nearly impossible to say."