Are We Looking at the Changing Face of Human Evolution?

I was watching one of those political shows on TV. They were talking about how President Obama has brought science back into the policy-making arena, about global warming, stem cells, and one of the guests started talking about the theory of evolution. It got me thinking about that chart they used to hang in school showing the proposed physical progression of human beings.

On the far left side, dating back 10 or so million years, are these ape-like creatures, hunched forward, with their knuckles dragging on the ground. The skull is oblong-shaped in the horizontal direction, with the jaw, mouth and chin way out in front.

The next picture in the sequence shows the creature standing up on two legs, in a little more erect position. The arms are long and thick, and as big around as the legs. The fingers and toes are long and curved and the teeth are big and sharp.

The next phase finds the man standing straighter still, and the face starting to elongate.

As we continue to progress, the creature becomes increasingly more upright, including the shape of his head, which shifts from “more horizontal” to “more vertical,” and he begins carrying sticks and spears, which he uses as weapons and tools.

Starting around two-and-a-half million years ago, the brow ridge disappears, the forehead rises straight up, the skull becomes rounder, the teeth get smaller, the arms shorter – the legs longer, and the brain bigger.

We eventually end up at what they call “modern man,” whose physical characteristics are: a rounder head, a smaller brow, sunken cheek bones and a more prominent chin, smaller teeth, a smaller chest. Modern man is taller than his ancestors.

They call us “modern man,” but our looks  haven’t (apparently) changed that much over a period of 200,000 years … until now.

If our discovery methods and analytical techniques continue to advance and improve then future anthropologists may look at this as a time period when the physical characteristics of human beings changed – fairly drastically. Peoples’ lips became puffier, their chins and cheeks became more contoured, their eyebrows lifted up, their foreheads smoothed out, and their faces seemed frozen and expressionless. Women’s breasts got markedly bigger, men’s parts (allegedly) got “larger,” and there were less bald people though strangely their hair seemed sewn-on.

Evidence for each of the physical changes that have taken place over the course of our evolution has been provided through the fossil record, just as evidence for the changes that are taking place in our physical appearance today will be seen in films and through the photographic record.

In evolutionary terms, the changes that occur and take place – both on the inside and the outside – are sometimes referred to as “mutations.” They can be caused by a variety of reasons, such as genes changing positions, the rearrangement of proteins, or by external sources including viruses, bacteria, parasites and carcinogens. In the present case, the mutations to our appearance are being caused by plastic surgeons.

I have no issues with this. I believe in free will, and I support people choosing paths and ways that suit them. It does make me wonder, though, if there may have been some odd cultural factors that contributed to some of our earlier mutations, and if successive generations of wide-eyed, puffy-lipped people will result in those characteristics taking hold in the genetic code, making wide-eyed and puffy lipped the new human norm.