Science Questions

Why is it, that despite all this talk of evolution going on, humans have not evolved for the last 4000 years? Tushar in India

There are obviously different components to evolution. There's a component of genetic change and genetic change is still going on. There's also the component of natural selection whereby certain adaptations are selectively advantageous or disadvantageous. There's an argument that we've stopped evolving as humans because we've removed those elements of natural selection. Other people are speculating that we're evolving in different ways; psychologically and so on rather than physically. But it's an open question.

July 2006