Empty Hands
Senior Master
No... Not even BIGGER noses & ears! Blood so watery that it just oozes out of the capillaries and pores?![]()
Blast it all old chap, now you've gone and upset the colonials!
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No... Not even BIGGER noses & ears! Blood so watery that it just oozes out of the capillaries and pores?![]()
I don't think interstellar colonization is in the cards...everything is too far away from Sol for us to get there -- I'm not expecting warp-drive engines or anything like that to make it likely either.I don't see a genetic partitioning based off mate selection happening. On the other hand this guy was talking 100,000 years, If we ever make it off this rock, intersteller colonization combined with genetic engineering could easily subset the species. I don't see any reason why the human race wouldn't diversify to fit niches on other planets. You would have both spatial seperation to create the opportunity for speciation as well as intentional gene engineering for desirable traits for non-terran norms.
Am I making sense? It's kind of hard for me to make sense of it and put it into laymans terms, because even though I have a basic understanding of biology and genetics, I am not a biologist myself.
Since that point is made, it becomes clear that we are really all only 1 race of human, and moving more towards 1 ethnicity with superior traits then towards any kind of seperation of species. This is because there is no breeding association to seperate our "breeds" like in the dog world.
Attempts at creating a human breeding association has occured throughout history, however. Sterilization programs, Eugenics, Slavery, Nazism, and Aristocracies all hold such examples. But, they all have failed, and will continue to. Why?
It is interesting when you compare humans and dogs in this way. For various reasons associated with diet and general health the human species is becoming physically superior with no clear indications of 'race', however you want to define them. We are moving toward a 'new' version of ourselves. With dogs you see a different movement. It appears to be a regression toward Canis lupis when they are left to breed without interference. Interesting.
If I had to guess, it's in the communication skills. Other animals don't have the capability to discover a better way to do it and then transmit that information to the rest of the species. Or maybe they do, but not to the same degree.
Inbred populations like Iceland and the Amish pay a high price for their "purity" in birth defects and mental retardation.
Royalty and aristocracy in different era's experienced the same thing. Among other mentioned reasons, this is why a forced eugenics program where a social elite try's to maintain a "pure" race will ultimatily always fail. Diversity allows us to adapt, and adapting is how we stay alive.
What about technology? Why couldn't gene technology be used to create diversity in the future? For a group of people who could afford it, it doesn't seem like its out of the question.
The seed companies have been promising this since about the 1970s. They talked about "Diversity in time rather than diversity in space." They've inserted and modified genes and now create whole artificial chromosomes for corn.What about technology? Why couldn't gene technology be used to create diversity in the future? For a group of people who could afford it, it doesn't seem like its out of the question.
At this point, things going as they are, I believe it is overly, and perhaps even naively, optimistic to believe the human race will last more than one or two more generations at best.
It's not a "new technology" that will create the two races, it's "low-tech" that will keep them together.....BEER! Helping ugly people reproduce since people first came together. LOL
What about technology? Why couldn't gene technology be used to create diversity in the future? For a group of people who could afford it, it doesn't seem like its out of the question.