Scientist: Human race will 'split into two different species'

[Herman Munster]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=489653&in_page_id=1965

The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist.

100,000 years into the future, sexual selection could mean that two distinct breeds of human will have developed.

The alarming prediction comes from evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry from the London School of Economics, who says that the human race will have reached its physical peak by the year 3000.

These humans will be between 6ft and 7ft tall and they will live up to 120 years.

"Physical features will be driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility that men and women have evolved to look for in potential mates," says the report, which suggests that advances in cosmetic surgery and other body modifying techniques will effectively homogenise our appearance.

Men will have symmetrical facial features, deeper voices and bigger penises, according to Curry in a report commissioned for men's satellite TV channel Bravo.

Women will all have glossy hair, smooth hairless skin, large eyes and pert breasts, according to Curry.

Racial differences will be a thing of the past as interbreeding produces a single coffee-coloured skin tone.

[H2O Man]

1. Already has started ....

republicans and democrats. We've just got to finish winning some more elections.

[Xipe Totec]

2. Did he make this prediction 100,000 years ago?

'cause I look around and...




:yoiks:

[sailor65]

3. H.G. Wells ripoff

except in his version the ugly ones are the "Masters."

[baldguy]

11. Morlocks v. Eloi

[blues90]

24. only difference is the Morlocks were the rulers .

Beside that at the rate we rate we are going there will be no 100,000 years left of mankind .

At this point I have already had enough of mankind that is the ruling class .

[Kingshakabobo]

4. I'm a hundred thousand years ahead of my time.....

:rofl:

[alfredo]

37. So which one did you evolve into?

[Kingshakabobo]

38. Let's just say I have a deep voice.........

:)

[alfredo]

44. Ha!

[Olney Blue]

5. Viva la evolution!

[Az]

6. This is an old story

I remember this theory surfacing a couple years ago. Even remember the same graphic being used. Must have been a slow news day or something.

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. Same newspaper too - almost exactly one year ago

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=410686&in_page_id=1770

Now, before we just slag off the Daily Mail for recycling their dubious articles, I have to say that a couple of days ago, I noticed on the BBC website that their version of this story had reappeared in their 'top 5 most read stories' list - pointing to the year old story. I assumed then that something like Fark had only just found it, and pointed everyone at the old BBC story. It could still be that, I suppose, and it's got second or third hand through to the Daily Mail, who accepted a new version of the story (it has quotes that last year's didn't) either unknowingly, or without caring. It could be the Bravo channel reran whatever programme they did on it - note it's the British one, unrelated to the American one of the same name - but frankly I wouldn't think their viewership was enough to cause it.

[Deja Q]

7. I see somebody else has read 'The Time Machine' lately...

And not watched that stupid remake movie from 4 years ago...

[sailor65]

13. I've lost track

of the number of times I've read it!

[mondo joe]

8. That was a Star Trek episode, wasn't it? At any rate, I wonder how Dr Curry proposes

we'd get and maintain the breeding isolation to arrive at 2 species.

[scarletwoman]

22. Yep. The Cloud City, Stratos, and the "troglyte" xenite miners below.

Yes, I'm a geek. :P

sw

[applegrove]

9. I like that last line. Where we are all coffee colored. I'm not to thrilled

about the prediction there will be a huge underclass.

[Gabi Hayes]

16. as opposed to, say, now? what percentage of the world lives in grinding

poverty at this moment?

and 'their' goal is to make the rest of us here as much like the rest of the world as possible

[applegrove]

23. The future coffee colour does imply that we will all mix in the near future.

Is inequality around the world worse now that say last century? Are there not more middle class people(even if the *WH is working full speed ahead to stop it). There wasn't much of a middle class in the 18th Century - anywhere.

It terms of sheer numbers of people I'm sure there are more poor now than at any time. There are also more middle class than ever before.

[TahitiNut]

10. Well, speaking as a dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creature, it'll be nice to have company.

:evilgrin:

[hyphenate]

12. Ummmmmm

If the human race is alive in another 100 years, it'll be a goddamned miracle, nevermind a 1000 years!

Yes, they covered that topic on ST: Enterprise. and we've also discovered that we originally had one deviation with the existence of Homo Erectus and Neanderthal--if we'd grown from Neanderthals instead of Homo Erectus, we'd be a lot more civilized species.

[Lint Head]

14. This is the most unscientific load of shit I have ever read.

:dem:

[man4allcats]

29. Ditto!

If this "top scientist" is suggesting that both of these populations or "breeds" are human (the article states: "100,000 years into the future, sexual selection could mean that two distinct breeds of human will have developed.") - my emphasis -, then by definition they are not separate species. An example from our furry best friends is instructive. The American Kennel Club officially recognizes some 150 different breeds of domestic dogs, but they are all of one species, Canis familiaris.

Presumably these different human "species" can interbreed and produce viable offspring since skin tone has taken on a "uniform coffee-coloured" appearance. No doubt the good Doctor would argue that such phenotypic differences occurred after reproductive isolation was already complete. It still sounds like a load of crap to me.

As for cosmetic surgery, while it may make penises longer and breasts larger or smaller, acquired characteristics are not heritable unless they are in the form of artificial manipulations of or naturally acquired mutations of germ line DNA. I guess anybody can get a PhD now-days.

[John Q. Citizen]

15. I'm rooting for the bonobos, but i don't have a great track record on picking winners....

[Robeson]

17. With proper diet, people could live to 120 now....

...they don't have to wait until 3000.

[Radio_Lady]

36. Yep. I've interviewed John Robbins, author of the book "Healthy at 100."

That's what he says if you can keep up with the diet.

[SoCalDem]

18. We're there sociologically already

We have the Thinkers and the Non-Thinkers

aka..democrats & republicans

[lonestarnot]

19. I think

evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry from the London School of Economics is full of crap.

[dweller]

26. and i think he posed for

number 5 from left...


:eyes:

dp

[lonestarnot]

28. Are the other 7 his bros?

:eyes:

[dweller]

33. i dunno, seriously would you want

that pic on your report/study? #5 is our present state, #6 appears to be an overgrown teenager, #7 a clueless, naked bank teller... and then quickly, like that, we've evovlved into an armless Troglydite in a potato sack. :shrug:

my my, the research that went into this. I take it back, Curry sees himself as #3, graced w/ a wicked tool.
dp

[Odin2005]

20. When people start using gene therapy to gentically engineer themselves there will be a lot more...

then just 2 species. I'm thinking of something like this: http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html

[GreenPartyVoter]

21. I could believe this was a theory from Victorian times, but from nowadays? Pffft

[eShirl]

27. ha! what a load

there are more than enough freaky people of all kinds to keep stirrin' up the gene pool

[walldude]

30. Middle Earth.

Orcs and Humans.

[Lorien]

32. Orcs and Elves. n/t

[HCE SuiGeneris]

31. Here we go -- evolution doing its thang!

VS.

[alittlelark]

34. This from a Prof of ECONOMICS !!!!

OK, that was just funny - in a racist twisted elitist kind of way.

[Radio_Lady]

35. Tonight, I kind of look like the little person on the far right.

Does that mean that there will be some people like me now -- small, plump, and pendulous -- still here in the year 3000?


Will we look like this in closeup?

[leftofthedial]

39. In this country,

we've already split

[hayu_lol]

40. One does not pay attention to Economists who dabble in ...

the social sciences. They know about differential equations but they do not know about people.

[Kingshakabobo]

46. Exactly! For instance, he doesn't factor in beer, vodka and viagra. n/t

[Evoman]

41. How can this be true....I thought the rich fucked the poor all the time?

[LeftishBrit]

42. The Daily Mail is NOT reliable, and the chances are that they got things wrong!

They are a right-wing sensational tabloid, well known for distorting science. I doubt that Curry said things in exactly the way that they are reported in this article!

The LSE does not just deal with economics, but with the social sciences in general. Curry is not an economist, but an evolutionary psychologist.

Here is a link to an article by Curry, to give some idea of the sort of things that he does. It concerns an academic debate about evolutionary psychology, and so is not nearly as exciting or sensational as the Daily Mail's 'summary' of his views. (I will try and find out what they're actually quoting, if I can!)

http://human-nature.com/nibbs/03/curry.html

[provis99]

43. Uhh, since humans haven't evolved at all since Cro-Magnon times

a quarter of a million years ago, why would they suddenly start evolving now? Seriously, there hasn't been a single evolutionary trait added since caveman times, as far as I can see, that affects all of humanity; at most we've had some purely localized variations due to environment, such as skin color or body shape. Nothing that has changed humankind as a whole. The big brains we developed were essentially our evolutionary undoing, since our use of tools have overcome the need of our bodies to adapt to the competition better. Big brains have made humans an evolutionary dead-end, ironically enough.

So this Curry twit doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

[edhopper]

45. A LeftistBrit pointed out

Curry is NOT a scientist! Predicting the path of evolution is absurd. Species evolve or don't as a reaction to their environment. I doubt Dr. Curry can predict what the Planet's environment will be like over the next 100,000 years with that much accuracy.