Recent and Current Human Evolution
Natural selection occurs in modern human populations. For example, the population which is at risk of the severe debilitating disease kuru has significant over-representation of an immune variant of the prion protein gene G127V versus non-immune alleles. The frequency of this genetic variant is due to the survival of immune persons. Other reported evolutionary trends in other populations include a lengthening of the reproductive period, reduction in cholesterol levels, blood glucose and blood pressure.
It has been argued that human evolution has accelerated since, and as a result of, the development of agriculture and civilization some 10,000 years ago. It is claimed that this has resulted in substantial genetic differences between different current human populations. Lactase persistence is an example of such recent evolution.
Read more about this topic: Human Evolution
Famous quotes containing the words current, human and/or evolution:
“Through this broad street, restless ever,
Ebbs and flows a human tide,
Wave on wave a living river;
Wealth and fashion side by side;
Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“Thou majestic in thy sadness
at the doubtful doom of human kind;”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.”
—Owen Barfield (b. 1898)