Are humans still evolving essays

Are humans still evolving essays In order to figure out if humans are still evolving scientists have to ask, do humans have variety in their gene pool, and is there a differential fitness to these variants? Everybody, whether or not they believe humans are still evolving, agree that we have variety. Between genetic drift and when Eyre-Walker and Keightley claimed in 1999 that humans, on average, had 4.2 amino acid altering mutations every generation since humans separated from chimpanzees it is unreasonable to claim that we dont have variety between humans. People who dont believe humans are still evolving are basing their theory on selective pressure. They believe with all the modern technology, medicine, food distribution, heating and cooling, etc, there are no longer any selective pressures in our lives to separate the fit from the unfit. They believe that the capabilities within our modern society and speed with which our culture adapts to change has completely overruled the process of natural selection and ther efore stopped natural selection. However, there are several problems with these claims that could prove these people wrong. These problems are placed into 4 different classes of error including: 1. Misunderstanding the nature and power of natural selection, 2. Forgetting other forms of selection, such as sexual selection, 3. Assumptions about the entire world from the specific first world lifestyles of the very people claiming this, and 4. Mistakenly taking the term current evolution to mean that evolution must happen before our eyes. The first class comes from the assumption that selection only works on the more obvious visible traits and little else. We perceive certain things as good attributes (sharp teeth, strong muscles, speed, and intelligence) and others as bad attributes (obesity, skin prone to sunburn, and uncoordination) and we decide that anything t ...