How People Will Look In a Few Million Years

Like all living beings on Earth, we continue to evolve. If you don’t believe us, remember the story of wisdom teeth: they were developed in our ancestors for eating solid food, but in our time they have become unnecessary.

We at Bright Side asked ourselves what people would look like through millions of years of evolution if the conditions on Earth approximately corresponded to emerging trends and probable predictions.

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• Height. Over the past 200 years, the population of developed countries has risen by 0.3′ (10 cm) due to improved living conditions and food quality. If this keeps up, the height of men will be about 2 meters, but hardly more. (Sources: Mean Body Weight, Height, and body mass index, United States 1960–2002, wikipedia)
• Our skin will get darker, as races will be intensively mixing. Dark skin will also become a better protection from UV light, which will penetrate Earth in abundance. (Source: livescience, nickolaylamm)
• Body. Human beings will reduce their physical costs by means of machines and robots. Physical strength won’t be demanded, and so muscles will lessen. Technology will become an integral part of our bodies, and various chips and gadgets will be implanted. (Source: futurehumanevolution)

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• Arms. The constant use of keyboards and touch screens will make our arms and fingers longer and thinner. (Source: the-scientist)

• Legs. The body will change to match the sedentary lifestyle: long strong legs won’t be needed. The fibula will be reduced, which is typical for terrestrial animals. This bone serves to rotate feet, which was important for our tree-climbing ancestors. But for us the mobility of the ankle to the side has become more harmful than helpful, often leading to dislocations. (Source: futurehumanevolution)
• Toes. Our ancestors used them to climb trees. In a series of Australopithecine, the toes have significantly shortened, and it’s probably not the end of it. Perhaps their number will reduce too. Land animals always come to a decrease in their number, and horses are the record holders. (Source: listverse)

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• Chest. If it becomes harder to extract oxygen from the atmosphere, the lungs will increase in size, as well as the chest.
• Head. It’s still unclear whether the man of the future will have a smaller or larger skull size than we have now. On the one hand, compared to the Cro-Magnons, the human brain became, oddly enough, less. It becomes smaller, which only contributes to its fast function. On the other hand, more caesarean sections allow children with large heads to survive. This will affect the increase of the average head size. Therefore, in the future natural childbirth may disappear. (Sources: mnn, bbc, vox)
• Teeth. Mankind passes to softer food. The number of teeth and their size will reduce, leading to the decrease in jaw and mouth size. (Source: naturalhistorymag)
• Digestion. Due to the abundance of easily digestible food, the intestine will become shorter. After this, the lumbar spine will also be shortened. (Source: naturalhistorymag)
• Eyes. If the mouth becomes smaller, the eyes will grow larger to compensate for the lack of facial expressions.
• Body hair. The need for it has long been eliminated, and body hair is expected to "disappear" due to it. The fate of hair on our heads is more difficult to predict. (Source: the-scientist)