Lately as I look around and ponder and then I wonder if the human species has outpaced our evolutionary capabilities

The first time I read Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species that he published in 1859, a scant 150 years ago (more on that later) I was stuck with the simplicity of his ideas. He formed most of his theory’s at a young age, he was only 26 when he first landed on San Cristobal Island, that is part of the Galapagos archipelago, in 1835. His observations at the time included finches, now commonly known as Darwin's finches. The islands are home to 13 species of finches, all of which have adapted to their habitat. The size and shape of their bills reflect their specializations. Darwin noted the similarities and differences in his journal and organized the finches as part of his collection. Indeed it was the finches that got the whole thing started. Another fact that struck me was that he was invited on the trip when he was still a young university graduate, still planning a career as a clergyman. Imagine how much longer it may have been before someone else figured it out. He called the Beagle (the ship he rode on the 5 year voyage) "by far the most important event in my life," saying it "determined my whole career." By the time he returned, he was an established naturalist, he had reached rock star status in London for the astonishing collections of specimens he had sent ahead. This trip also changed him from a promising young observer into a probing theorist. That just goes to prove we should always be looking for opportunities, he was going to be a clergy and through sheer chance became who he was – NEVER close yourself off to chance opportunities!


So Darwin postulated about how, over time, species adapted to meet the requirements of their surroundings, habitat to live in, what food that was available and how could we eat it and so on. So that got me to pondering, what is the difference between real time, (our hectic lives) evolutionary time, (the time it might take to grow three more fingers to accommodate the new electronic gadgets) and geologic time, (that time that it takes to literally reshape the planet we live on). Two of these are somewhat constants, at least when compared to our fast paced and crazy lives and one if nothing more than our reaction to the other two. If you span back through time and follow the fossil record our genus, Homo, has been around for 2.3 – 2.5 million years. We have gone through several iterations of evolution since that time, it becomes obvious that the evolutionary time clock spins awfully slow. I mean just as a perspective early Homo was probably a toolmaker since handheld tools for cutting and pounding were most useful because the early humans were a smaller-toothed species and did not have the large incisors needed to rip flesh from other prey animals. Our early selves were actually some pretty ingenious folks, imagine that conversation, hey guys we have to make some tools, only until evolutionary time can accommodate some bigger teeth for us. The one talking that trash around the camp fire was indeed the village idiot, oh wait a minute the actual fire making techniques were developed by Neolithic man 7000 BC. And whilst earlier hominids would have maintained blazes caused by fortuitous ignition, Neolithic man ignited fires with friction producing tools such as drills or saws or with sparks generated from pyrite struck against flint.
So I hope by now you are getting the point that evolution happens on a relatively slow scale and that is what is what I find so alarming. Up until maybe 150 years ago most folks lived in the country and produced all that they needed. They grew crops and raised livestock and hunted wild critters. We lived in small groups in the cities and even smaller groups in the country, settlements they were called. Not many people lived in areas where there were no other families or people around. Our interaction with other people is a big part of who we are as humans. Besides that there was, and still is to an even larger degree, a complex web of interaction with others for our own well being. Think for a moment about all the people involved in you getting through the day. The guy milking cows and running chicken farms just for your breakfast. We need each other and we ALWAYS have in order to get by in this life. So what is different, think about how complicated things are now in this global economy, a great number of things directly impacting my life are tied to a peasant in the hills of northern China or some crazy assed dictator in a far away land with his hand on the controls of the oil valves. So tenuous are our lives and yet we tumble headlong into the whatever is next without much time spent pondering what does it actually take for us to survive in this day and age. I am just talking about the external relationships that have to operate correctly and have not touched on the human’s abilities.


So back to evolutionary time for a moment, over the last 2 million years or so we have not really evolved nearly as much as those little finches could and did in a much shorter amount of time. We have not changed the shape of our mouths, although we did eventually get better teeth, we have not changed our basic form, no additional appendages or that ever useful third eye. Our brain size has not really changed much and for the life of me I can’t figure out how we are going to make it at the current pace that humans are progressing. So since the industrial revolution the human track has accelerated at a pace that I think might just be faster than our evolutionary ability to keep up. We keep inventing new and better things, then marketing groups are tasked to convince us we can’t get through the day with this gadget or that diet pill or this television show. Speaking from the evolutionary perspective how can humans adapt so quickly to massive changes in such a short period of time, we have to keep in mind that intellectual knowledge does not change evolutionary fact. Could it be that us humans just think we can cheat the system, there is no other species that has successfully traveled through such a quick change in their surroundings. All of the dinosaurs did not go extinct on the same day, there was a quick change in the environment and they slowly died out (using our time and not evolutionary time) because of their inability to adapt quickly. There are many thoughts about how long that took but some believe it took at least one generation.


Now look at the last 100 years and ponder the next 100 years, some of the greatest things in human history have happened and I can only imagine what the next 100 years will be like. My concern is can we keep up evolutionarily speaking, I hope so but I am convinced that intellectual knowledge (how smart we are) will never trump the simple evolutionary processes at play here.