I'm an evolutionary expert - these are the fascinating ways humans are STILL ... trends now
People may assume the human race stopped evolving thousands of years ago, but the process is still very much happening.
Evolutionary biologist Nicholas Longrich said that disease, predators and person-on-person violence had been largely eliminated as selective factors.
And, in a world where survival doesn’t dictate which genes dominate, the ability to reproduce is all-important.
For this reason, he believes that attractive traits - being tall and toned, for example - could become the new characteristics that are naturally selected.
But he has revealed several other fascinating ways humans will evolve in the coming centuries - including women becoming pregnant well into their 60s to counter the fertility crisis plaguing the world.
Our brains have changed size and shape in recent decades (stock)
Professor Longrich, an Alaskan-born academic at the University of Bath in England, said: 'We've largely eliminated predators as a selective factor.
'Violence is dramatically reduced as a selective factor. It still happens, but fewer people die of warfare or murder than at any point in human history.’
‘Disease is eliminated for the most part, but not entirely: coronavirus is not the flu, but it’s not the Black Death either. Every once in a while someone gets eaten by a shark, but most of the natural causes of death have been eliminated.’
Get ready for the 'hot generation;
Longrich said: ‘In hunter gatherer times you got two men, and one's pretty handsome but he's an idiot and he gets himself killed - he takes a spear to the chest or a lion eats him.
‘Now the woman goes to the remaining guy because he's alive, he might be a bit ugly, but ugly beats dead.’
But in a future where less people die, attractiveness will grow more and more important - particularly when people meet their partners digitally.
Will baldness go extinct?
With women increasingly choosing partners for their height - and both sexes choosing for facial symmetry, humans will become taller and more beautiful, Longrich suggested.
‘Women often select for height, and I would think we will have reduced levels of baldness - your bald readers may not appreciate this, but baldness may go extinct.’
Fertile seniors
With countries including Japan, the U.S. the UK and South Korea all already below ‘replacement level’, people who have lots of kids will drive human evolution.
That could lead
