I can certainly see it. As the cultures have intermingled all over the world, where we would originally have had tall Europeans like the Scandanavians, and the shorter cultures like the Chinese, (as examples) we're crossing into each other, and it's making short ones taller and taller ones shorter.

I see us having mental capacities and frantic energies of gerbils. No one has anything in the way of attention spans, and so many people multitask so badly its sad. I think despite the size of our brains, most people really don't truly use their brains.

hmmmmm I'm 60 years old and I am 2 inches shorter and a lot heavier than I was when I was 20. Are you saying that is natural?

Proof of evolution before your very eyes!

Maybe its just gravity and too many calories.

As far as I understand animal evolution, the only time you have two species that evolve from the same parent species (or one species 'splitting' from a parent species) is when the original parent species is composed of two groups which cease interbreeding.

For example: Consider a species of frog on some huge island. Water levels rise and the one island becomes two, and the two groups of frogs cannot get to one another to exchange genes. This creates the possibility of divergent evolution.

Human are unlike most other animals in our ability to move ourselves around the planet and mingle with other humans, anywhere. So there is NO reason to expect humans to diverge at this point - barring huge changes in our civilization (for example, maybe a return to earlier tech levels, or spreading to other planets and then a return to pre-space travel tech levels).

I'd expect that sometime within the last millenia, we reached a peak of 'divergence' with the 'races' on this planet - on different continents - and we were definitely still one species. From then on we've been mingling more and more.

I thought there was something amiss after reading the OP and there was.

The study was a single cultural study that means any findings can only be relative to that culture.

The subjects studied where Massachusetts women. Let me claify. If the subjects studied predominantly continue to have children at a young age (as we often see in the poorer less educated areas) and also continue to have children later than had been normal for many generations (as in the more educated working woman who puts off having children until later)then genetics will eventually compensate by beginning puperty earlier and the ability to bear children to a later age.

Part of the added weight is due to the extended period in which woman can more naturally conceive - more weight equated to easier conception and a body more adequit to nurishing a fetus and nursing a baby.

But a good portion of that weight will not be genetically affiliated, it will come from what is being eaten and bad eating habits which are so typical of our culture.

Had this been a cross-cultural study quite different results would have occurred.

The real value in this study is not that evolution continues rather the value lies in what we need to do to change the course of that possible outcome. And personally I think we definately need to pay attention and make the necessary changes.

I'm 64". Will I grow into my breeches? Or will women shrink into my breeches? The gap is welcome to narrow.

The theory suggests that genes for tall women will be evaporating from the pool. How so? Tall women will be less likely to reproduce? Why? What do we know about tall women that says they will be less likely to biosexually copulate than their shorter counterparts/colleagues? Are the tall women smarter? dummer? Maybe they have tall legs and since in the twenties of this century we'll all be slaves to the tycoons of the oil companies and computer manufacturing / software firms, and therefore constantly work while walking, running or standign up, maybe the newborns will be more likely to die during child birht by taller women, since the babies have longer to fall, and therefore they'll hit the floor harder.

What other reasons are there for all women to be reproducing less often than short women? They have long legs and harder to catch up to in a running position? Their long legs will be so sexy that all guys will ejaculate prematurely who are in the vicinity of a tall woman?

C'mon, people help me out here, please.

And not enough genes. Tightly fitting ones.

While the tendency is that an earlier species will eventually disappear, it is not in fact a necessity. Homo erectus lived during the same time as its evolved for heidelbergensis. erectus in Java may have actually lived during the same time as early Homo sapien. Evolution does not infer a need for change to survive, it could also show a change to better fit into a niche that is not filled by another species. Darwins finches for example. The common finch is not gone, and the original finch species may still very well still exist, but the other species evolved to fill different niches.

The direction we will evolve if uninterrupted is not very interesting. We might deal with anger better, resort to violence less, and have fewer of those annoying middle-age ailments like back problems. Right now our bodies are more adapted to the hunter gatherer set up than city living (but city living obviously works better for us.)

The next 50,000 years or so will get us very well adapted to this kind of living but if society is headed in the socialist direction it seems to be we won't see the differences quite so much because we will have already put ourselves in a situation where the old body plan performs really well.

The distant future is unpredictable as what we become will be based entirely on what troubles we face.

Most of you are looking at it all wrong. The Singularity is the next step in our "evolution". Not the clumsy natural processes most of you keep talking about.

Evolution is a generation level change. When we start altering ourselves within the generation that's something else altogether~

We are tool using creatures that shape our enviroment,and we will shape ourselves next. The Singularity is the next step in our evolution. None of this other stuff is going to happen. The Singularity is next.