More info at http://nutcrackerman.com/2014/07/21/evolutionary-patterns-in-the-future-a-comparison-between-action-of-nature-and-action-of-man/ The speed of evolutionary changes has greatly increased in the last 10,000 years. The huge increase in population plus the adaptation to new ecology conditions have resulted in strong pressure to produce genetic mutations: for example, to allow digestion of different food sources, to create resistance to unknown pathogens or to adapt skin to new environments. With this recent background, what type of variations can we expect that evolution will bring to humankind in the next 200,000 years? We can find different answers in the action of nature and the action of humans.

1. Evolutionary patterns in the future:
A comparison between action of nature and action of man
Roberto Sáez Martín Page 1 NutcrackerMan.com
The speed of evolutionary changes has greatly increased in the last 10,000 years. The huge increase in population plus the adaptation to new ecology conditions have resulted in strong pressure to produce genetic mutations: for example, to allow digestion of different food sources, to create resistance to unknown pathogens or to adapt skin to new environments. With this recent background, what type of variations can we expect that evolution will bring to humankind in the next 200,000 years? We can find different answers in the action of nature and the action of humans.
The action of nature
Humans must be prepared to live a new ice age in a more or less near future. This will likely come triggered by a colossal volcanic eruption, like occurred in the past. For example, Yellowstone’s estimated potential power is 50 times the Krakatoa eruption and 2,000 times the 1980 Mount St. Helen’s. The last Yellowstone eruption was 600,000 years ago and formed its current caldera. Other major eruptions took place 1.3 and 2.1 million years ago. However Yellowstone is not the most probable super eruption to happen because actually it seems to be cooling off. But there are several other super volcanos on Earth.
There is a controversial theory around the eruption of Toba (Indonesia) 75,000 years ago. It says that the eruption reduced the average global temperature by 3 to

2. Evolutionary patterns in the future:
A comparison between action of nature and action of man
Roberto Sáez Martín Page 2 NutcrackerMan.com
3.5 degrees Celsius, initiated an ice age and created population bottlenecks. Today’s modern humans would come from a surviving branch from that moment.
The Toba catastrophe theory is not widely accepted. In any case, we can expect something huge in the future with global effect on the climate and the people. The recent eruption in 2010 of Eyjafjallajökull (Iceland) alerted about a real scenario of a natural disaster with wide implications. Not only to the climate but to the model of society: the volcano ashes caused the closure of airspace in the North Atlantic, and some scientists expressed this could go on for years and cause a transformation in the Western social and economic systems. Finally it did not, but the risk of recurrence in Iceland’s volcanos is permanent.
We know that this can happen in the near term. Several sources claim that the current interglacial stage is ending. We are crossing an interglacial period of 11,500 years, compared to the 10,000 years of the previous period. Fortunately this time our technological progress will prevent us suffering devastating scenarios as in past glaciations, where only 10 % of the people survived. Even populations remaining isolated in northern areas will not go through past patterns of evolution by adaptation to cold: they will have many resources to protect against extreme cold. What will probably be differential to those populations from the rest of the world is inbreeding. They will experience some physical change due to different genetic variations, like lower average height or higher

3. Evolutionary patterns in the future:
A comparison between action of nature and action of man
Roberto Sáez Martín Page 3 NutcrackerMan.com
average body fat . But this will happen not because of being in an extreme cold ecology, but because of variations associated with sedentary lifestyle and changes in diet patterns: synthetic food or genetically altered aliments.
The action of man
The depletion of the planet's natural resources was a priority issue in the late twentieth century. And it will be again for sure anytime in the next 200,000 years, considering the rate of growth of world population and the inequalities in the distribution of resources.
This recalls to what happened in Rapa Nui, where the population pressure caused the collapse of the society in the seventeenth century due to the destruction of the environment. They could reach a peak of 20,000-30,000 people in just 164 km2. The habitants consumed all the resources in the island. We know there were many forests in the island, but at the end there was not a single tree. Today, globally we are not far from reaching the maximum population density of Rapa Nui. Some areas already exceed it.
The man never faced a similar problem at large scale. And this problem is greater if it comes in parallel with a new ice age, since a large part of the arable lands will cease to be usable. Then the genetic technology will come into play decisively, in order to minimize the use of natural resources by producing synthetic food. In the present we

4. Evolutionary patterns in the future:
A comparison between action of nature and action of man
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are already seeing a search for alternative resources, slowly but steadily. Many developing countries have abundant resources and they have an increasing percentage of the world population. Over the next thousands of years, great migrations will accompany the new distribution of resources in the world.
All these factors have an effect on the frequencies of genes that previously existed. They will not produce major changes over intellectual capacity or physical foundations of our species: our increasing interbreeding prevents that. But definitely new several genetic patterns will arise. Some examples we already detect are: the shape of the head, increased production of Heat Shock Proteins in warm climate regions, or increase of melanin cells to protect us of the increased UV radiation.
Another important factor is the effect of boosting the human lifespan by means of technology and genetics. We have doubled the global average lifespan since Bronze Age, and it is 30 years longer than the average in the nineteenth century. We will experiment increasing frequency of genes adapting to unknown chronic diseases or mental health conditions associated with new lifestyles.
Out of Earth
I wanted to honor the name of the Out of Africa theory to describe a final context. Very likely in the next 200,000 years we will have managed to establish a permanent

5. Evolutionary patterns in the future:
A comparison between action of nature and action of man
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base on the Moon. This will function independently without needing any provision of resources from Earth. We have already begun to experience the viability of a closed biosphere: BIOS-3 in Siberia (in the 1960s-70s) and Biosphere 2 in Arizona (1990s). These are only some first steps of what can achieved, especially when the water found on the Moon can be exploited.
At time zero of the establishment of the base, the conditions of gravity and atmosphere will be equal to Earth’s to ensure adaptation of the first inhabitants. But the economic cost of maintaining the base will be huge. This will cause that, very gradually over the years, the atmosphere and gravity will become milder to save costs. This will cause an adaptation of the inhabitants of the colony which will be reflected in their genes. The evolutionary changes there in the base will clearly differ from the habitants of the Earth, like happens nowadays in some populations living at high altitude, with their organs adapted to low oxygen.
In these artificial conditions of extreme isolation, human evolution will be a unique and unpredictable scenario. Maybe we can get an idea by extrapolating the case of Homo floresiensis. The island of Flores was a lost world. Regardless of what time period in the Pleistocene, the only way to get to Flores was always crossing open ocean.
In this extreme isolated world, many archaic animals (extinct in the rest of the world), evolved to giant or dwarf forms by allopatric speciation. And this included

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A comparison between action of nature and action of man
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Homo floresiensis, which evolved from Homo erectus over several thousand years until 17,000 years ago.
It is plausible that such isolated population on the Moon can follow evolutionary patterns similar to Flores. Over thousands of years we can expected a radical change in the beings living there. Not only in humans but also in animal populations that will be carried there to live with humans. However, there will be a factor that will make a difference to what happened in Flores: the human action through genetics, to find the optimal fitness of the individuals to the lunar base ecology. Genetic technology will prevent physical deterioration due to the artificial atmosphere and gravity: for example, accelerated loss of bone and muscle. After thousands of years of evolution, the humans on the Moon will probably not be able to live anywhere else.
Conclusion
In summary, the ‘Out of Earth’ seems an exciting scene from the point of view of evolutionary possibilities. I do not see likely that our evolutionary process will cause large changes to our species on Earth. I do not see likely that we will give rise to new successor species. We have a high degree of interbreeding which prevents big changes. We will definitely have local adaptations and regional variations, but only a catastrophic scenario can ‘re-set’ our evolution storyline. I am sure that the next technology revolution will be genetics, but we cannot

7. Evolutionary patterns in the future:
A comparison between action of nature and action of man
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expect we will produce new species artificially: humans were always able to put ourselves reasonable limits. A very different story will be the evolution of an extremely isolated population on the Moon, with autonomy over natural and technological resources. Over a broad time frame, this can be considered a new starting point for our species and a key milestone in the human evolution.