Question: Why have humans evolved the quickest?

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  1. I’d say we’ve taken the longest. Apes started walking on two legs millions of years ago and evolved into us over that time, with the first human-like ancestor appearing about 2 million years ago.

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  2. I’m not sure we’ve evolved ‘the quickest’, but something happened around 50,000 years ago that showed signs of our current culture speeding up in appearance. Tool use became better and things like fish hooks and the introduction of agriculture and civilisation (10,000 years ago) meant that we’ve had better nutrition, become healthier and stronger – which allowed for better development and longer life spans.

    We’ve been very ‘noisy’ in our presence (our footprint) on the earth, but it doesn’t mean we’re the best evolved. If evolution is taken to mean optimising… Well, there are plenty of insects who are perfectly evolved to live in their habitat without a negative impact on their environment – I think most scientists would agree many humans haven’t yet ‘evolved’ to that level of living sustainably.

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  3. One of the things that has helped humans evolve “faster” is communication. Since we can share what one person has learned with others, we don’t all need to independently learn how to make fire, say. That is partly biological evolution, but that is also cultural evolution that is independent of the genetic code of any individual organism. A lot of our progress in the last several thousand years has been this type of “evolution”, even though our genetic code is very close to what it was back then.

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  4. I think David nailed this one. Evolution is never a quick thing, and a “fast” change is one that only takes a million years.
    But of all the animals, we are the only ones (so far) with enough understanding to guide our own evolution.

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