The Observer: Is human evolution finally over? I don't think so. Natural selection is inexorable; just because we can't see it happening around us doesn't mean it won't continue to happen:
If you had looked at Stone Age people in Europe a mere 50,000 years ago, you would assume the trend was for people to get bigger and stronger all the time,' said Prof Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum, London. 'Then, quite abruptly, these people were replaced by light, tall, highly intelligent people who arrived from Africa and took over the world. You simply cannot predict evolutionary events like this. Who knows where we are headed?'
As we take more control over our own evolution, we'll change a lot, probably to an extent beyond recognition. But 50,000 years from now people almost certainly won't look like what we look like now. Part of this will be artificial selection, part natural.
A point made in the article is that isolated populations cause divergences from the norm; people mix much, much more now than at any other time in human history. But that's going to change; when we migrate to the planets, groups one one planet will be isolated from groups on another. So those groups will evolve (both naturally and artificially) in different directions.
(In a related vein, there's a review of Future Evolution in Salon. This book is quoted in The Observer piece.)
2:01:00 PM 
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