What Will Be Living on Earth 5000 Years From Now?

Just watch the "History Channel"

Barring a major event, I would say humans. We are now at the point of preventing our own evolution so I would say people exactly like us walking around.  Unless of course we decide to change some things about ourselves and add an extra finger or something. :)

I'd agree.  Remember, Dinos had hundreds of millions of years, meanwhile Humanity has only a drop in the bucket so far ;)  In 5000 years, barring something crazy, I expect people.. though society itself may be changed.

Unless, of course, we've just awakened the blob-monster  

http://www.adn.com/2835/story/864687.html

Pleasant dreams  :)

lol Matt...we all know that's actually Armus, the skin of evil rejected by civilizations past.

I can definitely imagine humans still being here...of course, there will definitely be some slight evolutionary changes due to climate fluctuations and such.

Even if the worst were to happen due to global warming, humans would still be around. There just won't be as many of us.

Roaches, crab grass, and rats.

 "We are now at the point of preventing our own evolution so I would say people exactly like us walking around."

I'm curious.  Exactly how are we "preventing" our own evolution?

We aren't "preventing" our own evolution so much as tinkering with it.  We keep alive the "weaker" people through advanced medicine and  social welfare programs.  Without such programs the weaker would die off without breeding as they do in the animal kingdom.

I must say I can't stand the programs that talk about how things will be After We're Gone.  I'd rather not engage in talk about the death of the human race, thank you.

 Robert, does that mean you're not doing anything to prevent it?  Every little bit helps, you know...

Dennis, you've perhaps opened up the biggest can of worms of all.  Talking about limiting the human population is one huge taboo, but this...  Is humanity more susceptible to pandemic or dieoff because of this?

Warning labels everywhere.

Yes, even things we take for granted such as eyeglasses are probably delaying or even nullifying evolution of human eyesight...though one could argue that medical advancements are taking human eyesight further, faster than evolution would have.

Edited by Brian Perry - 7/20/2009 at 03:36 am GMT

Just think of the positive eugenic benefit of repealing most of our safety laws. 

From what I've seen of those programs, they typically have talking heads describe in glowing terms how wonderful it would be for human artifacts to "go back to nature".  The hell with that.  I want civilization to continue, which I hope answers Don's question.

Looking at our history, and where we are today, I don't see how anyone could argue that humans will still be here in 5000 years without a drastic change for the better over the next 1000 years.  Either destruction of ourselves, or over population and lack of natural resources, which would lead to destruction of ourselves. 

Like I said, rats, roaches and crab grass.  In 10 billion years the earth will be dominated by Trex sized rats and roaches, I think I just thought of a new movie, Michael Bay could direct it and McG could produce it.

This seems to already be fast tracked towards this, so IBTL

 "Warning labels everywhere. "

I think the people who administer the Darwin Awards might disagree!

The Earth's poles are almost ready to invert again. It'll be interesting to see what survives while the Earth's magnetic field is temporarily turned off.

1. Humans
2. Stuff that humans allow to live
3. Stuff that just can't be eradicated by humans

These guys have some ideas about the future.

Or maybe, it will just be the same ol' same ol'



Just replace the old disasters and travails with new ones.


And if neither is true...well.......then they're just two old classics worth a listen.

Will they play Chopin?    

Supposedly the earths magnetic poles are always moving around, so when they "flip", not much will happen.

The great thing is, WE HAVE THE POWER TO EXTINCT OURSELVES!  It's something like, 10% of the worlds total nuclear/bio weapons will cause enough damage to extinct humans.  So the rats and cockroaches would rule, and have modified forced evolutions due to radioactive mutations!  Dare to dream!!

Even not barring us killing ourselves off wholesale, statistically we'll go extinct anyways.  The dominate species always goes extinct eventually no?  Not likely to happen in 3000-5000 years though I wouldn't think.  But who knows!  We're one meteorite away from Deadsville (and sadly, Michael Bay lied, there's no way to prevent a massive meteorite from smashing the earth if one ends up coming our way) that's also a statistical enevitability.

There's two sides to the human evolution thing.  Science is inhibiting natural evolution because of eye glasses and what not.  At the same time, it's forcing evolution the same way dog breeders can force evolution of animals.  Richard Dawkins talks about Russians breeding Foxes to be domestic, and within 20 generations (or years, I forget which), they started looking like dogs as opposed to foxes.  Who know what we'll be like with science modifying us!  Clones, introducing enzymes to make our brains work better, or to spruce up our immunity... could be awesome!

Or could make us all extinct faster... aw well, you only live once, might as will see what happens! :P