Most of us with an interest in evolutionary biology understand that it is mostly a speculative science. Genetics takes some of the speculation out of it, but only a small part. The fossil record and materiel science helps, but there are huge gaps in the fossil record that leave huge gaps in our understanding of life in the long ago past. That does not mean it is not science or without loads of interesting data. It just means the the people in the field rely on inductive reasoning more than other fields.

That said, there’s informed speculation and then there’s crazy talk. This story crosses into crazy talk.

Mankind is undergoing a major evolutionary transition comparable to the shifts from prosimians to monkeys, monkeys to apes, and apes to humans, according to Cadell Last, a doctoral student in evolutionary anthropology and researcher at the Global Brain Institute.

Human life expectancy has already increased from about 45 at the start of the 20th century to 80 today. Because of advancements in technology, which will affect natural selection, Last suggests life expectancy could increase to 120 as early as 2050 — a concept known as radical life extension.

In addition to longer lives, humans will likely delay the timing of biological reproduction and reduce the number of offspring too, according to Last. Taken together, these changes could signify a new type of human, more focused on culture than biology.

Well, life expectancy has increased considerably, but that’s mostly due to a drop in human violence and a massive drop in childhood mortality. In 1900, getting killed by bandits was common in much of the world. Dying from the runs was also common. It does not mean we are living longer. People in the 18th century who were not murdered, killed in war or killed by the plague in youth lived into their sixties and seventies. Ben Franklin lived to 85. Augustus lived to 75. Tiberius lived to 79.

Fertility rates have been dropping in the west for a long time and no one has a good explanation. The cost of children is one argument, but children have always been a cost. Similarly, humans in the West have been having children later in life. That’s not new either. Taken together, it could be nothing more than a fad in the West that will go away in a generation or two. Jumping to the claims about new types of humans is nonsense.

Last makes his case in a paper from the most recent issue of Current Aging Science. Citing other futurists like Ray Kurzweil and Francis Heylighen, Last theorizes about human interaction with technology, relying on observations of past primate evolution and biology.

Ray Kurzweil is a good example of someone who can have a top-1% IQ and be crazy.

According to life history theory, natural selection shapes the length of an organism’s life and the timing of key events to produce the most surviving offspring. In the “fundamental life history trade-off,” organisms must choose between spending their time producing as many offspring as possible or rearing those offspring to make them as successful as possible, according to Last.

And as brain sizes increases, organisms require more energy and longer rearing time to reach their full potential.

Human brain size has gone down since human settlement. There’s no science to back the idea that bigger brains mean longer development cycles.

Based on these ideas, three major shifts in primate history have occurred toward longer lives and delayed reproduction: between prosimians and monkeys, monkeys and apes, and apes and humans.

Humans already dedicate the most time and energy toward nurturing offspring of any primate species, and this pattern is becoming only more extreme.

“Human life history throughout our species evolution can be thought of as one long trend towards delayed sexual maturation and biological reproduction (i.e., from ‘living fast and dying young’ to ‘living slow and dying old’),” Last writes.

While physical needs fueled previous evolutionary changes, cultural and technological innovations will drive the next shift, which has been accelerating since the Industrial Revolution.

Simply said, humans need more time to develop to take advantage of our complex world.

This is just Tofflerism wrapped in bad science. The pace of change may seem like it is accelerating, but we can’t know how the pace of change felt in 1930 or 1430. If you were alive in Bohemia in 1620, life was changing pretty damned fast.

Considering recent advancements like in-vitro fertilization, egg-freezing, and even adoption, the mechanics of biological reproduction have radically changed. “The biological clock isn’t going to be around forever,” Last says — or at least, people can turn it off or ignore it for a while.

Today, and even more so in the future, the success of individual and collective human life depends on knowledge and economic prosperity. Passing on new and important ideas to the next generation involves a process called cultural reproduction, which redirects time and energy toward cultural activities, as opposed to biological reproduction.

In the 19th century, what passed for futurists used to write about how the Industrial Revolution was radically altering humanity. H. G. Wells comes to mind. Marx was so convinced he founded one of the most destructive cults in human history. I would imagine that the spread of settlement probably included cranks claiming the advent of farming was the end times.

As far as a new type of human, that’s the lesson of the fossil record. No species sticks around for ever. Some have a nice long run and things change too fast for them to adapt. Then poof, they are nothing more than weird looking marks on a stone. Others come along have a relatively brief run and end up as nothing more than drawings on a cave wall. But, some species adapt and then adapt and then adapt again. When you’re in the drive through at KFC, you’re not thinking of T-Rex, but he is thinking of you, through the mists of time, leastways.