All good things must come to an end.
Sadly, Homo sapiens time on Earth is no exception,
and someone would surely take our place as the dominant
species.
But who? Or rather, what?
How could genetic engineering spell out the end for our
species?
What would distinguish the next Homo species from us?
And could the world's next dominant species not be human
at all?
This is what if and here's what would happen if
Homo sapiens went extinct.
Some of the earliest species of humans date back at
least
7,000,000 years. Back then, different humanoid species belonging to the
hominity family walked amongst each other.
They evolved, interbred, and way more often than not died
out.
Our species, Homo sapiens, arrived on the scene about 6,000,000
years ago,
but it wasn't until some point in the last
15,000 to 40,000 years that we emerged as the only
living species of humans
and not long after that we had settled on every
continent except for Antarctica.
Our social innovation and tool creation are some of the
factors you could thank for this.
These skills allowed us to out compete other species like
Neanderthals,
and this innovative nature could be what leads to our
very own demise when we create a new superhuman species
that could outlive us all.
According to the author Don Simborg,
our successors or Homo Nouveau would look more or less
just like you.
The big difference? These humanoids would be more like a
highly engineered version.
Homo nuvo would be created through the selective editing of
our genes.
Their genes could be manipulated so that they grow taller,
age slower, or no longer contract certain diseases.
And should these new humans not interbreed with us,
they could be on their own distinct evolutionary path.
Thanks to natural selection, they could start looking and acting
differently from us Homo sapiens.
Now while this could sound like something out of a
sci-fi film,
it could be closer than you think.
It took modern humans about
200,000 years to evolve from our more archaic predecessors,
but Homo nouveau could come into existence in a matter
of decades.
This could be largely thanks to CRISPR.
And no, that's not the hottest new kitchen appliance.
It's an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.
In other words, genetic editing.
Using this method, you could add,
remove, or alter particular locations in an
organism's DNA. You could use it to prevent and treat
diseases by making edits to somatic cells in your body.
These changes you make to your own genome couldn't be
passed on to your children.
But should you start tinkering with the genetic sequences of
your eggs or sperm cells,
you could be laying out the red carpet for our
successor species.
Next, Gen. CRISPR created humans could have genetically modified heights
and muscle masses to go along with their customized skin,
hair, and eye colors. And over time,
there could be an intersection of both natural and unnatural
selection.
Desirable traits could emerge as dominant ones.
These new humans could digest food differently,
be less prone to disease,
and be better adapted to the effects of climate change.
They could withstand more extreme temperatures,
be less reliant on nutrients and water,
or be more resilient to radiation.
This would be a particularly huge advantage should interplanetary space
travel be common in the future.
But things wouldn't necessarily be all Peaches and sunshine for
this future species.
Dangers and unexpected challenges could present themselves when we play
such a God like role in our own evolutionary path.
Editing just one gene in a single individual with the
hope of achieving a specific result could have far reaching
unintended consequences.
And these consequences could then be inherited by this person's
children
and their children's children.
Now, while it may sound fun to manipulate our physiological
characteristics,
it wouldn't be so simple to engineer humans to be
more intelligent.
There are thousands of genes linked to your IQ,
and they rely on many complex interactions.
Messing around with these genes could have disastrous outcomes.
Imagine more and more humans suffering from behavioral conditions like
Tourette's syndrome or Attention Deficit Disorder.
Whether on purpose or accidental,
these could be encoded by only a few genes.
And since these are hereditary,
they could be passed on.
But then again, as gene editing advances,
you could also see these disorders eliminated entirely.
These Homo nouveau could also combine their genetically modified traits
with Cyborg technologies.
They could retrieve information at lightning speed,
enhance their vision with infrared to see at night,
or become super soldiers by hooking themselves up directly to
machines like fighter jets.
Competing with homo nouveau for survival would be an increasingly
difficult situation for us mere humans,
and eventually it could be the end of us.
Of course there's always the chance that a non human
entity could surpass us before they do,
like artificial super intelligence, but
that's a story for another
what if?