(This is an essay I submitted as an assignment while studying Anthropology courses and wanted to share it on this platform.)

Biocultural Evolution: Refers to the anatomical and technological adaptations that occur in a species to face environmental calamities and lack of resources and therefore be autonomous survivors. When a species is in continuous biocultural evolution, it begins to respond better and take advantage of the resources available around it, finds a way to automate labour, be more efficient, produce more tools and techniques, master group association skills, and so on. By having better withstood the difference in climatic conditions and food shortage by developing behaviors associated with survival techniques, then it can be considered a successful cultural adaptation and biocultural evolution.

By have learned that our species’ DNA separated from that of primates about 7 million ago and all these years of evolution had resulted on what we are now, Homo sapiens, a modern species that have been on Earth a tiny fraction of time compared to our most recent ancestors like Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus – 100,000 years / 2’000,000 years = 5%, (just thinking about this gives me goosebumps) made me feel that as a modern species we are just new to the business, we are just wearing diapers and learning how to crawl. Ancient Civilizations like Egypt, Greece, and Rome seem as close to us as the corner of our block.

From the first hominids until now, we have learned about the resistance of our species to extreme environments and adversities. To adapt, our species does not stop, we simply do not know how, but we continue to invent, create, pushing our resilience to the limit, and we have seen this behavior since the first hominids all the way to the situation we were experiencing globally with a pandemic. If this pandemic could have occurred 30 years ago, we could not have adapted so well. Remote connection to the world to work and study would not have been possible since we did not have the resources to do it efficiently, and we are talking about a progress in 30 years since personal computers began to be distributed – 30 years / 100,000 years = 0.001%. This percentage of progress is incredible, and in just one year, 2020, the pandemic had changed and had pushed all generations from adults to children to connect virtually and be part of a new form of connections that will influence the present and the future. I truly see that our species responds better to adversity, it is like a survival instinct that is in our genes and has been influenced by our continuous adaptations. Every difficulty we face pushes us forward physically and mentally, so if someone asks me how I see our species in the next millennium, the way I would respond that is simply that I see our species as I have seen it behave for the past hundreds of years, pushing itself to the limit to overcome adversities.

Climate change indeed is a threat, but we as a species are not new to it. We have learned that the first hominids faced climate change in Africa millions of years ago and that was when they began to adopt bipedalism, and it is our greatest trait ever because it gave us flexibility to move easier, faster, and with less energy consumption than before. If something big hits us, we will definitely evolve, and I wouldn’t think twice to respond that it could be quite possible that an adaptive change could alter us even further physically and mentally. If bipedalism was part of our adaptation to climate change, I do not see why not other forms of locomotion, mobility, or how to get our basic resources like oxygen, water and food could not change us for the better. Changes are inevitable, and we will have to embrace and accept them. We have mastered moving by land, air, on and under the water, and now we are looking at expeditions to Mars. I definitely believe that in the next millennia we will be reaching to places beyond Earth in space, and as a species, will be again cross another line in terms of adaptation and definitely the most challenging. Not only will it reinvent us as a species, but more importantly, it will change us physically and mentally.

As science has taught us, our body and brain mass are used to Earth’s gravitational force and its magnetic field, so what will happen if we as humans start living in spaceships or even a first colony? Population drifts could start to happen, new traits and mutation may emerge, and if we begin to theorize about what happened in the past to Homo erectus, Archaic Homo sapiens and modern Homo sapiens, as per Alan’s Templeton Out-of-Africa Assimilation version, it might start to happen again with the Out-of-Earth initiative. Multiple migrations to these out of Earth places could begin to occur, and genetic changes may start occurring drifting the populations apart, or new traits may begin to be shared between populations of newborns out of space and newborns from Earth, as happened with the Homo sapiens and Neandertals that interbred and now we as a species have a small amount of Neandertal genetic code. What an exciting time that could be! and this thought to be able to rewind the cassette and start talking about a model Out-Of-Space Model and Migrations is just terrific.

In conclusion, I am not part of the group that believes that the triumph of humanity will come when we will be able to master our own reproduction by assisted artificial intelligence. On the contrary, I like to think more about what had happened to us as a species in the past, and now having been able to understand much better the spectrum of time and the line of our evolution, I deeply believe that we will change and evolve more as species by continuous change in our surrounding environment and by new challenges. The idea that Homo sapiens could live out of space makes me feel that our biocultural evolution and adaptation towards other life forms may be just beginning and endless opportunities await us.