• Question: If the human race started over, how long would it take for us to evolve and be like how we are today? Would the human race end up like it is, or would it be completely different?

    Asked by yasmine23 to Emma, Jimmy, Janet, Niall, Simon on 18 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: James Holloway

      James Holloway answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      If we reset life on earth to the beginning and gave it roughly the same conditions then you would get completely different species than you do today.

      Chaos theory which means if you change on tiny thing in a complex system, then that complex system will exhibit wildly different behavior. So if you had roughly similar starting conditions, evolution would take a different path.

      If you had *exactly* the same starting conditions, down to the placement of every individual atom, you would still have wildly different outcome because quantum mechanics would randomize everything over time.

      there is a theory called convergent evolution though, which explains that if you give nature a problem, like too much harmful UV light, then different species will evolve similar ways of solving this problem. This means that although you would have different species on the earth they may still have eyes and wings and bones.

    • Photo: Niall Crawford

      Niall Crawford answered on 19 Mar 2013:

      There may be slight tweaks, but all evolutionary problems will have been solved. In the Cambrian period, there were a huge diversity of body shapes which evolved, and yet the standard backbone became a highly evolved trait. Whatever advantage they had, would probably still apply.

      Humans broke off from other apes around 200,000 years ago, and the same problems would have to be solved by them if the human race started over. Things like tool use, bipedal walking and language would probably all develop similarly.

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