Humans are still evolving. The processes of natural selection, gene flow, genetic drift, and mutation continue to affect human populational allele frequencies. However, human biocultural adaptations and behavior are changing the ways in which we deal with the challenges of the environments we face.
While disease may still play an important role in human evolution, technology is altering the patterns of how diseases impact populations. Because not all populations or all segments of populations have equal access to technologies, the same disease can have very different effects on different groups of humans.
Cultural behavior ranging from eating habits to body modification to gene flow is changing the morphologies of modern humans. It is not clear what long-term evolutionary impacts this will have.
Enormous increases in human populations may be changing the types of local environments and their associated stresses for many human populations. These increases in survivorship are also potentially increasing the genetic diversity within populations.
Human technological genomic modification may have the effect of accelerating allele frequency change (evolution) in some human populations.
There is substantial debate as to how much of our current behavior reflects specific adaptations to past environments and how much is expressions of a broad potential for behavior inherent in our species.
Biological anthropology and the themes of the scientific method, collaborative investigation, and critical thinking are core to understanding humanity.
