What the Human Face Could Look Like in the Future
It is impossible to say exactly what we will look like in 100,000 years, but we can assume that evolution is not going to stop. Natural selection and difficult environmental conditions no longer affect us, but researchers say that people are continuing to evolve. Dr. Alan Kwan, a computational geneticist from Washington University in St. Louis shared how he thinks humans may look in the future.
Today
Here are typical-looking contemporary humans.
In 20,000 years
Our understanding of the universe won’t stop growing, so the human brain will grow bigger. The entire skull will change to be large enough for our growing and changing brain. Nevertheless, people will look the same as they look now except for their slightly enlarged forehead.
In 60,000 years
One may surmise that in 60,000 years, humans will continue to explore outer space. People will probably create space colonies, and their faces might change accordingly. The eyes might become larger to adapt to existence in the colonies that are distant from the Sun. The skin will get more pigmented to protect our bodies from UV radiation outside the Earth.
A slighter, more pronounced superciliary arch and thicker eyelids may appear to mitigate the effects of a lack of gravity. “The technology and our knowledge are going to increase at a rate which will require larger brains. That’s why the head, I feel, is going to grow larger,” Kwan shared.
In 100,000 years
We may presume that in 100,000 years, our faces will change dramatically, and our features will adhere to the golden ratio. We will have straight noses and enormous eyes, and our facial lines will become strong and evident.
If humans continue to explore the Universe, their eyes will adapt to protect their eyesight from cosmic rays: an eye shine for low-light vision will appear, and a reduced eyelid will grow in the inner corners of the eyes. “We are running out of space on this planet, and eventually, people are going to spend entire lifetimes never having visited their home planet. So, with living further away and getting less light, evolution is going to select for larger eyes, and later on, when we do have the capability of engineering our own genomes, we will keep that change for functional reasons,” Kwan said.
What time in the future would you like to travel to if you had a time machine? What would you ask our descendants if you had the chance?