Engineering or Evolution?

I have always wondered why evolution, that was so myriad and distinct to observe over the millennia, has not been happening noticeably to man since many centuries BC. Are we so supreme that there is no way to evolve any further? Or are we the end of the long chain of biological evolution that ends if humans die out? Or haven’t we been here long enough to evolve noticeably? That got me thinking about how far we have come since we were naked, club wielding, raw meat eaters to the sophisticated, multi-lingual, planet-colonizing nuclear war-gods? 

Engineering is the evolution that we have seen quantitatively since the beginning of mankind. The guy who invented the wheel must have showed off his supreme invention to his neighbors, sons and grandchildren. Say one out of the 50 (approximately, considering the sparse population of the stone-age and lack of birth control) people he shared DNA with, thought it was a fab idea and tried to sell it to others as his family heirloom? He must have learnt it, enslaved and started a mass production so he would trade the wheelbarrows to get himself exotic meats and even exotic hook-ups.

Maybe along the line, his descendants carried the gene of his father - the wheel inventor and he began using his cave to carve ideas and these crazy drawings lead on to more inventions. Somewhere at the same time when man was beginning to understand what we now called science, another man who couldn’t understand the eccentric man’s drawings but could have a grunting match with many tribes. Maybe his son sewed the threads of grunts together and developed a pre-historic language. Artists probably began to bourgeois at the same rate as science dudes and business men.

So we now have the crafty tradesmen (Homo Negotiatoris*), crazy science geniuses (Homo Physicus*) and lost-in-a-trance artsy hippies (Homo Artifex*). And while we moved on from the period of element worship and came closer to the birth of Christ, many civilizations from the east to the west started evolving into smarted human beings – with bigger brains, straighter spines and opposable thumbs. Language was becoming more solid and so was understanding of each other. This was probably around the time documentation began. Some Homos** (the ‘Sapiens’ kind) started writing down stuff when the gyros-eating guy started drawing triangles on the ground and a vagrant telling tales of his bath-tub revelations at the tavern, who for some reason started chanting numbers looking at his slice of pumpkin pie¹. 

The East, in fact was growing smarter too. Unaffected by the mighty wars plaguing the west, its population grew exponentially but unfortunately not its recognition in the advancements in fields like medicine and astronomy, due to their social stigma of crossing seas and many difficulties scaling the great mountains, traversing icy landscapes and trying not to get burned in the desert, all on the way. But early invaders came, discovered, conquered and profited from the peaceful easterners.

Man discovered more modern vocations – the linguists and the Physicus* started sharing DNA and writing machine language, paving way to computers and all modern gadgets. The Artifexs* and Physicus* fell in love and their offspring created strong bridges, mighty ships and steel skyscrapers.    

So, what I was trying to convey was – maybe this is the path that evolution is supposed to take. Maybe we will not physically grow wings and fly or grow gills and swim – but man is on the expressway to becoming a superior being – with abundant knowledge, ability to create ideas (are ideas created in the mind or randomly appear out of thin air and fall into the mind of the genius?) and he is no longer a mere part of the chain that ends when Homos** die out – rather a chain that will grow longer with clones or even artificially created beings that deliberately lengthen the chain of evolution and chart a new course in the what we believed was nature? Humans could be the nature a thousand years later. Peace out – with scary thoughts.    

* - Latin names to humor the author

** - Random jokes, also to humor the author

¹ - The author assumes it was pumpkin pie – no other pie is so boring it reminds one of numbers