The DNA face maker is on its way into the game to give more options when making your face in the game, I haven't seen it yet but it's got me thinking about the human race, genetics and what we as a species are likely to "look" like that far into the future.
At the moment the characters I see in scenes from S42, other players avatars and NPC's in the Verse all have very recogniseable ethnicities however nearly 1000 years into the future with easy, fast and convenient transport around the world and even across the cosmos, would this still be the case?
Affordable air travel has only been around on Earth for about 60 years which equates to roughly 2 or 3 generations (a generation is between 20 and 30 years, depending on the definition you use). Assuming that continues to 2949 that will be between 33 and 50 generations of humans being able to travel and meet each other relatively easily.
Evolutionary forces originally caused certain traits to be beneficial for where people lived with a combination of external environmental factors and internal dominant and recessive genes - for (probably bad) example: it is thought the number of red-headed people in Scotland is higher than average in the general population because although the red-headed genes are recessive (dominated by other hair colours thus less likely to occur) the pale pasty skin that goes with that hair colour is apparently ideal for getting more Vitamin D from the reduced levels of light in that country during winters, giving them an evolutionary survival advantage over other skin types and promoting an ethnicity in the area higher in red-headed persons than other places might have. As people were originally limited to the speed their legs could carry them this generally worked for making ethnic traits in areas, you lived in a place where you couldn't get enough Vitamin D, you either crawled across the planet until you were somewhere you could thrive or you and your genetic traits could not compete with the others in your area and died out and those traits could not continue.
But with advanced medical knowledge and application with easy pan-globe travel, Survival of the fittest becomes less and less relevant... Just don't forget to take your Vitamin D supplements and you will literally be fine wherever you choose to settle, if you choose to settle...
I know SC is a game and they are not going to go and re-model all the characters into one overarching set of dominant DNA traits, but what do we think the Human Race will end up being in 930 years?
Is 50 generations even long enough to make anything close to a pan-ethnic appearance in the human race?
At the moment the characters I see in scenes from S42, other players avatars and NPC's in the Verse all have very recogniseable ethnicities however nearly 1000 years into the future with easy, fast and convenient transport around the world and even across the cosmos, would this still be the case?
Affordable air travel has only been around on Earth for about 60 years which equates to roughly 2 or 3 generations (a generation is between 20 and 30 years, depending on the definition you use). Assuming that continues to 2949 that will be between 33 and 50 generations of humans being able to travel and meet each other relatively easily.
Evolutionary forces originally caused certain traits to be beneficial for where people lived with a combination of external environmental factors and internal dominant and recessive genes - for (probably bad) example: it is thought the number of red-headed people in Scotland is higher than average in the general population because although the red-headed genes are recessive (dominated by other hair colours thus less likely to occur) the pale pasty skin that goes with that hair colour is apparently ideal for getting more Vitamin D from the reduced levels of light in that country during winters, giving them an evolutionary survival advantage over other skin types and promoting an ethnicity in the area higher in red-headed persons than other places might have. As people were originally limited to the speed their legs could carry them this generally worked for making ethnic traits in areas, you lived in a place where you couldn't get enough Vitamin D, you either crawled across the planet until you were somewhere you could thrive or you and your genetic traits could not compete with the others in your area and died out and those traits could not continue.
But with advanced medical knowledge and application with easy pan-globe travel, Survival of the fittest becomes less and less relevant... Just don't forget to take your Vitamin D supplements and you will literally be fine wherever you choose to settle, if you choose to settle...
I know SC is a game and they are not going to go and re-model all the characters into one overarching set of dominant DNA traits, but what do we think the Human Race will end up being in 930 years?
Is 50 generations even long enough to make anything close to a pan-ethnic appearance in the human race?
