FUTURE OF MAN.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20280, 14 April 1934, Page 27 (Supplement)

FUTURE OF MAN.

Hair and Teeth Both Doomed. What will the human race look like a half million years from now? A forecast announced recently, by tkeAmerican Museum of Natural History, is. that in 601.933 A.D. man will be taller, have fewer teeth, probably become bald earlier and more prominently, have a brain capacity in terms of skull volume, and that his brow will become smoother and more like that of women to-day. This glimpse of the future is by Dr. ■H. L. Shapiro, Curator of Physical ■Anthropology, writing in “Natural History His prediction is based on the (physical changes which have occurred in the past, as evidenced by the appearance of the Neanderthal Man and other forerunners of the present human types. Dr, Shapiro chooses 500.000 years as it he basis for liis time interval, because xhe evolution of man, in terms of physical changes in his appearance, is very slow. Five thousand, or even 50,000 years from now the difference would be so slight as almost to escape notice. “We must allow man sufficient time to undergo a few modifications,” he says. “Man in 500,000 years,” declares Dr. Shapiro, “will continue to be an upright creature, and with some hesitation I predict that his brain will be larger. The reason for my elight hesitancy with respect to the expansion of the brain in the near future (500,000 years is but a few days in man’s phylogenetic existence) is that there is some indication that the quality of the brain may. Improve with a concomitant increase in size.” Assuming that mankind' will not return to the tough, rough food of his prehistoric ancestors, Dr. Shapiro believers that the major change in the digestive' tract will be that the teeth will continue to deteriorate. “I complete the picture with a few words about the hair of our future man. It is well known, or, more precisely, it has been observed by some investigators, that baldness is much more frequent among highly civilised races of mankind than among primitive people of nature. Although - here I am on treacherous ground, I hazaid the guess that with the advance in civilisation the incidence of will increase, and that in the near future, or 500,000 years from now, it will not only appear earlier, but more extensively.”