Human evolution moving at breakneck speed

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Washington, Dec 12: Human evolution has been moving at breakneck speed in the past several thousand years, far from plodding along as some scientists had thought, researchers said on Wednesday. In fact, people today are genetically more different from people living 5,000 years ago than those humans were different from the Neanderthals who vanished 30,000 years ago, according to anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin. The genetic changes have related to different characteristics.

Many of the recent genetic changes reflect differences in the human diet brought on by agriculture, as well as resistance to epidemic diseases that became mass killers following the growth of human civilizations, the researchers said.

For example, Africans have new genes providing resistance to malaria. In Europeans, there is a gene that makes them better able to digest milk as adults. In Asians, there is a gene that makes ear wax more dry.

The changes is driven by the growth population—from a few million to 6.5 billion in the past 10,000 years—with people moving into new environments which they adapted, added Henry Harpending, a University of Utah anthropologist.

“The central finding is that human evolution is happening very fast—faster than any of us thought,” Harpending said in a telephone interview. “Most of the acceleration is in the last 10,000 years, corresponding to population growth after agriculture is invented,” Hawks said .