An Evolutionary Shift Like Never Before

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If human survival and well-being increasingly depend on the cultural systems around us, what happens to individual genetic evolution? Will we see a future where humanity evolves not as a collection of genetically distinct individuals, but as a cooperative, culturally shaped superorganism?

The idea is that just as ants or bees operate as superorganisms, humans may one day operate similarly, with survival and reproduction dependent on the health of the cultural systems that define our societies.

Tibi Puiu
September 18, 2025
Researchers Say Humans Are In the Midst of an Evolutionary Shift Like Never Before

It would seem to me that we have been evolving via cultural systems for thousands of years. Didn’t that begin with specialization and small groups/tribes? Perhaps even earlier with sexual differentiation with males generally being stronger and females better able to care for their young?

Sure, with the technologies in the transportation, farming, communication, and sanitation areas cities could develop. And those cities developed new cultures which then evolved even more. But it is not anything really new.

Now, perhaps the claim is that the technology/culture evolution is proceeding at a far faster rate than before. In centuries past it might be claimed that genetic and cultural evolution were comparable in contribution to human changes. And now, the technology/culture change is so much faster that the genetic changes are irrelevant. Maybe.

What I expect is that instead of genetic changes being irrelevant is that the ant/bee superorganism will not come about in humans because human genetics will be a barrier to such systems.

I can’t help but wonder if there is a what, back on the farm, my family viewed as “city folk” thinking. Basically, a bias of thinking their way of life is superior to the country life. There certainly are far more “cultural” options available in cities and those cultures (fads, as we thought of them) change much faster than the changes you see in the country.

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11 thoughts on “An Evolutionary Shift Like Never Before

  1. The most significant cultural evolution of all time was the domestication of the dog. Nobody is quite sure when that happened as it was far back in the Paleolithic. Dog and wolf DNA started to diverge about 40,000 years ago so in the absence of more information, I will regard this as the date. Much flowed from this. Dogs and humans are more effective at hunting as a team than either alone, even today. Better nutrition and higher survival rates were the results. Dogs are incomparably better sentries than humans. Real important when sleeping outside in a world full of predators. Some think that our evolutionary victory over Neanderthals was due to dogs. We had them and they didn’t. Dogs also provided a template for the domestication of other animals.

  2. Mr. Huffman:

    It has long been postulated that evolution (natural evolution, not forced artificial selection) ends in a species when it begins to significantly alter its own environment. Prior to that the environment in which the species lived drove the forces of natural selection via death of unfit individuals and the survival of “fit” individuals. What determined which characteristics were which? The environment. Nature does an incredible job of weeding out.

    A perfect example in insects were woodland moths in England. They have extremely short life spans and so genetic changes can be monitored within a bunch of human lifetimes. These moths lived on trees with essentially white bark, and the moths evolved almost-perfect camouflage of white wings with black speckles. Then their environment changed as England started using large quantities of coal, and the coal dust blackened the bark of the trees. Within about 50 years the color balance of the moths had reversed, and their camouflage was now mostly black with white speckles. While the driver of the change was “artificial” (induced by humans) nature effected the change in the genetics of the moths based on what was a new environmental driver. The formerly “fit’ moths were now less fit, and the formerly “unfit” moths now dominated survival and reproduction.

    Human civilization has now almost completely eliminated nature as a driver in “natural” selection. You no longer have to be even slightly intelligent to survive and reproduce; you no longer have to be physically fit and able to run down your game or even throw a rock in order to eat. The average intelligence of the human race has probably dropped like a rock in the past 20,000 years, and the average physical capabilities have also probably decreased because there is no longer a natural selection process for these traits. It has been suggested that what civilization is selecting FOR is the direct opposite of what drove nature to evolve humanity in the first place…the largest reproducing areas of our civilizations are the least productive.

    This is not meant as an endorsement of eugenics or any other non-natural selection process, simply pointing out facts. I myself would not survive in a “natural” environment having been “unfit” from birth. Amblyopia (with one really bad eye), a propensity for bad teeth, and a lack of situational awareness when I’m fully involved in something would have led to my early (non-reproductive) death.

    So unless some totalitarian society starts selecting human beings with the intent to drive towards this so-called “superorganism” I don’t see any further evolution happening with human beings until after the complete fall of civilization makes natural selection effective again.

    • Results from human genetic selection takes so long, and cultural change is so transient, that cultural impact is minimal versus actual selective pressure.
      It takes 25 generations to select for a single gene incidence drift and for humans that is 25 gen x 18 age of 1st reproduction = ~ 450 years.
      200 years ago we used candles and open fires to cook. Think about it….
      Most human civilizations last much less than 2,000 years and the following extended period of chaos kills more people (selection) than the centuries before.

  3. Bret Weinstein addressed all this several years ago. I don’t agree with everything he said, but it seems like a good model. His views have evolved some post COVID. (Well worth watching the whole 30min video but the first few minutes hits most of the high points.)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4NTbDD6PGQ

  4. Toward a superorganism?
    We already are/have one. It’s called a soul.
    As for a purely human one?
    Not a chance in hell.
    Modernization is changing us alright. But nowhere we truly want to go
    Tibi has his rose-colored glasses on.
    As the war cultures that bought us WWI &WWII did what for humanity?
    Destroyed the best and toughest of a whole generation spanning the northern hemisphere. Especially Europe.
    And a world about to implode from stupidity.
    Tibi never thought about the consequence of importing millions of people that don’t understand how to use tech for anything but greed, and fantasy is going to do what for any of us?
    We’re all going to live in the fantasy internet world and be fed by robot farmers?
    Idiocracy, is Tibi’s superorganism. Because the only thing that changes is the way we mentally react the environment.
    Evolution by natural selection is a bigger lie than manmade climate change through CO2 production. It can’t happen, therefor it isn’t happening.
    Semi-ignorant humans doing the same ignorant crap is the future.
    Just as it was in the past. And God help us all. (Cause were certainly not going to help one another.)
    Plan accordingly.

  5. So far, tech appears to be bending us more toward “Idiocracy” than any sort of collective efficient super-genius hive-mind.
    The very smart and fit have fewer kids, while supporting morons too stupid to not have a whole brood of morons.
    Graph the “average number of children women have by IQ” and it’s a grim-looking graph. Not much better for men.

  6. So how much of all this change that is being cited is truly evolution within a specie and what is just conditions favoring an expression of a trait that will disappear when the condition changes? With the increased use of Natural Gas & “green energy” in Britain, are the moths becoming white again? The basic tenet of evolution is that the changes are permanent in order for subsequent changes to also be permanent and thereby develop new species. If that is actually occurring, the time frames appears to be so long that we have been unable to conclusively measure the changes. I have personal philosophies that make sense to me regarding the fascination with “evolutionary biology”. I think there are many more valuable uses of time and money than pursuing a debate that, if it takes as long as postulated to have occurred, we will never conclude and would be out of our control anyway.

  7. If I recall from my Evolution class 50 years ago, organisms will randomly mutate in a number of different directions. We might assume culture does the same.

    When some major stressor is added into the system, many of the organisms will not survive to reproduce. Meteor strike, volcanic eruption, climate shift, disease or new predator adds a variable that may completely eliminate whole species.

    I’ll assume the same thing would happen to cultures that do not enhance survivability and reproduction if a new stress would suddenly appear. Many would be unable to compete favorably to get the limited resources available. It might take years to centuries to run through the cycle.

  8. Puiu is just portraying the old Marxust/Eugenicist/Progressive thinking from the 1800s and early 1900s. So what?

  9. We are still “evolving”. Homo Sapiens is gradually being replaced by the next step in the process…..called Homo Stupidicus.

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