Humans Videos

[A photograph of the entrance to the Museum’s Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins. Arranged in a display are a cast of a modern human skeleton in the center, a cast of a chimpanzee skeleton on the left, and a cast of a Neanderthal skeleton on the left.]

ROB DESALLE (CURATOR AND PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR, INSTITUTE FOR COMPARATIVE GENOMICS): The question, are humans still evolving, is one that we get asked a lot.

[Rob DeSalle speaks to camera from a genomics lab inside the Museum.]

DeSalle: Evolution is simply change. And our DNA sequences are changing as we extend our lifetime as a species.

[An animation of a DNA double helix rotates and breaks apart into proteins.]

If you're asking, will humans diverge into two new species…

[A split-screen shows a mirror image of a man appearing in the middle of the screen and walking away.]

DeSalle: …or will we have two really bizarre-looking humans on the planet in the future…

[Both mirror images of the man freeze, the one on the left turns red and the one on the right turns green.]

DeSalle: …more than likely not.

[A series of timelapse video clips show large crowds exiting and entering a train, security lines at an airport, busses entering and exiting a crowded depot, and many passenger rushing by at a transit hub.]

DeSalle: And that's because we're such a huge population, that any strange variation gets soaked into the overall population and eliminated through interbreeding.

[Back in the Hall of Human Origins, a shot of the “Our Family Tree” display which shows how various genus and species of hominids have evolved and are related. Then, a series of clips showing dioramas of Homo ergaster from 1.8 million years ago, Homo neanderthalensis from 50,000 years ago, and Homo sapiens from 15,000 years ago. All three dioramas show a few individuals in a secluded environment with lots of empty space in the background.]

IAN TATTERSALL (CURATOR EMERITUS, DIVISION OF ANTHROPOLOGY): We evolved under circumstances where hominid populations were very small, scattered over the landscape. And that is the circumstances under which you're most likely to see evolutionary novelties come into populations and be fixed. Today, and this is a very recent phenomenon, we are packed cheek by jowl over the entire face of the globe.

[A series of clips of human settlements in diverse landscapes: a crowded beach near a mountain, an urban area built within a jungle, homes by a snowy Nordic fjord.]

We are one big intermixing population. And a large population like that is not good circumstances for fixing evolutionary novelties.  

DeSALLE: A lot of the adaptation that occurs today is cultural, through cultural evolution.

[A series of depictions of humans practicing agriculture: an ancient Egyptian illustration of farmers planting seeds, a Japanese print of workers in a rice field, a European painting of women gathering fallen wheat from the early modern period, a photograph of early steam engine farm equipment, a man in a lab coat with a tablet, checking on hydroponic crops...] 

DeSalle: And cultural evolution can make things change really fast, and make it look like things are evolving really fast.

[..Finally, a little boy sitting in a shopping cart being pushed by his mother in a grocery store.] DeSalle: But in reality, our DNA sequences, our genomes, isn't evolving that rapidly.

DeSalle: And any specialized trait that members of our species can develop…

[Early film footage in black-and-white shows a running racing past the competition in a race, men running and jumping over hurdles at a sporting event, and a contortionist hanging from trapeze and holding his legs behind his head.]

DeSalle: …more than likely will blend back in with the larger population due to the fact that we just love mating with each other.

[Immediate cut to a closeup of couples holding hands. A newlywed couple having flowers thrown on them by the wedding guests, a stroller being pushed down a busy street.]

TATTERSALL: As long as we have a huge population like this, we're going to have to live with ourselves the way that we are…

[Smog rolling over an urban area; cranes moving in an enormous garbage dump.]

TATTERSALL: …and not expect that evolution will come in on his white horse and rescue us from our follies.

[An animation of areas of the human brain lighting up.]

TATTERSALL: The excitement in future will be in the exploration of a capacity we already have.

[A closeup of a person’s eye, a person’s ear, a person’s nose.] 

TATTERSALL: Humans process information in a qualitatively unique fashion no other creature does, as far as we know.

[A photograph of cave paintings; A photograph of hieroglyphics carved into stone; A photograph of an early lithograph of the English alphabet; finally, a hand typing emojis into a text message.]

TATTERSALL: What we do is we take the environment around us, and we deconstruct it into a mass of discrete mental symbols and we can move them around into new combinations and come up with new ideas about the world.

[Chimpanzees gather in a tree; crows flit about; an orca whale moves majestically underwater.]

TATTERSALL: Other creatures, however sophisticated they may be, however smart they are, I don't think they remake the world in their minds.

[A ballet dancer moves gracefully across a stage; two children play with dinosaur toys; a father reads with his son.] 

TATTERSALL: And that make us, in a sense, separate from the world, and able to sort of step back from it and regard ourselves as actors in the play.

[A person writing computer code on a laptop; a man with an ipad supervising a warehouse of robotic machinery.]

TATTERSALL: And thinking in this symbolic manner of ours has opened up all kinds of possibilities, which we’ve only just begun to explore.

[Once again back in the Hall of Human Origins, visitors enjoy learning about human evolution.]

TATTERSALL: And that is where the action will be. You know, in the future. So the excitement isn't over.

[CREDITS]