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From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Bronowski and historical fossils
Message-ID: <10600014@inmet>
Date: Mon, 10-Mar-86 15:24:00 EST
Article-I.D.: inmet.10600014
Posted: Mon Mar 10 15:24:00 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Mar-86 03:04:27 EST
Lines: 23
Nf-ID: #R:<8603090839.AA00847@decwrl.DEC.C:-35:inmet:10600014:000:1119
Nf-From: inmet.UUCP!janw    Mar 10 15:24:00 1986


[John Redford DEC-Hudson]
>Everything dies, be it  countries,  or  civilizations,  or  whole
>species.  I  doubt  if America will be around in any recognizable
>form in two thousand years, or if homo sapiens will be around  in
>a  hundred  thousand.  Our species didn't even exist a mere fifty
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>thousand years ago, and there are notable anatomical  differences
>between  us and the people of even twenty thousand years ago. Why
>imagine that the process has stopped?  If  anything  it  has  ac-
>celerated.  Folks  on  this list have been blithely talking about
>our descendants of 200,000 years from now. The chances  are  that
>they won't be human. Human, that is, in the sense of being genet-
>ically and mentally similar to us.

A hundred thousand ? Make it *one* thousand, because  of  genetic
research  and  possibilities  of artificial evolution. One way or
another, we are likely to be among the last generations  of  this
species.  This  makes  space  expansion even more urgent: to make
sure that among the many branches of this  evolution,  some  turn
out successful.

		Jan Wasilewsky