in a few billion years, there should be a species (providing a lack of catastophes that wipe out all life) that is decendant from humans and has all of our culture and information plus some. would this species still be considered human?

Why wouldn't it be? We are only human because we call ourself human. If they call themselves human then they will be human. Of course they may decide not to call us human and make up a new name for us.

i don't see how it would become a new species unless different groups of humans were separated for long enough. but then again, i only have a basic understanding of high school bio.

i don't see how it would become a new species unless different groups of humans were separated for long enough. but then again, i only have a basic understanding of high school bio.

 

I believe you will see just that in less than 100 years. There will be offshoots due to cloning "accidents". We will accidentally do something that will create a "different human". I don't know, but I see this happening.

 

Bettina

I ould think you would have more of an issue when humans branch out to other planets, without the huge amount of cross breeding that takes place on earth, I would imangine a new species of human evolving on that planet quite quickly

Genetic engineering: The evolution of the future. I doubt they will call themselves human because they probably won't speak English.

why not? isn't the proportion of the population that speaks english growing?

why not? isn't the proportion of the population that speaks english growing?

You said in a few billion years. Language changes over time. Just look at the difference between English today and language during Chaucher's(sp?) time. It wouldn't even be remotely similar 2 billion years from now unless they went to great lengths to keep the same language as today. I kind of doubt they would even talk as we do today anyways after 2 billion years. If you ran across our descendants of 2 billion years from now you might not even suspect they were once human.

why would they even talk? they would've probably evolved some technology that allows telopathic communication, language barriers would be gone forever!

i don't see how it would become a new species unless different groups of humans were separated for long enough. but then again, i only have a basic understanding of high school bio.

I think that the term you are looking for is Chronospecies

A chronospecies is a species which is reproductively isolated from its relatives by existing in a different time period.

 

A fossil line could be viewed as a number of chronospecies or as a continuously changing single species; the breakdown is therefore inevitably fuzzy.[/Quote]

hey right now even english is being added to, for instance grok is now a word. The continual immigration of spanish speaking peoples to the united states should cause english (at least the american version) to add a couple of spanish phrases to itself, for instance I know a great many people who use adios for goodbye

 

woot 300 posts

hey right now even english is being added to' date=' for instance grok is now a word. The continual immigration of spanish speaking peoples to the united states should cause english (at least the american version) to add a couple of spanish phrases to itself, for instance I know a great many people who use adios for goodbye

 

woot 300 posts[/quote']

colloquial and formal are not the same.

however slang usually makes its way into language after a certain period of time

 

also grok is in websters dictionary

so is "aint"...what's your point?

 

what does "grok" mean?

my point is that language does evolve, and the english used in 100 years will be quite different than what we use today, just like elizabethan english is to us today.

 

now grok however is a word that I would hesitate to give the definition, as it would significantly detract from one of the greatest literary works of all time IMHO stranger in a strange land. The book was extremely popular in the 1960's and its popularity resulted in people useing the word extensively and eventually in webster's admitting the word as part of the english language (the author created the word for the book).

 

If your not interested in reading the book then I would suggest just hopping over to dictionary.com/wiktionary, or the dictionary of your choice to look it up

I grok it. May you never thirst

hahahaha, awesome

Let us grok Yourdad in fullness.

 

::gets out the cutlery::