All the most interesting in one magazine. How has a person changed How has a person changed over the past 100 years

For example, Professor Steve Jones of University College London says that the driving forces of evolution no longer play an important role in our lives. Among people who lived a million years ago, in the literal sense of the word, the fittest survived, and the hostile environment had a direct impact on the human appearance. In a modern world with central heating and an abundance of food, mutations are much less likely.

However, there is a possibility that our bodies will continue to develop. A person can continue to adapt to the changes taking place on our planet, which is becoming more polluted and dependent on technology.

According to the theory, animals evolve faster in isolated environments, while people living in the 21st century are not isolated at all. However, this issue is also controversial. With new advances in science and technology, people have been able to instantly exchange information, but at the same time have become more isolated than ever before.

Color of the skin

Yale University professor Stephen Stearns says globalization, immigration, cultural diffusion, and the availability of travel contribute to the gradual homogenization of the population, which will lead to averaging of facial features. People's recessive symptoms such as freckles or blue eyes will become very rare.

In 2002, a study by epidemiologists Mark Grant and Diana Lauderdale found that only 1 in 6 non-Hispanic white Americans had blue eyes, while more than half of the white population in the United States was blue-eyed 100 years ago. The skin and hair color of the average American is projected to darken, with very few blondes and very dark or very light skinned people left.

In some parts of the planet (for example, in the USA), genetic mixing is more active, in others - less. In some places, unique physical traits, adapted to the environment, have a strong evolutionary advantage, so people will not be able to say goodbye to them so easily. Immigration in some regions is much slower, so, according to Stearns, complete homogenization of the human race may never occur. However, in general, the Earth is becoming more and more like a large melting pot, and the scientist said that in a few centuries we will all become like Brazilians.

It is possible that in the future, people may acquire the ability to consciously change the color of their skin due to the artificial introduction of chromatophores into the body. (pigment-containing cells present in amphibians, fish, reptiles). Maybe there is another method, but in any case it will have some advantages. First, interracial prejudice will finally disappear. Secondly, being able to change, it will be possible to stand out in modern society.

Growth

An upward trend in growth has been reliably established.Primitive people are believed to have an average height of 160 cm, and over the past centuries, human growth has been steadily increasing. A particularly noticeable leap has occurred in recent decades, when a person's height has increased by an average of 10 cm. This trend may continue in the future, since it largely depends on the diet, and food is becoming more nutritious and affordable. Of course, at the moment, in some regions of the world, due to poor nutrition, low in minerals, vitamins and proteins, this trend is not observed, but in most countries of the world people continue to grow. For example,every fifth inhabitant of Italy is over 180 centimeters tall, while after the Second World War there were only 6% of such people in the country.

the beauty

Researchers have previously found that more attractive women have more children. the less attractive, and most of the children born to them are girls. Their daughters grow into attractive sexually mature women, and this pattern repeats itself. Scientists from the University of Helsinki concluded that the trend towards an increase in the number of beautiful women is increasing with each new generation. At the same time, the trend does not apply to men.

Nevertheless, the man of the future is likely to be more beautiful than he is now. His body structure and facial features will reflect what most are looking for in partners today. He will have thinner facial features, an athletic physique and a good figure.

Another idea, proposed by evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics, seems to be inspired by ideas from classic science fiction. According to his hypothesis, the human race will eventually split into two subspecies: the lower, consisting of short ones, similar to underdeveloped goblins, and the upper class - tall, slender, attractive and intelligent superhumans, corrupted by technology. According to Curry's forecasts, this will not happen soon - in 100 thousand years.

Big heads

If a person continues his development, turning into a more complex and intelligent creature, his brain will become larger and larger.
With technological advances, we will depend more and more on intelligence and the brain and less on our other organs.

However, paleontologist Peter Ward of the University of Washington in Seattle disagrees with this theory. “If you have ever experienced childbirth or witnessed it, then you know that with our anatomical structure we are standing on the very edge - our big brains already cause extreme problems during childbirth, and if they got bigger and bigger, then this would cause a greater mortality of mothers during childbirth, and evolution will not follow this path. "

Obesity

A recent study by scientists at Columbia and Oxford Universities predicts that half of the US population will be obese by 2030. That is, there will be 65 million more adults with problematic weight in the country.

If you think Europeans will be slim and elegant, then you are wrong. Over the past two decades, obesity rates have more than doubled in most European Union member states, according to a report published by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. As a result, on average more than 15% of European adults and one in seven children are obese, and the trends are disappointing.

Will the people of the future become obese and lazy creatures, like the characters from the cartoon "Valley"? All in our hands. There are other points of view on this matter. The point is that modern diets are high in fat and cheap "empty calories." At present, there is a rather negative attitude towards the problem of obesity, which will make people in the future better fit and picky about food. With the popularization of the concept of proper nutrition, as well as with new technologies "", everything will fall into place.

When humankind finally understands healthy food, it is likely that heart disease and diabetes, which are currently among the leading causes of death in developed countries, will disappear.

Hairline

Homo sapiens is often jokingly called a naked monkey. But, like all mammals, humans grow hair, of course, in much less quantity than our cousins \u200b\u200band hominid ancestors. Even Darwin in "The Descent of Man" stated that the hair on our bodies is a rudiment. With the ubiquity of heating and affordable clothing, the old purpose of body hair has become obsolete. But the evolutionary fate of hair is not easy to predict accurately, since it can act as one of the indicators of sexual selection. If the presence of body hair remains an attractive aspect for the opposite sex, then the gene responsible for this will remain in the population. But it is likely that people in the future will have much less hair than they do today.

Influence of technology

Computer technologies, which have become a part of our daily life, will undoubtedly affect the development of the human body. Continuous use of keyboards and touch screens can cause our hands and fingers to become thinner, longer and dexterous, and the number of nerve endings in them increases dramatically.

As the need to use more technical interfaces increases, priorities will change. With further technological progress, interfaces (naturally, not without surgical intervention) can migrate into the human body. Why not a man of the future to have a keyboard in the palm of his hand and learn to press the conditional OK button with a nod of his head, and answer an incoming call by connecting his index and thumb? It is likely that in this new world, the human body will be stuffed with hundreds of tiny sensors transmitting data to external devices. A display with augmented reality can be built into the retina of the human eye, and the user will control the interface using the movements of the tongue along the front incisors.

Wisdom teeth and other rudiments

Vestigial organs such as wisdom teeth, which are surgically removed, can also disappear over time as they no longer function. Our ancestors had larger jaws with more teeth. As their brains began to grow and their diet began to change and their food became less rigid and easier to digest, their jaws began to shrink. It has recently been estimated that about 25% of people today are born without the germs of wisdom teeth, which may be the result of natural selection. In the future, this percentage will only grow. It is possible that the jaws and teeth will continue to grow smaller and even disappear.

Bad memory
and low intelligence

The theory that people of the future will have higher intellectual abilities is also questionable. Research from Columbia University demonstrates that our addiction to Internet search engines severely damages our memory. The Internet replaces the ability of our brain to remember information that we can easily find on the Web at any time. The brain began to use the Internet as a backup memory. “People are less likely to make the effort to remember something when they know they can always find that information later,” the study authors say.

Neurophysiologist and Nobel laureate Eric Kandel also points out in his article that the Internet makes people stupider. The main problem is that too active use of the Internet does not allow you to focus on one thing. To master complex concepts, you need to pay serious attention to new information and diligently try to associate it with the knowledge that is already in memory. Surfing the web does not provide this opportunity: the user is constantly distracted and interrupted, which is why his brain is not able to establish strong neural connections.

Physical weakness

As noted above, evolution follows the path of eliminating traits that are no longer needed. And one of them can be physical strength. Comfortable transport of the future, exoskeletons and other machines and tools of our ingenuity will save humanity from the need for walking and any physical activity. Research shows that we have already become much weaker compared to our distant ancestors. Over time, advances in technology can lead to changes in limbs. The muscles will begin to contract. The legs will become shorter and the feet will be smaller.

Depression

According to a recent study, the population of the United States is caught in a vicious cycle of constant stress and depression. Three out of ten Americans say they are depressed. These symptoms are most common in people between the ages of 45 and 65. 43% report regular outbursts of irritability and anger, 39% - about nervousness and anxiety. Even dentists are faced with more patients with jaw pain and worn teeth than thirty years ago. Because of which? Due to the fact that from stress, people tightly clench their jaws and literally grit their teeth in a dream.

Stress, as shown by experiments on laboratory rats, is a clear sign that an animal is becoming increasingly unsuitable for the world in which it lives. And as Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace shrewdly noticed more than 150 years ago, when the habitat is no longer comfortable for a living being, the species dies out.

Weak immunity

People of the future may have weakened immune systems and become more susceptible to pathogens. New medical technologies and antibiotics have significantly improved overall health and life expectancy, but also made our immune systems lazier. We are more and more dependent on drugs, and over time, our bodies may stop "thinking" for themselves, and instead rely entirely on drugs for basic bodily functions. Thus, people from the future could actually become slaves to medical technology.

Selective hearing

Humanity already has the ability to direct its attention to the specific things they hear. This feature is known as the "cocktail effect". At a noisy party, amid many conversations, you may well focus on one particular speaker who has caught your attention for some reason. The human ear does not have a physical mechanism for this; everything happens in the brain. But over time, this ability can become more important and useful. With the development of media and the Internet, our world is becoming overflowing with various sources of information. The man of the future will have to learn to more effectively determine what is useful for him and what is just noise. As a result, people will be less stressed, which will undoubtedly benefit their health, and, accordingly, will take root in the genes.

Strange faces

Artist Nikolai Lamm and Dr. Alan Kwan presented their speculative views on how the man of the future will see. The researchers base their predictions on how the environment will affect the human body - that is, climate and technological advances. One of the biggest changes, in their opinion, will affect the forehead, which has become wider since the XIV century. The researchers also stated that our ability to control our own genome will affect evolution. Genetic engineering will become the norm, and human preferences will determine the appearance of the face to a greater extent. In the meantime, the eyes will get bigger. Attempts to colonize other planets will result in darker skin in order to reduce exposure to harmful ultraviolet radiation outside the earth's ozone layer. Kwan also expects people to have thicker eyelids and pronounced brow ridges due to low-gravity conditions.

Postgender society

With the development of reproductive technologies, reproduction in the traditional way may disappear into oblivion. Cloning, parthenogenesis and the creation of artificial queens can significantly expand the potential for human reproduction, and this, in turn, will finally erase the boundaries between a man and a woman. People of the future will have no attachment to a particular gender, enjoying the best aspects of life, both. It is likely that humanity will mix completely, forming a single androgynous mass. Moreover, in the new post-gender society, not only will there be no physical sexes or their supposed characteristics, gender identity itself will be eliminated and the line between the role models of male and female behavior will be erased.

Flexible skeleton

Many creatures, such as fish and sharks, have a lot of cartilage in their skeleton. Human beings could follow the same path of development in order to have more flexible bones. Even if not thanks to evolution, but with the help of genetic engineering, this feature would give a lot of advantages and protect a person from injury. A more flexible skeleton would obviously be extremely useful in childbirth, not to mention its potential for future ballet dancers.

Wings

According to Guardian columnist Dean Burnett, he once spoke to a colleague who doesn't believe in evolution. When he asked why, the main argument was that people do not have wings. According to the opponent, "evolution is the survival of the fittest," and what could be more convenient for adapting to any environment than wings. Even if Burnett's theory is based on immature observation and limited understanding of how evolution works, it also has a right to exist.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

People are getting taller, fatter and living longer than ever before in history. And all these changes have taken place over the past century, scientists say. However, this is not only about evolution, as one century is not enough for such changes.

Scientists believe that most of the transformations that have occurred over such a period of time are the body's response to changes in conditions, such as improved nutrition, health and hygiene. Here are the main changes that have happened to people over the past century.

Increased human height

The latest study showed that people in developed countries have become taller, and the highest average height in the world - 1.85 cm - is observed in the Netherlands. Although Americans were the tallest people in the world during World War II (1.77 cm), growth rates had stalled by the end of the 20th century.

While average growth has increased in many countries, it has not been uniform. In some countries plagued by disease, war and other problems, the average height has declined from time to time.

The researchers believe that this suggests that negative factors such as hunger or epidemics affect the next generations, and it takes about 5 generations to overcome these factors.

According to the latest research, the relationship between growth and quality of life has been identified, and tall people are perceived as more intelligent and influential.

People are getting fatter

Since the 1970s, researchers have studied the growth dynamics of Mayan children and their families in Guatemala, Mexico and the United States. When the Mayans moved to the United States, they were 11.4 cm taller than their peers in Guatemala and Mexico. However, their weight also increased and they were more likely to be obese.

There is also a trend towards weight gain worldwide. So in 2013, 29 percent of the world's population was overweight or obese.

Why people get fatter is a subject of scientific controversy. Some researchers believe that overeating and lack of physical activity are to blame. But there is also a theory that genetics play a role here, as well as viruses that have been associated with obesity. Contrary to popular belief, many studies have found a link between being overweight and poverty.

Some researchers speculate that this trend is related to epigenetics or inherited changes that affect how the body stores excess energy from food.

For example, if your mother and grandmother went through hard times, this is passed on to future generations, and when times are good, the body tries to store extra energy in the form of fat.

Early puberty

In many countries, children start to mature earlier, especially girls. Many studies have shown that the age at which girls reach puberty has decreased over the past half century.

For example, a study in the United States showed that the age of menarche dropped by 0.3 years per decade from the mid-1800s, when the first menstruation occurred at age 17, until the 1960s.

Research also indicates that there is a link between overweight and early puberty, and girls with a high body mass index reach puberty at an earlier age.

This can have negative health consequences, as research has shown that early maturation is associated with the development of hypertension and diabetes later in life.

There are social consequences as well. In some cultures, a girl who has reached puberty is considered old enough for marriage, which means she has fewer opportunities to pursue an education or career.

Human longevity and its negative consequences

People are now living longer than ever. According to WHO, life expectancy worldwide has grown from 30 years in the 20th century to 70 years in 2012. Experts predict that the world average life expectancy for women born in 2030 will rise to 85 years.

Increased life expectancy is associated with advances in medicine, improved sanitation and access to clean water.

However, while these factors have reduced the death rate from infectious diseases, the death rate from degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, heart disease and cancer have increased.

In other words, people have begun to live longer, but they are dying from other diseases than in the past. The rise in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes has been linked by some scientists to improved hygiene. That is, when the body is exposed to too few microbes, the immune system overreacts to even the most harmless microbes.

Human development in the future

What will happen to people in the future, given how quickly technology is changing our world?

There is some concern that the future of evolution will be determined by genetic engineering. Bionic implants, nanotechnology and new drugs can extend human life even further.

Some scientists believe that we can achieve immortality through technology in the next 30 years. While this sounds like science fiction, it's clear that humans are evolving rapidly and technology is having a big impact.

Skull hunters are sometimes called anthropologists. Georgy Frantsevich Debets is a kind of champion among them. Ten years ago, I, a student and an excavator, listened by the fire to the stories of the head of the complex Kyrgyz archaeological and anthropological expedition. And although the conversation was about serious things, the stories were often funny. For example, how, in the twenties, the head of a railway station in Siberia sold at auction a large box filled with ancient skulls. The student Debets did not have enough money to pay for the transportation of finds at an increased rate ... (and it was apparently still impossible to take an urgent loan on the card at that time).

... When Georgy Frantsevich took up the problem of rounding the head in people over the past millennia, he had seven thousand ancient skulls at his disposal. Of these, more than a thousand are people of the Neolithic era, two thousand are of the early Iron Age, and four thousand are medieval. In addition, GF Debets divided the skulls into groups according to the territories where they were found.

When comparing the skulls of different eras, two processes were very clearly visible. One is head rounding: brachycephalization. And the other is a thinning of the face and bones of the skull. The human skull became more round and less massive, more graceful. The second process is called gracilization by scientists - from the word grace, which does not need to be explained.

Over the past several millennia, these processes have gone very far. So much so that scientists until recently believed (and many believe even now) that the point is not in the changes in the skull, but in the invasion from other areas of aliens with a different head shape. In different geographical areas, this process goes on at different rates, in some places it seems to be interrupted, dies down for a thousand or two years. In a word, three thousand years ago, our (again, middle) ancestor had a skull of such massiveness, which has become a rarity today. The bones of the skeleton have also become thinner.

There are a lot of explanations for both of these processes. Brachycephalization, for example, has been associated with a cradle shape. It's amazing how obedient to the external pressure is the child's skull and how "patient" the brain is at the same time, which only it is not able to endure while remaining normal. The ancient Incas artificially lengthened their heads, tightening them in children with a tourniquet over the eyebrows. Some ancient tribes of the Black Sea region managed to make the foreheads of their children almost horizontal, sharply stretching their heads from nose to back ...

So this suspicion about the cradle could be substantiated. But - only it could. An invasion of another race? No, neither them, nor racial confusion can explain everything. What has happened in the last three thousand years in large areas of Eastern Europe? The climate remained the same. The geochemical composition of rocks and soil has not changed. What's the matter then? G. F. Debets put the question in this way:

“It is necessary to pay attention to the phenomena that:
a) would make it possible to establish the differences between the southern outskirts of Eastern Europe and its central regions at the beginning of the II millennium BC. e .:
b) have undergone significant changes in the central regions over the past two millennia BC. e .;
c) to some extent smoothed out the differences between the southern and central regions during these two millennia.

Having clarified the course of brachycephalization and gracilization in various regions of Eastern Europe, the scientist paved the way for an explanation of the causes of these processes.

Historians are aware of events of world-historical importance falling in the central part of Eastern Europe at this time. It was at that time that a massive transition to agriculture was taking place here. Could this be reflected in the shape of the skulls? Apparently, it could - Debets comes to this conclusion. He mainly means gracilization. The farmer consumes much less meat (and milk, if we compare only with the cattle breeder) than the hunter or herder. And his body began to receive much less calcium, the main material for the construction of the skeleton and skull. Here, as you can see, the appearance of a person is no longer influenced by the conditions of nature, among which he lives. The socio-economic conditions that have arisen as a result of human activity come into play.

In the west of Ukraine, during the same period, there were no major changes in economic life - there agriculture was mastered much earlier. And just there, there have been no special changes in the structure of the skulls over the past millennia. Apparently, the process of gracilization of skulls also took place there, but ended accordingly earlier. But among the local Mongoloid tribes of Eastern Siberia, where cattle breeding continued to dominate in the last millennia, at this time the process of gracilization did not take place at all.

The population of the Mediterranean and Western Asia in the III-IV millennia BC was distinguished by a more gracile skull than the then inhabitants of Eastern Europe. Well, the former, after all, respectively, earlier became farmers. And there is also reason to think that the ancestors of the "graceful-headed" Mediterranean of the 3rd millennium BC, indeed, were again people with more massive skulls.

However, in the Mediterranean region, something other than the transition to agriculture could affect the gracilization of skulls. In different climatic conditions, hunting, cattle breeding, farming have different effects on the physical characteristics of people. Pygmy hunters do not have more massive skulls than their agricultural neighbors.

In tropical Africa, the process of gracilization clearly affected many purely pastoralist tribes. And what this is about is not yet clear. It is also explained in different ways that the skull, simultaneously with the thinning of its bones, becomes rounder. It is known, for example, that the shape of a ball, which has the smallest surface area, is the strongest, all other things being equal. Has not nature taken this into account?

B.A. Nikityuk, Candidate of Biological Sciences, decided to test on animals what circumstances can cause rounding of the skull. No matter how "offensive" it is for people, he set up experiments on rats. And he found out: a change in the usual living conditions of animals, a sufficiently strong deviation from them, leads precisely to a rounding of the head. Maybe the scientist came across some regularity of the influence of the environment on the organism, common to many mammals, including humans?

It is possible to try from this point of view to explain why in the last century in a number of regions of Europe more dolichocephals began to be born than before, that is, there were signs of the termination of the brachycephalic process.

Perhaps, over several thousand years, a person as a representative of a biological species has finally adapted to the agricultural type of diet?

We did not talk about a tenth share of observations on changes in modern humans, nor did we cite a hundredth of the hypotheses that anthropologists from different countries make about them. However, one thing is clear - nature has retained the ability to somehow change our appearance. Rather, the person himself retained the possibility of changes.

Anthropology not only registers facts and draws conclusions from them about the past of mankind. She studies the patterns of development of the human body, collects material for predictions, for predictions about the future of the species homo sapiens. Over the past two millennia, even those purely "geographical" changes in man, about which we spoke, have occurred less than in the previous two thousand years. Scientists come to the conclusion that new races of man cannot already arise under the influence of the environment.

These days, people of science love graphics regardless of their specialty. So, the curve of human changes tends to become more and more flat, to turn, in the end, into a straight line. This means that a person in the future in appearance will differ from us relatively little. And it is probably worth saying in conclusion that the deeper anthropologists study the differences between peoples, the more they are convinced of the unity of mankind.

Perhaps it is impossible to judge unequivocally. There are a number of characteristics inherent in each personality, which are called character. But habits can be replaced with others that are more beneficial for a person.

Is personality a constant?

Even speaking about character, one should not forget that the individual is able to improve him depending on his own needs and desires. Times change, people change. Many have complexes that came from childhood. For example, a child closes down, protects himself psychologically. But when he grows up, already an adult begins to understand that he no longer needs the old mechanisms, they should fall out of his head, like milk teeth.

Why do we act and think in one way or another?

Neural connections are created in the brain, which fix in our consciousness a certain algorithm of actions, a list of options for actions in a given situation. For example, if a child is humiliated in the yard, he gets used to being bullied, but in the future this can affect his self-esteem and cause creation

If people do not change, they remain the same frightened children who cannot develop either in their professional or personal life. And even if the outside world is benevolent to them, the created neural connection in the brain says "Suffer, there is danger, evil and enemies around."

As a rule, adolescents experience such contradictory feelings, but some pull this train along with them into adulthood. Do people change after childhood traumas or those experienced at a more conscious age? Of course! The main thing is the desire to understand yourself, delve into psychology, and not think that this is all nonsense.

Sometimes you need to delve into yourself

As a rule, when an individual receives a profession, a hobby, the attention of the opposite sex, makes friends, he himself has a question: "So what don't I like?" It's time to understand the reasons for your incorrectly constructed thinking and really become the person you always wanted to be.

People don't change only if they don't want to. Even the types of temperament studied by psychologists are considered not so much innate as a phenomenon obtained in the development process. Many justify their indecision by the fact that they consider themselves to be melancholic, or harshness, being choleric. But nothing changes from this justification. People, as they did not like excessive softness and rudeness, will not like it, but a person will live with it.

He can endlessly run away from his shortcomings, but it is much more effective to deal with them, clarify everything, understand the train of his own thoughts and discover at what point the path of development of the inner emotional sphere has turned in the wrong direction. With proper effort, you can change yourself. Do not adjust to the surrounding reality and put on a mask, but show your best qualities.

Changing the background we are on

Human flexibility in terms of adapting to the environment becomes obvious to us in the simplest examples. For example, in children's textbooks on the subject “The World Around” you can see what is changing. In the top row of the table, in one of the tasks, items are registered that were used before. These are hay, firewood and food obtained during the hunt. Looking around, seeing tall buildings, cars, supermarkets, computers in every house and apartment, we understand that people's lives are changing. In the upper section of the assignment, there are those household items that helped to survive earlier, and they will seem to us, no doubt, meager. Now a person has more opportunities. The flow of information is huge and non-stop, which we sometimes do not even have time to assimilate.

Because of the chaos and noise of the world, many develop mental illness. And at the same time, the world has become more progressive. There is more knowledge about how to use the gifts of nature. If it were not for the achievements of scientists, we would be deprived of many amenities, but there were times when the development of scientific thought was suppressed.

Inhibition of development

When it comes to the Middle Ages, we immediately imagine the vaults of castles, Gothic cathedrals, campaigns of the Crusaders and endless internecine wars. We visualize the bonfires that were organized by the inquisitors, as well as among the feudal lords. This era is famous for such signs.

How did the ideas of medieval man change against the background of these external signs? Did they see the external environment in the same way as we do, and what was the driving force behind their actions?

How medieval man's ideas about the world changed can be seen from the cultural and intellectual fund, elements of which have survived to this day. The people of that time gained a lot of useful knowledge from ancient philosophers and sages. There were many prejudices and distortions in performance during this period. It is precisely this that separates the era of the Greeks and Romans from the period that they used to call the New Time.

How are people's perceptions changing, for the better? Most of the authors who touched on this topic in their writings argue that it is not, and characterize the Middle Ages as a failure in development, a stupor in which mankind fell. The culture of European states at that moment was much weaker than in other time periods. There was a noticeable backwardness, decline in culture and moral values, less attention was paid to human rights. This period will be cast as a gloomy shadow. This is what they call its beginning - "dark ages".

Aspirations and desires

In the novel "The Master and Margarita" by M. Bulgakov, Woland said that people do not change. But here it is more about their motives. The fact that a person has always been seduced by wealth is well known to everyone.

Likewise, such passion as vanity is eternal. It was on them that the hero emphasized. But at the same time, it is hard to deny that no matter how great the progress of science, self-realization, closeness with other individuals, and mutual understanding are always important for people. Civilization offers many ways to entertain oneself without being surrounded by other people, but at the same time, nothing can replace live communication in terms of quality and impact on mood. In human nature, there are many instincts that sit at the subconscious level.

Instinctive level

Sometimes we don't even realize why we are acting in one way or another. Take, for example, falling in love between a guy and a girl. Women tend to over-focus on their partner and, without receiving news from him for a long time, fall into a hysterical and depressive state. Of course, everyone who has bothered to sort out their emotions at least once and bring all their causes to the surface is less susceptible to such incidents.

If you blindly follow your instincts, you will notice extremely stupid behavior. So what is the reason for all this? If we remember the primitive community, we will see that the men went hunting, and the women cooked food, watched over the children. If there was not enough food for the entire tribe, the division of material values \u200b\u200bwas carried out according to the principle of strength. And, of course, men measured their biceps. After the strongest, the woman ate him, then the second most powerful and his wife.

The instinct of self-preservation

So the idea of \u200b\u200bmodern ladies that they cannot live without their chosen one, called love, is the purest self-preservation. Selfishness is inherent in everyone, so that such a feeling can be explained by some benefit for oneself.

In our time, a woman can earn her own living, engage in intellectual work, but still, in the subcortex of the brain, there is the thought that starvation awaits her without a companion. Hence the desire to be beautiful, the idea that the main thing in a girl is attractiveness. This is because it was by this criterion that they were judged. And this is the most commonplace example of how our actions and thoughts are controlled by instincts.

In fact, our ancestors before us did a very thorough job of creating survival skills, thinking mechanisms and other patterns that we sometimes use unconsciously. Everything changes, life changes, people change. Or is it just the shell that becomes different, but inside we are still the same?

What can and cannot be changed?

The attitudes that sit in us genetically are almost impossible to change. They need to be realized and understand why we do this. The second large layer of information that is stored in our brain is the events of childhood. We have a set of species instincts, but now we need to develop our own, conditioned by the environment and events that are happening around us personally.

If an individual did not develop in the most favorable environment and was negatively influenced, his parents fought, drank, paid little attention to him, or, on the contrary, pampered him too much, all this can affect the further formation of the personality and cause some complications. But such a person should not consider himself a moral invalid.

Almost everyone has such dark spots, which at a conscious age have to be wiped off. The main thing is not to justify yourself, but to get down to business. Not to complain that the world does not accept a person, but first to know and love oneself.

Everyone can change for the better

Sometimes we cannot change the traits of our character and body, but you can always find how to improve them, because each has a grain of beauty, from which you can grow a whole garden with beautiful flowers and healthy tasty fruits. It only requires a hardworking cultivator who can get to the bottom of the problem and shed the refreshing moisture of truth on it.

Looking at scientific progress, the cultural heritage of mankind, we see that people have enough strength, intelligence and opportunities for development. Looking at wars, catastrophes and accidents, we also understand that if we do not get out of delusion at the right time, do not set the right priorities, this force may not serve for the best purposes.

All in our hands

A person is simultaneously evil and kind, stable and changeable. The whole charm of our life is that we ourselves create the path along which we go. If people have the opportunity to change for the better, they will definitely succeed in doing it.

If an individual wants to throw his soul into the fire of sin and the intention is firm, no assurances can dissuade him from this venture. For the harmonious development of the world and the presence of only positive changes, everyone must learn to take responsibility, first of all, for their own life, judgments and actions, to make themselves better. Then all of humanity will be transformed. The choice is yours!

Increased human growth. The latest study showed that in developed countries people have become taller, and the highest average height in the world - 1.85 cm - is observed in the Netherlands.

Although Americans were the tallest people in the world during World War II (1.77 cm), growth rates had stalled by the end of the 20th century. And while average growth has increased in many countries, it has not been uniform. In some countries plagued by disease, war, and other problems, average growth has declined from time to time. The researchers believe that this suggests that negative factors such as famine or epidemics affect the next generation, and it takes about 5 generations to overcome these factors. According to the latest research, the relationship between height and quality of life has been identified, and tall people are perceived as more intelligent and influential.

People are getting fatter. Since the 1970s, researchers have studied the growth dynamics of Mayan children and their families in Guatemala, Mexico and the United States. When the Mayans moved to the United States, they were 11.4 cm taller than their peers in Guatemala and Mexico. However, their weight also increased and they were more likely to be obese. There is also a trend towards weight gain worldwide. So in 2013, 29 percent of the world's population was overweight or obese. Why people get fatter is a subject of scientific controversy. Some researchers believe that overeating and lack of physical activity are to blame. But there is also a theory that genetics play a role here, as well as viruses that have been associated with obesity. Contrary to popular belief, many studies have found a link between being overweight and poverty. Some researchers suggest that this trend is due to epigenetics or inherited changes that affect how the body stores excess energy from food. For example, if your mother and grandmother went through hard times, this is passed on to future generations, and when times are good, the body tries to store extra energy in the form of fat.

Early puberty. In many countries, children start to mature earlier, especially girls. Many studies have shown that the age at which girls reach puberty has decreased over the past half century. For example, a study in the United States showed that the age of menarche dropped by 0.3 years per decade from the mid-1800s, when the first menstruation occurred at age 17, until the 1960s. Research also indicates that there is a link between overweight and early puberty, and girls with a high body mass index reach puberty at an earlier age. This can have negative health consequences, as research has shown that early maturation is associated with the development of hypertension and diabetes later in life. There are also social consequences. In some cultures, a girl who reaches puberty is considered old enough for marriage, which means she has fewer opportunities to pursue an education or career.

Human longevity and its negative consequences. People are now living longer than ever. According to WHO, the average life expectancy worldwide has grown from 30 years in the 20th century to 70 years in 2012. Experts predict that the world average life expectancy for women born in 2030 will rise to 85 years. Increased life expectancy is associated with advances in medicine, improved sanitation and access to clean water. However, while these factors have reduced the death rate from infectious diseases, the death rate from degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, heart disease and cancer have increased. In other words, people have begun to live longer, but are dying from other diseases than in the past. The rise in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes has been linked by some scientists to improved hygiene. That is, when the body is exposed to too few microbes, the immune system overreacts to even the most harmless microbes. Human development in the future What will happen to people in the future, given how quickly technology is changing our world? There is some concern that the future of evolution will be determined by genetic engineering. Bionic implants, nanotechnology and new drugs can extend human life even further. Some scientists believe that we can achieve immortality through technology in the next 30 years. While this sounds like science fiction, it is clear that humans are evolving rapidly and technology is having a big impact.