In article <1991Nov03.164524.8865 at crom2.rn.com>, jim at crom2.rn.com (James P. H. Fuller) writes:
>>> In <55093 at netnews.upenn.edu> Frank Yue writes:
> >
> > *The human population has come to an evolutionary standstill.*
>> Well, if you accept the Gould/Eldridge "punctuated equilibrium" model of
> biological evolution, this is just what would be predicted: lots of evolu-
> tionary motion during the original Homo sapiens speciation event, not much
> since then, not much expected until the next genus-Homo speciation event,
> however that is to be caused. My personal hope is that it will be caused by
> geographical isolation of human populations on other planets, but that's
> another story ....
I'm a dilettant (=non-biologist), but I thought Gould and Eldridge estimated
that the speciation period was typically around 10% of the species' "life".
Given that homo sap sap is around 500,000 years old, and that we could expect
on purely biological grounds that the species would survive at least 5
million years, perhaps we are still in the process of speciating?
