This article explores the end of Homo sapiens. It discusses the possibility of self-destruction by human-made technology, the possibility of evolutionary leapfrogging into a new species, and reconsiders the meaning of extinction. We look at how technological advances and biological evolution will affect the future of humanity.
Before we begin, it’s important to define what we mean by the word “apocalypse”. If you look up the word apocalypse, it’s defined as “the end of an ongoing event or phenomenon”. When we talk about the end of Homo sapiens, we mean that there will no longer be 21st century humans.
In the beginning, humans were nothing special. They had very short fingernails compared to other birds of prey, which didn’t help with self-protection, and they didn’t have any fur on their bodies, which made them vulnerable to fluctuating temperatures – they couldn’t withstand freezing cold at all. But the reason we’re here in 2017, reigning as the top species on Earth, is because we’re so intellectually advanced compared to other species. Our brains have evolved dramatically, allowing us to store large amounts of information, and we’ve developed artificial intelligence (AI) like AlphaGo, which is far more computationally capable than humans. We’ve also applied and advanced technologies that were unimaginable in the past, such as the use of stem cells to create new human organs. But even as we accomplish these great feats, humans will become extinct.
When people think of human extinction, they often envision a scenario in which humans are self-destructed by human-made technology. This is a common theme in many science fiction (SF) movies. For example, in the Terminator series of movies, humans create artificially intelligent robots to help advance humanity, but in the end, the robots wipe out humanity and take over the planet. Another example is the Resident Evil series of movies, where the biotechnology that humans use to advance humanity leads to the destruction of the planet by zombies, undying, man-eating monsters. Like these movies, extinction could indeed happen if humans lost control of their technology.
But extinction can also be caused by new evolution, which is why we think the end of Homo sapiens happened. Indeed, there have been many, many species on Earth, and many of them have become extinct. However, extinction doesn’t necessarily mean that a species is completely gone, because mutations occurred among the offspring, and individuals with better traits survived and retained the remaining traits of their ancestors. For example, Homo erectus looked similar to modern humans, had their own culture, and even had a language. Despite their similarities to us, the Neanderthals became extinct, but the current Homo sapiens evolved from the Homo erectus species and became more advanced. In this way, we can understand extinction as not just something that was there and then completely disappeared, but something that is different and distinct from our ancestors. The categorization of species in the first place is also an artificial act, and life can be understood as the result of continuous evolution.
Like Pasteur, who argued that all life originated from other life, we have many characteristics that we inherited from our past ancestors, a process that we go through to better adapt to our changing environment.
The end of Homo sapiens could literally mean the end of all people as we know them today, killed by nuclear or biological weapons of their own making. However, the end of Homo sapiens could also mean that artificially intelligent robots will replace the arms of our organic complexes, or that the species itself will evolve biologically and become a different species altogether, and the Homo sapiens we know will cease to exist.
