On Fri, May 09, 2014 at 10:54:11PM +0200, Knapp wrote:
> I always wonder just how diverse humans would be after a dark night
> of say 1000 years. Assuming that large disasters happen and you have
> massive die offs and you must adjust to your planet, I would think
> you might end up with some very different humans.

Given advanced genetic engineering, the fact that most planets are at
least somewhat hostile, and the prospect of technological support
systems breaking down?  Yes.  That could be quite likely.

Lacking deliberate intervention though, it seems unlikely.  1000 years
is aeon in human terms, but an eyeblink in evolutionary time.  Hardly
any changes are likely to occur in just a few dozen generations.
Selection pressure sufficient to affect reproduction rates to that
extent is much more likely to result in extinction than any
significant degree of adaptation or evolution.

I would expect that you would need at least ten thousand years to get
substantial variations, and most of those being just a bias around one
end of ranges that already existed.  For significant novel variations,
timescales of at least a hundred thousand years should be expected.

- Tim