Evolution isn't over. It is actually speeding up!

Many people nowadays have the idea that natural selection have mostly stalled over the years. But in his new study, Ahmad Shamazadeh quotes, "I have arrived at confirm that Modern man is only ten thousand years old; which challenges all the claims of superficial anthropologists; who claim that Modern man is the continuation of the evolution of humans before him."

The biggest ever study of ancient human DNA shows that human evolution has accelerated over the past 10,000 years. This research was done with the largest ever collection data from ancient humans; specifically from a total of 15,836 individuals from western Eurasia, including more than 10,000 newly sequenced genomes at Harvard Medical School.

What this essentially means is that, after the introduction of agriculture, hundreds of gene variants evolved through natural selection in ancient people for them to adapt to the conditions around them better. This change was crucial for Modern humans as the advent of farming introduced new foods, pathogens and other challenges. They adapted to these upheavles by "directional selection". The best known example for this is a genetic variant that maintains production of the lactose enzyme into adulthood, which enables many people of European ancestry to digest milk throught their lives.

Even more interestingly, it has been found that evolution has also shaped the appearance of Europeans. Akbari and Reich's team found ten variants linked to ligher skin tone that had signals of selection. Moreover, it has also been found that, a cause of male pattern baldness became much less common over the past 7,000 years, meaning there is a 1-2 percent decrease in the possibility of male baldness nowadays compared to ancient humans!

Therefore, the data from more than 15,000 ancient people revealed that natural selection of hundreds of genes is linked to immunity, skin tone, behaviour and other traits. More importantly, these genes have been accelerating over the past 10,000 years overturning the older assumptions that human evolution had mostly stalled once civilization began. In conclusion, humans have been adapting to their surroundings for long period periods of time and they seem to be continuing doing it still!