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Future Evolution
Everyone wonders what tomorrow holds, but what will the real future look like? Not decades or even hundreds of years from now, but thousands or millions of years into the future. Will our species change radically? Or will we become builders of the next dominant intelligence on Earth- the machine?
These and other seemingly fantastic scenarios are the very possible realities explored in Peter Ward's Future Evolution, a penetrating look at what might come next in the history of the planet. Looking to the past for clues about the future, Ward describes how the main catalyst for evolutionary change has historically been mass extinction. While many scientist direly predict that humanity will eventually create such a situation, Ward argues that one is already well underway--the extinction of large mammals--and that a new Age of Humanity is coming that will radically revise the diversity of life on Earth. Finally, Ward examines the question of human extinction and reaches the startling conclusion that the likeliest scenario is not our imminent demise but long term survival--perhaps reaching as far as the death of the Sun!
Full of Alexis Rockman's breathtaking color images of what animals, plants and other organisms might look like thousands and millions of years from now, Future Evolution takes readers on an incredible journey through time from the deep past into the far future.
These and other seemingly fantastic scenarios are the very possible realities explored in Peter Ward's Future Evolution, a penetrating look at what might come next in the history of the planet. Looking to the past for clues about the future, Ward describes how the main catalyst for evolutionary change has historically been mass extinction. While many scientist direly predict that humanity will eventually create such a situation, Ward argues that one is already well underway--the extinction of large mammals--and that a new Age of Humanity is coming that will radically revise the diversity of life on Earth. Finally, Ward examines the question of human extinction and reaches the startling conclusion that the likeliest scenario is not our imminent demise but long term survival--perhaps reaching as far as the death of the Sun!
Full of Alexis Rockman's breathtaking color images of what animals, plants and other organisms might look like thousands and millions of years from now, Future Evolution takes readers on an incredible journey through time from the deep past into the far future.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2001
5 people are currently reading
444 people want to read
About the author
Peter D. Ward
29 books104 followersPeter Douglas Ward is an American paleontologist and professor of Biology and of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle. He has written popular numerous science works for a general audience and is also an adviser to the Microbes Mind Forum.
His parents, Joseph and Ruth Ward, moved to Seattle following World War II. Ward grew up in the Seward Park neighborhood of Seattle, attending Franklin High School, and he spent time during summers at a family summer cabin on Orcas Island.
Ward's academic career has included teaching posts and professional connections with Ohio State University, the NASA Astrobiology Institute, the University of California, McMaster University (where he received his PhD in 1976), and the California Institute of Technology. He was elected as a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences in 1984.
Ward specializes in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, the Permian–Triassic extinction event, and mass extinctions generally. He has published books on biodiversity and the fossil record. His 1992 book On Methuselah's Trail received a Golden Trilobite Award from the Paleontological Society as the best popular science book of the year. Ward also serves as an adjunct professor of zoology and astronomy.
His book The End of Evolution was published in 1994. In it, he discussed in three parts, each about an extinction event on earth.
Ward is co-author, along with astronomer Donald Brownlee, of the best-selling Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, published in 2000. In that work, the authors suggest that the universe is fundamentally hostile to advanced life, and that, while simple life might be abundant, the likelihood of widespread lifeforms as advanced as those on Earth is marginal. In 2001, his book Future Evolution was published, featuring illustrations by artist Alexis Rockman.
Ward and Brownlee are also co-authors of the book The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the New Science of Astrobiology Charts the Ultimate Fate of the World, which discusses the Earth's future and eventual demise as it is ultimately destroyed by a warming and expanding Sun.
According to Ward's 2007 book, Under a Green Sky, all but one of the major mass extinction events in history have been brought on by climate change—the same global warming that occurs today. The author argues that events in the past can give valuable information about the future of our planet. Reviewer Doug Brown goes further, stating "this is how the world ends." Scientists at the Universities of York and Leeds also warn that the fossil record supports evidence of impending mass extinction.
His parents, Joseph and Ruth Ward, moved to Seattle following World War II. Ward grew up in the Seward Park neighborhood of Seattle, attending Franklin High School, and he spent time during summers at a family summer cabin on Orcas Island.
Ward's academic career has included teaching posts and professional connections with Ohio State University, the NASA Astrobiology Institute, the University of California, McMaster University (where he received his PhD in 1976), and the California Institute of Technology. He was elected as a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences in 1984.
Ward specializes in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, the Permian–Triassic extinction event, and mass extinctions generally. He has published books on biodiversity and the fossil record. His 1992 book On Methuselah's Trail received a Golden Trilobite Award from the Paleontological Society as the best popular science book of the year. Ward also serves as an adjunct professor of zoology and astronomy.
His book The End of Evolution was published in 1994. In it, he discussed in three parts, each about an extinction event on earth.
Ward is co-author, along with astronomer Donald Brownlee, of the best-selling Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, published in 2000. In that work, the authors suggest that the universe is fundamentally hostile to advanced life, and that, while simple life might be abundant, the likelihood of widespread lifeforms as advanced as those on Earth is marginal. In 2001, his book Future Evolution was published, featuring illustrations by artist Alexis Rockman.
Ward and Brownlee are also co-authors of the book The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the New Science of Astrobiology Charts the Ultimate Fate of the World, which discusses the Earth's future and eventual demise as it is ultimately destroyed by a warming and expanding Sun.
According to Ward's 2007 book, Under a Green Sky, all but one of the major mass extinction events in history have been brought on by climate change—the same global warming that occurs today. The author argues that events in the past can give valuable information about the future of our planet. Reviewer Doug Brown goes further, stating "this is how the world ends." Scientists at the Universities of York and Leeds also warn that the fossil record supports evidence of impending mass extinction.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 15, 2007
When I picked up Peter Ward's Future Evolution, I was expecting something more fanciful – a lushly illustrated spectacle like Dougal Dixon's After Man or Wayne Barlowe's Expedition. Instead, what I got was far more academic. Dr. Peter Ward, a paleontologist and professor of Biology and Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington, writes about evolution largely in the context of mass extinctions of the past. Beginning with the Devonian and working forward to the ice-age and today's largely anthropogenic extinction of the mega-mammals, half the book is dedicated to how these events have influenced evolution in the past, rather than charging head-first into speculation about the future. When he does finally offer some possibilities for future evolution, he does so with trepidation, as if saying “even though we can't be sure, this might sort of kinda be almost the way it could be – even though it isn't.”
Fair enough. I've seen too many examples of similar “scientifically based” works that speak in definite terms; “fish will learn to fly” or “gastropods will be the next sentient intelligence”.
But one of the things that sets Future Evolution apart from similar works is that in Ward's vision, mankind does not and will not go extinct. An extinction-proof humanity is something even Ward himself suggests might be “a little naive,” but when a large number of other hypotheses – both scientific and science-fictional – engage in that collective self-deprecation that man must go extinct, if not from our own irresponsibility then from some natural disaster like meteor impact, disease or astral event, the idea of a future where we persevere is an interesting prospect.
There are global implications for such a long-lived humanity, too. The current extinction will probably continue and most of the animals on the brink today will disappear. While this may offend our sensibilities, it only makes sense on a long-term, human-influenced globe. As our species ages and more of world comes under our auspices, “specialized” species (plants and animals which are adapted to narrow ecological niches) will go extinct, and those that remain will be more the those that adapt to human presence. In short, the future will no longer have untamed wilds. Rather there will be two kinds of life – the domesticated and weeds.
It struck me as strange, though, that such an academic work should have as many problem with typos and other errors – just a handful really, but curiously more than I'd expect in a published book. It also raised my brow when Ward references the planet Venus, but instead described the planet Mercury. But I digress.
Much of Future Evolution may seem bleak or pessimistic on the surface. One of the book's rare narratives about the future finds H.G.Well's main character from The Time Machine (a device Ward uses more than once to segue from era to era) fifty million years from the present day, standing in a landfill that stretches as far as the eye can see. At his feet are millions of cockroach-sized rodents with unique adaptations for foraging through the trash; narrow heads for poking into coke cans, needle-like claws for digging through old packaging. Rats have changed into long, eel-like parasites, sticking like hairy lampreys to the sides of pigs with shovel-shaped heads that plow through mountains of refuse. But change – for better or worse – is inevitable. What one takes away from this book is that, though the current trend of extinction and climate change is far, far from a “good thing,” it's not the end of the world, and is merely another in a long history of catastrophic events that eventually lead to the proliferation of even more biodiversity.
Or maybe not. This might only sort of possibly happen.
Reduce, reuse, recycle, folks.
Fair enough. I've seen too many examples of similar “scientifically based” works that speak in definite terms; “fish will learn to fly” or “gastropods will be the next sentient intelligence”.
But one of the things that sets Future Evolution apart from similar works is that in Ward's vision, mankind does not and will not go extinct. An extinction-proof humanity is something even Ward himself suggests might be “a little naive,” but when a large number of other hypotheses – both scientific and science-fictional – engage in that collective self-deprecation that man must go extinct, if not from our own irresponsibility then from some natural disaster like meteor impact, disease or astral event, the idea of a future where we persevere is an interesting prospect.
There are global implications for such a long-lived humanity, too. The current extinction will probably continue and most of the animals on the brink today will disappear. While this may offend our sensibilities, it only makes sense on a long-term, human-influenced globe. As our species ages and more of world comes under our auspices, “specialized” species (plants and animals which are adapted to narrow ecological niches) will go extinct, and those that remain will be more the those that adapt to human presence. In short, the future will no longer have untamed wilds. Rather there will be two kinds of life – the domesticated and weeds.
It struck me as strange, though, that such an academic work should have as many problem with typos and other errors – just a handful really, but curiously more than I'd expect in a published book. It also raised my brow when Ward references the planet Venus, but instead described the planet Mercury. But I digress.
Much of Future Evolution may seem bleak or pessimistic on the surface. One of the book's rare narratives about the future finds H.G.Well's main character from The Time Machine (a device Ward uses more than once to segue from era to era) fifty million years from the present day, standing in a landfill that stretches as far as the eye can see. At his feet are millions of cockroach-sized rodents with unique adaptations for foraging through the trash; narrow heads for poking into coke cans, needle-like claws for digging through old packaging. Rats have changed into long, eel-like parasites, sticking like hairy lampreys to the sides of pigs with shovel-shaped heads that plow through mountains of refuse. But change – for better or worse – is inevitable. What one takes away from this book is that, though the current trend of extinction and climate change is far, far from a “good thing,” it's not the end of the world, and is merely another in a long history of catastrophic events that eventually lead to the proliferation of even more biodiversity.
Or maybe not. This might only sort of possibly happen.
Reduce, reuse, recycle, folks.
June 30, 2008
Ward paints a bleak picture of the future.
Ward says we are in the middle of a mass extinction, caused by humans. This much is un-controversial.
After previous mass extinctions, new animals evolved to fill all the unexploited niches. This won't happen this time, Ward says, because humans will remain the dominant life-form on earth for a long time.
The future of evolution, he says, is among weedy species that can live in the new niches created by humans--in agricultural fields, garbage dumps, and sewers. He predicts that rats, snakes, crows, and domesticated animals will be the big winners in future evolution. Pretty grim.
While the ideas in this book were provocative, I was frustrated at how quickly he moved from one idea to another, without building a coherent case for his overall thesis.
Ward says we are in the middle of a mass extinction, caused by humans. This much is un-controversial.
After previous mass extinctions, new animals evolved to fill all the unexploited niches. This won't happen this time, Ward says, because humans will remain the dominant life-form on earth for a long time.
The future of evolution, he says, is among weedy species that can live in the new niches created by humans--in agricultural fields, garbage dumps, and sewers. He predicts that rats, snakes, crows, and domesticated animals will be the big winners in future evolution. Pretty grim.
While the ideas in this book were provocative, I was frustrated at how quickly he moved from one idea to another, without building a coherent case for his overall thesis.
September 2, 2019
Striking images and a sprightly text
This is almost as much of an art book as it is a book on evolution. The images, photos of about 30 paintings by Alexis Rockman, mostly oil and acrylic on wood or watercolor and ink on paper, are stunning depictions of creatures, past, present and to come: an arsinotherium (a rhino-like animal), a thylacine (a doglike marsupial, extinct in 1936), huge dandelions with thick roots several feet long, rabbits and rats on hind legs like kangaroo, crows like vultures, snakes with wings, etc. The text by geologist Peter Ward is sprightly, informed, very readable, and at times even moving, as when Ward recalls his return to New Caledonia after twenty-five years.
Ward's vision, however, is not pretty. He is not looking at planet earth after humans have gone extinct as some other books on future evolution have done. He sees us as surviving for another 500 million years so that the fauna and flora that do evolve will do so with humans as probably the most significant part of their environment. Consequently there will not be any large mammals, and the most numerous creatures will be small and "weedy." They will be mostly nocturnal animals that have learned to tolerate humans, rats and insects and "escapes" from our farms and genetic engineering labs.
Ward is very good at producing striking word portraits. One is the "brown mountain" he observed flying into Mexico City (the polluted air rising above the city), and another is his fanciful creatures of the future, the "Zeppeliniods," who have learned how to create hydrogen-filled air sacks so they can float in the air. In a particularly dystopian vision on pages 135-137, Ward's time traveler visits a garbage dump 10-million years in the future crawling with "cockroach-sized insects...[and] mammals, a few as large as cats but most rat-, mouse-, or even shrew-sized." These creatures have evolved adaptations for exploiting the garbage dump: "some with long tapered heads, others with thin ribbonlike tongues, others with blunt heads and large knoblike teeth, still other with huge batlike eyes." A pig-like creature with rats "like hairy lampreys with greedy sucking mouths" hanging from its sides appears. Overhead large crows "with brilliant plumage" dive bomb the traveler with knifelike barbs on their feet, driving him bleeding toward a tree where a hungry flock of these clever and hungry crows await. Ward also sees a great increase in the number of snakes, some with unusual adaptations to feed on the garbage eaters.
This "dyspeptic" vision, like some of the other visions in the book, is calculated to shock and revolt the reader, but just how likely is it to come to pass? On the one hand it would seem, not very, since we are already recycling away from garbage dumps in many places in the world. On the other hand, if we consider that we, as domesticated creatures ourselves, may be getting dumber, this scenario might seem more likely. (See page 105 where Ward references neurologist Terry Deacon as noting that "all domesticated animals appear to have undergone a loss of intelligence compared with their wild ancestors.") My feeling, however is, that should we by some wild happenstance still be around ten million years from now (average life span of a mammalian species is about two million years) I would expect us to have used our technology to better effect. More likely of course (and Ward addresses this possibility, but dismisses it) is that we will be replaced by the products of our technology long before then. Whether "they" will think it worthwhile to continue "living" is a very interesting question.
Clearly this is a popular book, almost a "coffee table" book, aimed at a popular readership, but that doesn't mean it's simplistic or dumbed down. True, Ward is biased toward a long-lived humanity which he thinks is likely the only intelligent creature in the cosmos (see Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (2000), which he wrote with Donald Brownlee), but Rockman's paintings really are first rate, and although the speculations are no more than that, they are interesting in themselves. Additionally there is a wealth of information in the text about evolution. Ward points out for example that it is not likely that we are going to undergo much Darwinian-type evolution in the future unless some humans become isolated. This can happen, he speculates, if an elite population isolates itself reproductively from the masses, or if we establish far-flung colonies in space. Another nice tidbit is Ward's observation that the average human I.Q. is not going to change much because whatever is measured on I.Q. tests is subject to the actions of numerous genes and any short term anomalies will be flooded by the mass of genetic humanity.
This book is a bit pricey because it is printed on expensive, glossy paper for the reproduction of the paintings. It's an attractive and entertaining book.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
This is almost as much of an art book as it is a book on evolution. The images, photos of about 30 paintings by Alexis Rockman, mostly oil and acrylic on wood or watercolor and ink on paper, are stunning depictions of creatures, past, present and to come: an arsinotherium (a rhino-like animal), a thylacine (a doglike marsupial, extinct in 1936), huge dandelions with thick roots several feet long, rabbits and rats on hind legs like kangaroo, crows like vultures, snakes with wings, etc. The text by geologist Peter Ward is sprightly, informed, very readable, and at times even moving, as when Ward recalls his return to New Caledonia after twenty-five years.
Ward's vision, however, is not pretty. He is not looking at planet earth after humans have gone extinct as some other books on future evolution have done. He sees us as surviving for another 500 million years so that the fauna and flora that do evolve will do so with humans as probably the most significant part of their environment. Consequently there will not be any large mammals, and the most numerous creatures will be small and "weedy." They will be mostly nocturnal animals that have learned to tolerate humans, rats and insects and "escapes" from our farms and genetic engineering labs.
Ward is very good at producing striking word portraits. One is the "brown mountain" he observed flying into Mexico City (the polluted air rising above the city), and another is his fanciful creatures of the future, the "Zeppeliniods," who have learned how to create hydrogen-filled air sacks so they can float in the air. In a particularly dystopian vision on pages 135-137, Ward's time traveler visits a garbage dump 10-million years in the future crawling with "cockroach-sized insects...[and] mammals, a few as large as cats but most rat-, mouse-, or even shrew-sized." These creatures have evolved adaptations for exploiting the garbage dump: "some with long tapered heads, others with thin ribbonlike tongues, others with blunt heads and large knoblike teeth, still other with huge batlike eyes." A pig-like creature with rats "like hairy lampreys with greedy sucking mouths" hanging from its sides appears. Overhead large crows "with brilliant plumage" dive bomb the traveler with knifelike barbs on their feet, driving him bleeding toward a tree where a hungry flock of these clever and hungry crows await. Ward also sees a great increase in the number of snakes, some with unusual adaptations to feed on the garbage eaters.
This "dyspeptic" vision, like some of the other visions in the book, is calculated to shock and revolt the reader, but just how likely is it to come to pass? On the one hand it would seem, not very, since we are already recycling away from garbage dumps in many places in the world. On the other hand, if we consider that we, as domesticated creatures ourselves, may be getting dumber, this scenario might seem more likely. (See page 105 where Ward references neurologist Terry Deacon as noting that "all domesticated animals appear to have undergone a loss of intelligence compared with their wild ancestors.") My feeling, however is, that should we by some wild happenstance still be around ten million years from now (average life span of a mammalian species is about two million years) I would expect us to have used our technology to better effect. More likely of course (and Ward addresses this possibility, but dismisses it) is that we will be replaced by the products of our technology long before then. Whether "they" will think it worthwhile to continue "living" is a very interesting question.
Clearly this is a popular book, almost a "coffee table" book, aimed at a popular readership, but that doesn't mean it's simplistic or dumbed down. True, Ward is biased toward a long-lived humanity which he thinks is likely the only intelligent creature in the cosmos (see Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (2000), which he wrote with Donald Brownlee), but Rockman's paintings really are first rate, and although the speculations are no more than that, they are interesting in themselves. Additionally there is a wealth of information in the text about evolution. Ward points out for example that it is not likely that we are going to undergo much Darwinian-type evolution in the future unless some humans become isolated. This can happen, he speculates, if an elite population isolates itself reproductively from the masses, or if we establish far-flung colonies in space. Another nice tidbit is Ward's observation that the average human I.Q. is not going to change much because whatever is measured on I.Q. tests is subject to the actions of numerous genes and any short term anomalies will be flooded by the mass of genetic humanity.
This book is a bit pricey because it is printed on expensive, glossy paper for the reproduction of the paintings. It's an attractive and entertaining book.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
June 13, 2019
Underwhelming in its vision, unremarkable in its scientific content, and insidiously myopic in its treatment of human topics like class and eugenics.
January 27, 2022
Really interesting and sober look at what the future might hold for the planet. Completely objective so doesn’t fall into any agenda trap that can come across in other books such as those regarding climate change. Incredibly well written, some of the writing in this would not look out of place in a piece of top class prose.
December 11, 2010
Everyone wonders what tomorrow holds, but what will the real future look like? Not decades or even hundreds of years from now, but thousands or millions of years into the future. Will our species change radically? Or will we become builders of the next dominant intelligence on Earth- the machine?
These and other seemingly fantastic scenarios are the very possible realities explored in Peter Ward's Future Evolution, a penetrating look at what might come next in the history of the planet. Looking to the past for clues about the future, Ward describes how the main catalyst for evolutionary change has historically been mass extinction. While many scientist direly predict that humanity will eventually create such a situation, Ward argues that one is already well underway the extinction of large mammals and that a new Age of Humanity is coming that will radically revise the diversity of life on Earth. Finally, Ward examines the question of human extinction and reaches the startling conclusion that the likeliest scenario is not our imminent demise but long term survival--perhaps reaching as far as the death of the Sun!
Full of Alexis Rockman's breathtaking color images of what animals, plants and other organisms might look like thousands and millions of years from now, Future Evolution takes readers on an incredible journey through time from the deep past into the far future.
These and other seemingly fantastic scenarios are the very possible realities explored in Peter Ward's Future Evolution, a penetrating look at what might come next in the history of the planet. Looking to the past for clues about the future, Ward describes how the main catalyst for evolutionary change has historically been mass extinction. While many scientist direly predict that humanity will eventually create such a situation, Ward argues that one is already well underway the extinction of large mammals and that a new Age of Humanity is coming that will radically revise the diversity of life on Earth. Finally, Ward examines the question of human extinction and reaches the startling conclusion that the likeliest scenario is not our imminent demise but long term survival--perhaps reaching as far as the death of the Sun!
Full of Alexis Rockman's breathtaking color images of what animals, plants and other organisms might look like thousands and millions of years from now, Future Evolution takes readers on an incredible journey through time from the deep past into the far future.
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November 22, 2013Very thought provoking read.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews