I wanna know if there are any differences from them. How have we adapted and stuff in 400 years.
In: Biology
From a genetic perspective, basically nothing has changed. Adaptations takes a lot longer than that to manifest. Especially among a large population. Anatomically modern humans have been around for over 100,000 years.
That said, on average people are taller and are more likely to be nearsighted.
Neither of these are genetic, though. Taller height is due to better nutrition and nearsightedness is thought to be because we spend so much time with screens from a young age.
So if you could magically take a few infant from the 1600s and raise them as a normal modern child they would likely be taller then they would have been and more of them would be nearsighted then they would have been.
Evolution does not work that fast.
If you look at the entire population you may see some traits become more or less common due to demographic changes, but that is basically it.
If you go back a bit more you might see some adaptations as humans survived different plagues, but even that is not really a big difference just a change in the ratio of what existed before.
If you look at the bodies themselves you might see some changes brought about by better nutrition and healthcare, like people growing taller and stuff, but that isn’t genetic. Bring a baby from that time feed it properly and give it the right healthcare and it won’t be any different from anyone alive today.
In fact you might be able to go back 200,000 years and find humans who are basically anatomically the same as us today, with only minor mutations like being able to stomach milk as an adult and some people having their skin turn white.
If you look at the bodies itself you could easily tell a body from the 1600s from one from today though.
Radioactive isotopes from nuclear bomb tests and microplastics everywhere in the body of someone living this century is going to be very obvious.
That’s definitely less than 10 generations (maybe even <5). This is like your great-grandparent’s great grandparents more or less. Super old people from the 1800’s only barely died off in the last 20 years and that’s only 1 generation.
Nothing has changed at the level you’re asking. I’d argue nothing has even barely changed mentally either and for even longer than that (i.e. “monkeys with cell phones”).
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