So far, humans have been a highly dominant species. Our multiplication and adaptability have allowed us to populate even some of the remotest and most desolate places on earth.
Yet, we are not the first species to have thrived and taken hold on this planet in huge numbers, and many before us have been obliterated by mass extinction events.
When you consider that over 99% of all living things that ever populated the earth are now long extinct, it stands to reason that we too may have a time limit. But what is it ?.
As far as the grand scale of things go, humans are a ‘newish’ species, having only begun our infestation of the earth relatively recently.
And, as with every living thing, humans are a distinct species with environmental and climatical needs that are essential to our survival, along with a plentiful food supply and adequate water.
Clues to the future of mankind are already appearing, and our ‘advancement’ is our own worst enemy, with the worst threats to humankind probably being the end result of the impact we are having on our own environment.
Should the earths’ environment become unable to sustain humans in such numbers, can it be assumed that humankind could be on the list of ‘endangered’ species ?.
Or will our advanced thinking somehow allow future generations to stabilise our ailing planet enough to allow for many further millions of years of human occupation ?.
Scientists have used marine organisms to study mass extinction events, and suggest that they occur every 26-30 million years. (Evolutionary purists can now sigh with relief - the earth seems to be currently mid cycle, with no mass extinctions due for around 10 million years).
Yet no animal has ceaselessly eroded and altered its’ own habitat and environment with the dubious success of the human. If this world is in an evolutionary cycle, then doubtless that cycle has been disturbed by our own negative contribution to the planet we inhabit.
It remains to be seen if humans will be able to sustain their numbers over the longer term, and our attempts to predict the timeline of our ultimate demise fail to take into account the hoped-for advances of the future.
Whichever way humans end up going, the creation of an artificial environment seems more easily achievable than hoping to persuade the human virus to change its' ways and mutate into something without an evolutionary death-wish.