There’s a problem with that “March of Progress” picture that’s so often used to illustrate our species’ development: it ends. Human evolution, the image implies, began in apehood and finishes here, with us. We’re done. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

It’s poetic, but it’s wrong . Evolution, famously, has no end goal – and there’s no reason to assume we’re already at the pinnacle of our species’ journey. In fact, as a new study from researchers at the University of Maine suggests, we might be right in the middle of a major evolutionary shift – and it’s one that’s totally different from anything we’ve seen before.

“Human evolution seems to be changing gears,” Tim Waring, an associate professor of economics and sustaina

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