--------------------------------------------
On Sat, 5/10/14, Tim <xxxxxx@little-possums.net> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML]Chemistry Question
 To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
 Date: Saturday, May 10, 2014, 12:32 AM

 On Fri, May 09, 2014 at
 10:54:11PM +0200, Knapp wrote:
 > I always
 wonder just how diverse humans would be after a dark
 night
 > of say 1000 years. Assuming that
 large disasters happen and you have
 >
 massive die offs and you must adjust to your planet, I would
 think
 > you might end up with some very
 different humans.

 Given
 advanced genetic engineering, the fact that most planets are
 at
 least somewhat hostile, and the prospect
 of technological support
 systems breaking
 down?  Yes.  That could be quite likely.

 Lacking deliberate
 intervention though, it seems unlikely.  1000 years
 is aeon in human terms, but an eyeblink in
 evolutionary time.  Hardly
 any changes are
 likely to occur in just a few dozen generations.
 Selection pressure sufficient to affect
 reproduction rates to that
 extent is much
 more likely to result in extinction than any
 significant degree of adaptation or
 evolution.

 I would expect
 that you would need at least ten thousand years to get
 substantial variations, and most of those being
 just a bias around one
 end of ranges that
 already existed.  For significant novel variations,
 timescales of at least a hundred thousand years
 should be expected.

 - Tim
 -----

Considering that the Ancients removed Homo <whatever> from Terra a whole lot more than 100,000 years ago, I wonder if there should be more diversity than is documented amongst the Vilani, Zhodani, & all the minor humans?