What Will Future Humans Look Like in 1,000 Years? | Unveiled

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What Will Future Humans Look Like in 1,000 Years?</h4>

It’s strange (and maybe a little unsettling) to think that one day, in a couple hundred years or so, all that exists now will be just another part of history. Perhaps, sometime in, say, the 2300s, the key events of this generation will be taught and learnt in classrooms; something that happened yesterday, or last week, or tomorrow, will be immortalized forever, although only as the answer to a tricky quiz question. But what’s especially clear in modern times is that the potential rate of change between now and then could be immense. Head even further forward, to the year 3,000 and beyond, and human society could well be unrecognizable.

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; what will future humans look like in one thousand years?

A thousand years, one millennium, is at once an exceptionally long and deceptively short period of time. Understanding a generation to mean a period of about thirty years, there are just more than thirty of those in our one thousand year block, with each bringing the same familiar cycles of life, death, happiness, sadness, the gravity of important moments, and the steady rhythms of everyday routine. If we cast our minds back one thousand years into the past, we can instantly see that so much has changed. While there are an estimated eight billion people on Earth today, there were only between 300 and 400 million in 1,000 AD. While that number has grown, then, our planet has played host to the rise and rise of cities; to the almost continuous waging of war; to the rise and fall of diseases; to the crumbling of empires; the dark ages, the enlightenment, the industrial revolution and the tech boom. Humanity certainly hasn’t stood still, to the point that it’s often said that, were it possible to bring a past human forward in time to now, they might well fail to recognize Earth as their home.

On the other hand, however, one thousand years actually isn’t so long, after all. The modern human species is around three hundred thousand years old… so all that’s happened in the last ten centuries, as immense and vital as it may seem to us, is really just a short chapter in the overall story. We have cities that are older than one thousand years; ancient structures that have been here for more than double that time; massive religions that have endured for longer, too. More significantly, though, while ninety-nine percent of the plant and animal species that have ever lived are now extinct, much of today’s natural world is also far older than just a millennium. The crocodile, for example, was here for the dinosaurs… so the last one thousand years of humanity is really but the blink of its old and reptilious eye.

The key for today, however, is that for as much as human civilization has changed, the human beings themselves are, really, much the same. We’ve seen small tweaks made to our collective DNA… such as, in some locations, where there’s been a noticeable rise in average height, or in average life expectancy (which, globally, has upped by literal decades since just the mid-1900s). We’ve also seen a greater diversity emerge across our now-global society, thanks to the advent of easy and accessible overseas travel, particularly within the last century. But, ultimately, were our same hypothetical time traveler to be brought here, again from one thousand years past, it’s not as though they would fail to recognise modern humans as humans. For all the changes that have occurred, and for all the modern world might feel like a wholly alien place, we - as animals - aren’t so radically different.

But, what’s interesting, is that many predictions for the future still aren’t what you’d call conservative. No matter the steady pace of evolution we’ve shown up until this point, it’s expected that humans will race through a long list of dramatic changes in the coming years… so that by 3,000 AD we actually might be significantly altered. 

The tech boom ignited with such excitement, particularly in the latter half of the twentieth century, that today we’ve become accustomed to (and even despairing of) some of the relatively recent developments. So much so that something of a malaise could be said to have set in, but there’s still always a carrot at the end of the stick - and, for many, that carrot is post-biology. Across a wide range of aspects, it’s tipped that the human body will soon become significantly enhanced by inorganic means. We’ve had additional devices such as eye glasses, hearing aids, and pacemakers for decades now… but the human species in the future is in line for such upgrades as in-built visual translators, to effectively end blindness… hyper-sensitive auditory aids to enable wearers to not just hear at optimum human level, but beyond it… and wholly artificial hearts that pump blood through our veins with infallible efficiency.

This quest for ultimate efficiency is really at the heart of most of the current predictions for our future. For instance, with languages, where some foresee inbuilt translator chips cut into our brains, so that nothing is beyond our understanding. From signs and menus to entire novels, our eyes will decipher all written texts… but, even more impressively, we should also be able to understand every single other person. Even in a conversation with multiple different languages spoken, all of the information should instantly be translated via AI in and around our ears, so that there’s zero chance of confusion. These changes wouldn’t necessarily show on the surface of the human body, but they would still be game-changing to our development.

In fact, many of the most important changes perhaps wouldn’t be immediately visible. Much has been made of the emergence of nanotechnology in recent times, and of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing… and both could mean that our insides run differently, perhaps even long before a thousand years from now. If the highest predictions ring true, we’ll all have armies of tiny, tiny machines riding through our bloodstreams… hell-bent on custom servicing our own bodies, in whatever way is needed. Preventing blood clots, dismantling tumors, eradicating viruses, filtering oxygen, meticulously sorting through the contents of our digestive systems… nothing will be left to chance or plain old organic evolution, anymore. And, really, while these upgrades won’t directly show on our outsides, perhaps they will indirectly… as we should all look (and feel) fresher, probably younger, and generally more polished. The darker side to all of this is that we could well all end up looking pretty much the same, once the machines inside us land on the optimum conditions for a human body. How do you think this particular part will play out?

There are some predictions toward immortality, too - within just the next one hundred years, let alone one thousand - and again possibly spurred on by genetic enhancements that first serve to reverse the aging process in our bodies’ cells, and then to stop it completely. This would theoretically lead to a human society without the physical signs of aging, as well; without irreversibly gray hair, for example, or wrinkled skin, creaky joints. Bizarrely, this could also make it impossible to tell one generation from the next, so that you and your grandmother (or even you and your great-great-great-grandmother) look very much alike.

And, finally, there’s the impact that space travel might have on our appearance, too. If NASA, SpaceX and the rest are to be believed, then we should have a human presence on the moon and Mars by the end of this century… by the end of this millennium, then, we could be even more spread out. And our new, interplanetary status could manifest itself in our bodies and faces. Changing gravity may stretch and compact our spines, leading to big differences in our heights… and in our general builds. Differing levels of sunlight could lead to larger or smaller eyes, as our pupils work to harvest only the amount of light required. Our inevitably changing diets will show in various ways, too, affecting our skin, hair, fingernails, and more. Or, if we were to instill a universal diet of optimum, synthetic nutrition… then this could be another area through which we all, actually, end up the same.

In general, as we look into our own future, we are then met with some potential contradictions. On the one hand, it’s predicted that we could be extremely changed, fast-tracking through evolution much quicker than we have in the last one thousand years of history. Powered by post-biological technology, we might’ve enhanced our bodies beyond all recognition… and without aging or death to worry about, we could all be forever young. However, on the other hand, for all the dramatic upheaval that we’re predicted to face, it might be that the end result is something like a species of lookalikes. Consider the potential development of cloning technology in the coming centuries, too, and our path toward a futuristic sameness becomes arguably clearer and clearer.

What do you think will happen? Are we heading for better times, or worse? Let us know in the comments! Because that’s what future humans could look like, in one thousand years.