Speculation is that evolution is going to continue

Everything around us seems to be changing at breakneck speed. Twenty years ago, smartphones were niche products. Twenty years before that, computers were clunky behemoths. Forty years before that, far more Americans traveled by train than by plane. Forty years before that, cars were just starting to supplant horses.

Over the past couple millennia, a mere blip of Earth’s history, humans have manifestly reshaped the planet – from the physical to the biological. The ground, the oceans, the air...