Off The Record

According To Scientists, This Is What Humans Will Look Like In 1,000 Years

Published on February 11, 2025

It might seem reasonable to infer that humans have reached the end of our evolutionary journey when considering our monkey forebears.

Many scientists, however, think that the current state of human appearance is only the beginning.

The world is changing more quickly than ever before due to technology, space travel, and climate change, and experts predict that humanity will change along with it.

Artificial intelligence (AI) now shows us what future humanity might look like.

MailOnline has used top scientists’ forecasts to envision the evolution of the human race using Google’s ImageFX AI image generator.

Experts predict that human appearance will become much more uniform in the future.

According to their predictions, the typical individual will have darker skin and resemble someone from Brazil or Mauritius, two contemporary cultural melting pots.

The good news is that specialists predict that people in 3025 may be more attractive than we are now.

People will be shorter

Humans dying before they could procreate and pass on their genes used to be the main factor propelling evolution.

However, a growing number of people are surviving long enough to have children because to modern medicine.

This implies that the genes that grow more prevalent will be determined by a different force.

“In the past, that has always worked on some children not surviving, but the point is that evolution also works on fecundity – on how many children are born,” UCL evolutionary geneticist Professor Mark Thomas told MailOnline.

This basically indicates that the likelihood of a person passing on their genes increases with the number of children they have.

It’s interesting to note that some scientists have hypothesized that this might eventually cause humans to become shorter.

Although Professor Thomas makes it apparent that this is only “one theory among many,” it has been suggested that shorter height is associated with early sexual maturation.

Early sexual maturity enables organisms to produce more offspring throughout the course of their lives, however it seems that this is exchanged for smaller stature.

Professor Thomas says: “This is one of the arguments that’s been put forward to explain why you get pygmy populations in many places around the world.”

“Their lives are relatively short because it’s a tough life in the rainforest, so they’ve traded off sexual maturation against physical growth.”

The genes that cause both early maturation and shorter stature may become more prevalent in the population if individuals who mature earlier have more offspring.

Professor Thomas emphasizes that the connection might not persist outside of certain situations because this theory hasn’t been tested in population studies.

More attractive

The number of offspring one can have will be the primary driver of evolution as fewer people die.

Ironically, this could have the unintended consequence of making guys more appealing.

rofessor Thomas says: “The natural state of affairs in mammals is really for females to do all the choosing.”

“But when you have strong patriarchies, as we do in many places around the world, then the males end up doing a lot of the choosing and controlling.”

Selective pressure may reappear when civilizations liberalize and women’s autonomy in selecting partners increases.

“Thankfully we’re moving into a world where females do the choosing, and they’re going to choose males who they like for one reason or another,” says Professor Thomas.

“It might be for brains, success, because they look good, or look muscly but as there’s more female choice you would expect those traits to increase.”

Therefore, humanity may become slightly more handsome over the course of the next few thousand years as more attractive males successfully pass on their genes.

Darker skin and more uniform looks

Experts predict that one of the most significant changes will be the increasing homogeneity of human look.

Individual communities have been comparatively separated from one another for a significant portion of human history.

Small, isolated groups, such as the Amish, tend to be more different from other populations due to the increased incidence of genetic drift, or random variations in gene frequencies, that occurs when they breed together.

People from diverse ethnic backgrounds are already interacting with one another far more frequently than in the past, though.

Dr Jason Hodgson, senior lecturer on bioinformatics and big data at Anglia Ruskin University, told MailOnline: “One thing that might happen in the future is the breaking down of population structure.”

“Current trends in the US, at least, suggest that interracial marriages are becoming more common. Assuming this pattern continues you will see less population structure.”

This indicates that the average human of the future will inherit features from more groups, increasing their genetic diversity on an individual basis.

This might, however, result in less variance at the population level.

“In terms of appearance, you would then see that people are more intermediate,” says Dr Hodgson.

“If we think about one of the few traits that varies by population – skin colour – most people would be a bit brown, for example.”

Professor Thomas notes that the current populations of Brazil and Mauritius, where several ethnic groups have already intermixed for many generations, would be excellent points of comparison.

Technologically enhanced

Humans may be able to influence our own development with the help of powerful new technology.

Dr Hodgson says: “I would question whether evolution will be allowed to proceed naturally in the distant future.”

“We currently have the technology to do targeted gene editing with CRISPR-Cas9. This gives us the ability to largely change the genome as we want.”

Future generations may not be as meticulous, despite the fact that practically all scientists now view this as immoral, as Dr. Hodgson notes.

In the US, there are already businesses that offer “designer baby” services that promise to assist parents in choosing for characteristics like gender, height, and IQ.

Genetic features that were previously uncommon in the population may become much more prevalent if these technologies are let to proliferate unchecked.

Dr Hodgson says: “In the distant future you might see very significant change, and it could potentially happen on the scale of a single generation.”

Humans may even be able to acquire novel genetic features from other animals through the use of technologies like CRISPR-Cas9, which enables researchers to cut and paste segments of DNA.

For instance, in order to help protect oneself from damaging UV rays, people may decide to give themselves darker skin with higher melanin levels.

As technology gives people greater control over how they seem, fashion and cultural trends will likewise alter how people look.

Dr John Hawks, an anthropologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told MailOnline: “If we look to the future, the cultural and technological changes are almost certainly going to be stronger than the genetic changes across humanity.”

“Many of those affect appearance: you can imagine color-changing tattoos, all kinds of body modification, new modes of expression that come from blending bodies with technology.”

Smaller brains

Evolutionary biologist Professor Robert Brooks of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, told MailOnline that he anticipates our brains becoming smaller over time.

According to Professor Brooks’ idea, the benefit of having a large brain diminishes when computers take over more aspects of life, such as computation, facts, and social interaction.

However, the energy costs for moms with larger brains and the hazards associated with larger heads during childbirth are unchanged.

Dr. Nicholas Longrich, a palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist from the University of Bath, likened the future development of humans to that of a tamed animal in an article for The Conversation.

Dr Longrich wrote: “Arguably we’re becoming a kind of domesticated ape, but curiously, one domesticated by ourselves.”

He continues: “Sheep lost 24 per cent of their brain mass after domestication; for cows, it’s 26 per cent; dogs, 30 per cent.”

“This raises an unsettling possibility. Maybe being more willing to passively go with the flow (perhaps even thinking less), like a domesticated animal, has been bred into us, like it was for them.”

Hunched backs and clawed hands

According to previous research, more technology use may result in more non-evolutionary alterations.

This might involve people’s hands becoming crooked and overdeveloped from using phones or their hunches becoming more noticeable from spending all day in front of a computer.

Similarly, sleep specialist Dr. Sophie Bostock has previously warned that people’s bodies might start to change significantly if they didn’t get enough sleep.

More people may find themselves sleeping for six hours or fewer as their usage of social media and technology increases.

According to Dr. Bostock, the typical Briton will have red, puffy eyes, sagging skin, thinning hair, swelling legs, and chronic back pain in 25 years.

They will also have thinner limbs and legs and a weakened immune system, which makes them more vulnerable to the flu.

However, as there would be no evolutionary benefit to pass them on, these modifications would not take place at the genetic level.

Adaptations for space

It is not completely impossible that a portion of humanity might gradually diverge from the remaining population on Earth if they were to travel into space.

“The human population of Earth is very large and diverse, but long-term space travel does create the potential of small founder populations that remain separated for millennia,” Dr. John Hawks, an anthropologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told MailOnline.

It would be difficult to establish a sustainable human population in a different solar system after thousands of years of travel. However, the prospect of speciation would arise in such a situation.

Only 38% of the gravitational pull and 66% of the sunlight that humans experience on Earth would be available to them on Mars.

Humans may grow taller and develop longer arms as a space adaptation to help them function better in low gravity.

NASA claims that because astronauts’ spines stretch out in zero gravity, they can grow by roughly 3% during their first few days in orbit, even on the ISS.

Similarly, future people might become paler to maximize the quantity of vitamin D from low light, as was the case when ancient humans migrated into northern Europe.

Additionally, human eyes could be enlarged and made more sensitive to see in low light or improved by various technological enhancements.