By Anna-Marie Lever Science and nature reporter, BBC News Humans
have moved into the evolutionary fast lane and are becoming
increasingly different, a genetic study suggests. Is human
evolution speeding up? In the past 5,000 years, genetic change
has occurred at a rate roughly 100 times higher than any other
period, say scientists in the US. This is in contrast with the
widely-held belief that recent human evolution has halted. The
research has been published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Professor Henry Harpending, an
author of the study from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City,
US, said: "The dogma has been these [differences] are cultural
fluctuations, but almost any temperament trait you look at is
under strong genetic influences. "Genes are evolving fast in
Europe, Asia and Africa, but almost all of these are unique to
their continent of origin," he added. "We are getting less
alike, not merging into a single, mixed humanity." This is
happening, he said, because "there