Can Human Evolution be called Adaptive Radiation?

Human evolution is a long journey that spans a period of almost 6 million years, from our ancestors to modern man or Homo sapiens. Man has evolved remarkable traits such as advanced tool-making skills, social behavior, arts, and cognitive abilities through the process of natural selection and adaptation over the years. Human evolution is a slow process.

Adaptive radiation is a course of evolution where new species are diversified from a single species. This diversification is caused due to the changes in the environment which makes new resources available and creates new challenges for the species.

From the above discussion, we can easily understand that human evolution cannot be called adaptive radiation, because:

• Human evolution is a gradual and slow process but adaptive radiation is a rapidly diversifying process.
• The term adaptive radiation is unrelated to human evolution because adaptive radiation is a process of diversification that produces new species from another species but human evolution is a process of progression or evolution of a particular species, such as homo sapiens.

Relelavnt Links:

• Evolution Notes for Class 12 Chapter 6
• What is the Process of Evolution?
• NCERT Solutions for Class 12 Biology Chapter 6 Evolution
• What is Divergent Evolution?