Anthropogenic Evolution — The Third Driver of Evolutionary Change

This paper proposes Anthropogenic Evolution as a third driver of evolutionary change, distinct from natural selection and random genetic mutation. It argues that human cultural, technological, and ideological agency has become a dominant selective force — directing evolutionary trajectories through dietary choice, biotechnology, epigenetic inheritance, and interspecies hybridisation. The paper examines concrete mechanisms including lactase persistence, canine reduction, appendix vestigiality, and CRISPR germline editing, before proposing that the origin of Anthropogenic Evolution may trace to the interbreeding of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals — the genetic collision that produced the metacognitive threshold making all subsequent directed evolution possible. A final section examines the self-destructive consequences of this process: antibiotic resistance, chronic disease, microbiome collapse, genetic loss, and the sixth mass extinction. The paper argues that Darwin, Lamarck, and De Vries were each partially correct, and that no evolutionary framework is final — every theory is a snapshot of a moving target.