New research suggests that despite modern technology and industrialisation, 'humans continue to evolve'. In the last 10,000 years or so, the pace of our evolution has speeded up 100 times creating more mutations in our genes and hence, greater natural selection.

Some clues that show humans are evolving are

(i) Lactose Tolerance Historically the gene that regulated human's ability to digest lactose was shut down as infants are weaned off of their mother's breast milk. However, adult human in regions of Africa and Northern Europe developed the ability to tolerate lactose in their diets as recent as 5,000 or 6,000 years ago due to mutations.

(ii) Wisdom Teeth Our ancestors had much bigger jaws than we do to lactose their eating habits. Today our jaws are much smaller and wisdom teeth are often impacted estimates say that they will disappear in the coming population.

Yes, had Darwin been aware of Mendel's work, he would have been able to explain the origin of variations. Darwins observation of different forms of an individual in a population could be related to the presence of different forms of alleles of a gene.

The gene express as the most adaptive traits are selected naturally and become more abundant than those that are expressed as less adaptive traits.

Over the time, the accumulation of these traits might change the species to an extent that it develops into a new one and adapted to the specific environment.