We Sit, Shop, Grow Fat!

I listened to a great and enlightening conversation with Evolutionary Biologist Daniel Lieberman yesterday. The gist: our human bodies have evolved much slower than our human cultures. Our bodies are stuck in the Stone-Age, and we are "mismatched" with our current culture/society. Revelatory!

We were made to run, to hunt, to gather. And instead we sit, shop, and grow fat. Really, really super-sized fat. And most of our diseases are the result of this evolutionary mismatch. We are in conflict with our bodies. If we do what comes naturally - maximize calories, maximize and store fat, to be used later in times of crisis or need, well... just look around folks!

We must be very discriminating when it comes to the "modern world." It's a killer. We have built a world of comfort and plenty. We are not equipped biologically to live in the land of plenty, the land of fast food and cheap calories. We come from another world entirely. Our bodies are still stuck in a Paleolithic (early Stone Age) mode. Our bodies are of the past, alive in a present that over-rewards us in every way.

All of this makes so much sense. That dangerous Darwinian ideas resonates across the ages. What a conundrum. Our culture is in a turbo-speed evolutionary mode, and our bodies are still intimately connected to that long line of folks taking one little step at a time.