IPFS News Link • Books
Should we aim to live like cavemen?
• newscientist.comYour book is about pseudoscientific ideas you call "palaeofantasies". What are they?
They stem from the idea that evolution makes minuscule changes over millions of years, so we haven't had enough time to adapt to the modern industrial world – and that we would be healthier and happier if we lived more like our ancient ancestors.
Is there any truth to the idea that we haven't evolved fast enough to cope with modern life?
To some extent it is true. Our bodies are ill-suited for sitting at computers all day, for example. Because humans evolved in an environment where they were not crouched over computers, sitting that way all day is going to have ill effects. But it's more nuanced than that. Being bipedal has a lot of costs on the human skeleton, too. Should we all long to be quadrupeds? It just doesn't make sense.