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A review by ela_lee_
The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel Lieberman
5.0
I absolutely loved this book, it is one of the best educational resources I’ve ever read. Lieberman has a great way of explaining things sequentially and simply. This book was very easy to follow while answering so many questions I’ve always had, but never knew where to start. I highlighted so many educational notes from this book…how could I not?!
"Like money in the bank, fat reserves enable humans to stay active, maintain their bodies, and even reproduce during lean seasons. Unfortunately, natural selection never prepared us to cope with endless seasons of plenty, let alone fast food restaurants."
"All living humans can trace their roots to a common ancestral population that lived in Africa about 300,000 to 200,000 years ago, and that a subset of humans dispersed out of Africa starting about 100,000 to 80,000 years ago. In other words, until very recently, all human beings were Africans. All living humans are descended from an alarmingly small number of ancestors. According to one calculation, everyone alive today descends from a population of fewer than 14,000 breeding individuals from Sub-Saharan Africa. And the initial population that gave rise to all non-Africans was probably fewer than 3,000 people."
"Most of the diseases that are likely to afflict you are triggered or intensified by environmental factors that have mostly become common since farming and industrialization. For most of human evolution, people did not have the opportunity to get sick or become disabled from diseases such as Type 2 diabetes and myopia."
"If we really wanted to prevent cavities, we would have to reduce our consumption of sugar and starch drastically. However, ever since farming, most of the world’s population has been dependent on cereals and grains for most of their calories, making a truly cavity preventing diet impossible for all but a few. In effect, cavities are the price we pay for cheap calories."
"More food is good, but agricultural diets can provoke mismatched diseases. One of the biggest problems is a loss of nutritional variety and quality. Hunter-gatherers survived because they eat just about anything and everything that is edible. Hunter-gatherers therefore necessarily consume an extremely diverse diet, typically including many dozens of plant species in any given season. In contrast, farmers sacrifice quality and diversity for quantity by focusing their efforts on just a few staple crops with high yields. It is likely that more than 50% of the calories you consume today derived from rice, corn, wheat, or potatoes."
"Farming surpluses also made possible social stratification, suppression, slavery, war, famine, and other evils unknown to hunter-gatherer societies. Farming also ushered in many mismatched diseases that range from cavities to cholera. Hundreds of millions of people have died from plagues, malnutrition, and starvation - deaths that would not have occurred if we remained hunter-gatherers. Yet despite these many deaths, there are nearly 6 billion more people alive today than would be the case had the agriculture revolution never begun."
"It is as if the human species had a total makeover. Our daily lives would be barely comprehensible to our ancestors from just a few generations ago, but we are essentially identical genetically, anatomically, and physiologically. The change has been so rapid that too little time has elapsed for more than a modicum of natural selection to have occurred. Was it worth it?"
"Yet just because we can live lives of exceptional cleanliness and comfort, doesn’t mean they are good for us - especially children. To grow properly, almost every part of the body needs to be stressed appropriately by interactions with the outside world. Just as not requiring a child to reason critically will stunt her intellect, not stressing a child’s bones, muscles, and immune systems will fail to match these organs capacities to their demands."
"Yet the rate and power of cultural evolution has vastly outpaced the rate and power of natural selection. The bodies we inherited are still adapted, to a significant extent, to the various and diverse environmental conditions in which we evolved over millions of years."
"Humans are also marvelously adapted to make and use tools: to communicate effectively, to cooperate intensively, to innovate, and to use culture to cope with a wide range of challenges. These extraordinary cultural capacities enabled homo sapiens to spread rapidly across the planet and then, paradoxically, seize being hunter-gatherers."
"The next generation of Americans risks being the first generation to live shorter lives than their parents."
"The US, for example, spends more than $2 trillion a year on healthcare - nearly 20% of the country’s gross domestic product. And it is estimated that approximately 70% of the illnesses we treat are preventable."
"We humans sometimes behave in ways that are not in our best interests because we lack sufficient information, we cannot control our environments, we are unfairly manipulated by others, and, crucially, because we are poorly adapted to control deep cravings for comforts and calories that used to be rare. Consequently, a sensible role of government that benefits everyone is to help one another make choices that we would rationally judge to be in our own self-interest. In other words, government has the right, and even duty, to nudge (or sometimes push) us to behave rationally while preserving our right to still behave irrationally if we so choose."
PS: Children chewing gum could prevent crooked teeth and cavities! Over the years, we have eaten too many cooked and softened foods (therefore, chewing significantly less) so our mouths have tightened up and our faces shrunk. Instead of expanding our mouth and creating space, we now have impacted wisdom teeth and crooked teeth.
"Like money in the bank, fat reserves enable humans to stay active, maintain their bodies, and even reproduce during lean seasons. Unfortunately, natural selection never prepared us to cope with endless seasons of plenty, let alone fast food restaurants."
"All living humans can trace their roots to a common ancestral population that lived in Africa about 300,000 to 200,000 years ago, and that a subset of humans dispersed out of Africa starting about 100,000 to 80,000 years ago. In other words, until very recently, all human beings were Africans. All living humans are descended from an alarmingly small number of ancestors. According to one calculation, everyone alive today descends from a population of fewer than 14,000 breeding individuals from Sub-Saharan Africa. And the initial population that gave rise to all non-Africans was probably fewer than 3,000 people."
"Most of the diseases that are likely to afflict you are triggered or intensified by environmental factors that have mostly become common since farming and industrialization. For most of human evolution, people did not have the opportunity to get sick or become disabled from diseases such as Type 2 diabetes and myopia."
"If we really wanted to prevent cavities, we would have to reduce our consumption of sugar and starch drastically. However, ever since farming, most of the world’s population has been dependent on cereals and grains for most of their calories, making a truly cavity preventing diet impossible for all but a few. In effect, cavities are the price we pay for cheap calories."
"More food is good, but agricultural diets can provoke mismatched diseases. One of the biggest problems is a loss of nutritional variety and quality. Hunter-gatherers survived because they eat just about anything and everything that is edible. Hunter-gatherers therefore necessarily consume an extremely diverse diet, typically including many dozens of plant species in any given season. In contrast, farmers sacrifice quality and diversity for quantity by focusing their efforts on just a few staple crops with high yields. It is likely that more than 50% of the calories you consume today derived from rice, corn, wheat, or potatoes."
"Farming surpluses also made possible social stratification, suppression, slavery, war, famine, and other evils unknown to hunter-gatherer societies. Farming also ushered in many mismatched diseases that range from cavities to cholera. Hundreds of millions of people have died from plagues, malnutrition, and starvation - deaths that would not have occurred if we remained hunter-gatherers. Yet despite these many deaths, there are nearly 6 billion more people alive today than would be the case had the agriculture revolution never begun."
"It is as if the human species had a total makeover. Our daily lives would be barely comprehensible to our ancestors from just a few generations ago, but we are essentially identical genetically, anatomically, and physiologically. The change has been so rapid that too little time has elapsed for more than a modicum of natural selection to have occurred. Was it worth it?"
"Yet just because we can live lives of exceptional cleanliness and comfort, doesn’t mean they are good for us - especially children. To grow properly, almost every part of the body needs to be stressed appropriately by interactions with the outside world. Just as not requiring a child to reason critically will stunt her intellect, not stressing a child’s bones, muscles, and immune systems will fail to match these organs capacities to their demands."
"Yet the rate and power of cultural evolution has vastly outpaced the rate and power of natural selection. The bodies we inherited are still adapted, to a significant extent, to the various and diverse environmental conditions in which we evolved over millions of years."
"Humans are also marvelously adapted to make and use tools: to communicate effectively, to cooperate intensively, to innovate, and to use culture to cope with a wide range of challenges. These extraordinary cultural capacities enabled homo sapiens to spread rapidly across the planet and then, paradoxically, seize being hunter-gatherers."
"The next generation of Americans risks being the first generation to live shorter lives than their parents."
"The US, for example, spends more than $2 trillion a year on healthcare - nearly 20% of the country’s gross domestic product. And it is estimated that approximately 70% of the illnesses we treat are preventable."
"We humans sometimes behave in ways that are not in our best interests because we lack sufficient information, we cannot control our environments, we are unfairly manipulated by others, and, crucially, because we are poorly adapted to control deep cravings for comforts and calories that used to be rare. Consequently, a sensible role of government that benefits everyone is to help one another make choices that we would rationally judge to be in our own self-interest. In other words, government has the right, and even duty, to nudge (or sometimes push) us to behave rationally while preserving our right to still behave irrationally if we so choose."
PS: Children chewing gum could prevent crooked teeth and cavities! Over the years, we have eaten too many cooked and softened foods (therefore, chewing significantly less) so our mouths have tightened up and our faces shrunk. Instead of expanding our mouth and creating space, we now have impacted wisdom teeth and crooked teeth.