Tuesday, May 14, 2013

The Speed of Evolution



Marlene Zuk is a professor of ecology, evolution and behavior at the University of Minnesota. She has written Paleofantasy ; What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet, and How We Live.
There is much talk recently in magazines and web chatter how we are just not evolved for modern life. Supposedly there was some wonderful hunter-gatherer past that we did well in...we chased game down and didn't eat grains. We ate everything raw and were perfectly suited for our environment.
No, sadly this is a paleofantasy. Zuk argues and quotes many research studies to show that the pace of evolution is not eons long. We are evolving and adapting all the time. "Even assuming we could agree on a time to hark back to, there is the sticky issue of exactly what such an ancestral nirvana was like. Do we use examples of modern day subsistence existence in a few remaining parts of the world?" Or do we speculate, using fossils and bones to construct what that existence was like? As one commenter on a "Paleo" blog says "It is idiotic to model one's behavior on the practices of pre-modern humans on the belief that it will make you live longer, or result in improved quality of life... You are not a pre-modern human. Get over it." Zuk not only is witty about this misconception, she also quotes the newest research in DNA and biology. Fascinating!

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