(Article published in Scientific American in Spanish)
Our body has been evolving for millions of years and has become adapted to a highly mobile lifestyle, but in the last 13.000 years all that work had to be undone. Nowadays, spend 90 percent of our day almost with no mobility at all.
Let’s go back in time 2 million years. In Africa, we would find the oldest representatives of our genus Homo. We would also notice that they had a hunter-gatherers lifestyle, and that they walked miles and miles per day. A way of living that was maintained for 1.987.000 years out of the 2.000.000 we have been on this planet. Humans have carried on this way of living for 1.987.000 years out of the 2.000.000 we have been on this planet.
If we pay attention to those big fat numbers, we will see that there is only 13.000 years of difference between them and us,. During the last years of mankind history, the majority of those humans had chosen to spend their lives with a drastically different lifestyle. These radical change was generated by agriculture, plant and animal domestication, which sprouted 13.000 years ago in different parts of the world.
This tiny alteration in their livelihoods drastically changed the history of mankind for two big reasons: On the one hand is the dependency foisted on us over the foods our ancestors have chosen to domesticate consume (On the one hand, is the dependency foisted on us over the animals our ancestors have chosen choose to domesticate) , just a fistful compared to the hunter-gatherers’ varied diet. On the same level of importance, the abandonment of the high mobility lifestyle that had characterized the human genus for 1.990.000 years.
Light bones
A study of 2014, published in by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that human bones have become more and more lightly built in the cultures that adopted agriculture. Our hunter-gatherer ancestor’s bones where a 20 percent more robust.
This has nothing to do with a changes in our diet but with the loss lack of mobility due to a sedentary lifestyle. Having lighter bones is not related to an evolutionary change that had been passed down from generation to generation, but because our bones grow weaker than those of hunter-gatherer children.
One of the authors of the study, Colin Shaw, from Cambridge University, United Kingdom, had published a similar study in 2013, at Journal of Human Evolution, in which he compared the bones of hunter-gatherers from 50.000 years ago, with those of ordinary current humans, and those of athletes.
Athletes versus prehistoric hunters
The results would pale even athletes who exercise 5 to 6 hours a day, and run between 130 and 160 kilometres per week. A prehistoric hunter-gatherer had a daily physical activity of exactly twice that of the professional athlete. The thing is, those hunter-gatherers from 50,000 years ago used to tour through a region of between 3,000 and 5,000 square kilometres.
It is better not to mention where the current average human is, to avoid embarrassment. But, Well, if you insist or really want to know, a person that exercises at least twice a week does not even reach a third of the physical activity of their or the already mentioned prehistoric ancestor.
“It’s not agriculture what makes us weak, or prone to certain diseases, but lifestyles,” said anthropologist José Luis Lanata, researcher from Argentina CONICET.
“Undoubtedly, a very sedentary life like the one we are taking nowadays in the cities, spending eight hours sitting in front of a computer, produces changes in different organs, in our bones, in our sight,” Lanata says. “A monotonous diet like the one produced by agriculture generates problems, while a varied diet is what we have evolved for. But it is also bad for our health not to have physical activity.”
Maladapted because of agriculture?
Our body, which evolved over millions of years to adapt to a highly mobile lifestyle, even higher than that of an Olympic athlete, had to start to adapt in only 13.000 years to spend 90 percent of the day sitting, almost with no mobility. This brings us problems like backache, among other things. So, are we maladapted?
“I think that we are neither adapted nor maladapted”, said Carles Lalueza Fox, expert in paleogenetics from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology of Pompeu Fabra University, Spain. “There is a current trend (which is reflected even in fashions such as pale diet or pale training), to consider the hunter-gatherer lifestyle as a healthier lifestyle; I do not think it was like that; clearly, the way of life farmers had had several advantages that led to its expansion, including a population increase and the possibility of storing food surplus”.
“It is evident that this had to constitute a great selective force and that we are, in the end, the descendants of the farmers who survived these adaptive challenges”, Lalueza Fox concluded.
Our body has been evolving for millions of years and has become adapted to a highly mobile lifestyle, but in the last 13.000 years all that work had to be undone. Nowadays, spend 90 percent of our day almost with no mobility at all.
Let’s go back in time 2 million years. In Africa, we would find the oldest representatives of our genus Homo. We would also notice that they had a hunter-gatherers lifestyle, and that they walked miles and miles per day. A way of living that was maintained for 1.987.000 years out of the 2.000.000 we have been on this planet. Humans have carried on this way of living for 1.987.000 years out of the 2.000.000 we have been on this planet.
If we pay attention to those big fat numbers, we will see that there is only 13.000 years of difference between them and us,. During the last years of mankind history, the majority of those humans had chosen to spend their lives with a drastically different lifestyle. These radical change was generated by agriculture, plant and animal domestication, which sprouted 13.000 years ago in different parts of the world.
This tiny alteration in their livelihoods drastically changed the history of mankind for two big reasons: On the one hand is the dependency foisted on us over the foods our ancestors have chosen to domesticate consume (On the one hand, is the dependency foisted on us over the animals our ancestors have chosen choose to domesticate) , just a fistful compared to the hunter-gatherers’ varied diet. On the same level of importance, the abandonment of the high mobility lifestyle that had characterized the human genus for 1.990.000 years.
Light bones
A study of 2014, published in by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that human bones have become more and more lightly built in the cultures that adopted agriculture. Our hunter-gatherer ancestor’s bones where a 20 percent more robust.
This has nothing to do with a changes in our diet but with the loss lack of mobility due to a sedentary lifestyle. Having lighter bones is not related to an evolutionary change that had been passed down from generation to generation, but because our bones grow weaker than those of hunter-gatherer children.
One of the authors of the study, Colin Shaw, from Cambridge University, United Kingdom, had published a similar study in 2013, at Journal of Human Evolution, in which he compared the bones of hunter-gatherers from 50.000 years ago, with those of ordinary current humans, and those of athletes.
Athletes versus prehistoric hunters
The results would pale even athletes who exercise 5 to 6 hours a day, and run between 130 and 160 kilometres per week. A prehistoric hunter-gatherer had a daily physical activity of exactly twice that of the professional athlete. The thing is, those hunter-gatherers from 50,000 years ago used to tour through a region of between 3,000 and 5,000 square kilometres.
It is better not to mention where the current average human is, to avoid embarrassment. But, Well, if you insist or really want to know, a person that exercises at least twice a week does not even reach a third of the physical activity of their or the already mentioned prehistoric ancestor.
“It’s not agriculture what makes us weak, or prone to certain diseases, but lifestyles,” said anthropologist José Luis Lanata, researcher from Argentina CONICET.
“Undoubtedly, a very sedentary life like the one we are taking nowadays in the cities, spending eight hours sitting in front of a computer, produces changes in different organs, in our bones, in our sight,” Lanata says. “A monotonous diet like the one produced by agriculture generates problems, while a varied diet is what we have evolved for. But it is also bad for our health not to have physical activity.”
Maladapted because of agriculture?
Our body, which evolved over millions of years to adapt to a highly mobile lifestyle, even higher than that of an Olympic athlete, had to start to adapt in only 13.000 years to spend 90 percent of the day sitting, almost with no mobility. This brings us problems like backache, among other things. So, are we maladapted?
“I think that we are neither adapted nor maladapted”, said Carles Lalueza Fox, expert in paleogenetics from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology of Pompeu Fabra University, Spain. “There is a current trend (which is reflected even in fashions such as pale diet or pale training), to consider the hunter-gatherer lifestyle as a healthier lifestyle; I do not think it was like that; clearly, the way of life farmers had had several advantages that led to its expansion, including a population increase and the possibility of storing food surplus”.
“It is evident that this had to constitute a great selective force and that we are, in the end, the descendants of the farmers who survived these adaptive challenges”, Lalueza Fox concluded.
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