Our own ingenuity, our capacity to keep inventing and innovating, means that almost all of us live not just geographically but more importantly technologically a million miles away from the "EEA": the environment of evolutionary adaptedness.
One reason why modern, wealthy societies struggle with rising obesity, say, is that the human body is built for hunter-gathering. Place us in an environment of abundant, tasty food and comfy chairs, and we put on weight.
Obesity as well as atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, certain cancers, Type 2 diabetes and other conditions are sometimes dubbed "diseases of modernity".
Of course, being very far from the environment we evolved for is a fantastic deal for essentially all human beings.
This story is from the October 23, 2024 edition of The Straits Times.
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This story is from the October 23, 2024 edition of The Straits Times.
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