Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet,
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- Other > E-books
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- 1
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- 3.03 MB
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- English
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- Paleofantasy What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex Diet
- Uploaded:
- Aug 26, 2013
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- mdusanjay
Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live by Marlene Zuk 2013 | ISBN: 0393081370 | English | 336 Pages | EPUB | 3 MB An exposé of pseudoscientific myths about our evolutionary past and how we should live today. We evolved to eat berries rather than bagels, to live in mud huts rather than condos, to sprint barefoot rather than play football—or did we? Are our bodies and brains truly at odds with modern life? Although it may seem as though we have barely had time to shed our hunter-gatherer legacy, biologist Marlene Zuk reveals that the story is not so simple. Popular theories about how our ancestors lived—and why we should emulate them—are often based on speculation, not scientific evidence. Armed with a razor-sharp wit and brilliant, eye-opening research, Zuk takes us to the cutting edge of biology to show that evolution can work much faster than was previously realized, meaning that we are not biologically the same as our caveman ancestors.
joshua13 at 2013-08-28 00:26 CET:
Even if we were identical to our paleolithic ancestors, a major flaw in "paleo diets" and the like is the false assumption that animals are perfectly adapted to their environment and eat the best possible diet. Evolution in no way guarantees that. As conditions change or animals migrate those best adapted to the new conditions are more likely to leave more descendants, and thus are naturally selected. But obviously the process is not instantaneous, nor guaranteed to keep up with change. Again, animals that eat a better diet will possibly leave more descendants, but the perfect diet may not even be available, or at least not year round. Animals will move to new diets if the plant life or prey population changes and it may be a very long time, if ever before they are perfectly adapted to the new diet. Animals are just getting bye the best they can. as were our ancestors. Scientifically formulated diets and veterinary care enable many kinds of captive animals to live longer than in the wild. The wild conditions are distinctly inferior in some ways to the man made ones. In other cases it's the reverse. It's just not as simple as some people would like it to be.
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