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The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease, by Daniel Lieberman
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In this landmark book of popular science, Daniel E. Lieberman gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years. He illuminates the major transformations that contributed to key adaptations to the body: the rise of bipedalism; the shift to a non-fruit-based diet; the advent of hunting and gathering; and how cultural changes like the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions have impacted us physically. He shows how the increasing disparity between the jumble of adaptations in our Stone Age bodies and advancements in the modern world is occasioning a paradox: greater longevity but increased chronic disease. And finally—provocatively—he advocates the use of evolutionary information to help nudge, push, and sometimes even compel us to create a more salubrious environment and pursue better lifestyles.�
[With charts and line drawings throughout.]
- Sales Rank: #6620 in Books
- Published on: 2014-07-01
- Released on: 2014-07-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .90" w x 5.20" l, .97 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 480 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In thoroughly enjoyable and edifying prose, Lieberman, professor of human evolution at Harvard, leads a fascinating journey through human evolution. He comprehensively explains how evolutionary forces have shaped the human species as we know it, from the move to bipedalism, and the changes in body parts—from hands to feet and spine—that such a change entailed, to the creation of agrarian societies, and much more. He balances a historical perspective with a contemporary one—examining traits of our ancestors as carefully as he looks to the future—while asking how we might control the destiny of our species. He argues persuasively that cultural evolution is now the dominant force of evolutionary change acting on the human body, and focuses on what he calls mismatch diseases that are caused by lack of congruence between genes and environment. Since the pace of cultural evolution has outstripped that of biological evolution, mismatch diseases have increased to the point where most of us are likely to die of such causes. Lieberman's discussion of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and breast cancer are as clear as any yet published, and he offers a well-articulated case for why an evolutionary perspective can greatly enrich the practice of medicine. Agent: Max Brockman, Brockman Inc. (Oct.)
From Booklist
Like it or not, we are slightly fat, furless, bipedal primates who crave sugar, salt, fat, and starch. Harvard professor Lieberman holds nothing back in his plea that people listen to the story of human evolution consisting of five biological transformations (walking upright, eating a variety of different foods, accumulating physical traits aligned to hunting and gathering, gaining bigger brains with larger bodies, and developing unique capacities for cooperation and language) and two cultural ones (farming and reliance on machines). Unfortunately, human beings now create environments and presently practice lifestyles that are clearly out of sync with the bodies they’ve inherited. This mismatch results in myriad problems, including Type 2 diabetes, myopia, flat feet, and cavities. Lieberman cleverly and comprehensively points out the perils of possessing Paleolithic anatomy and physiology in a modern world and bemoans just how out of touch we have become with our bodies. Natural selection nudges all life-forms toward optimality rather than a state of perfection. If we want to continue our phenomenal run as a species, it is essential to understand (and embrace) our evolutionary legacy. --Tony Miksanek
Review
“Monumental . . . an epic voyage that reveals how the past six million years shaped every part of us—our heads, limbs, and even our metabolism. . . . Through Lieberman’s eyes, evolutionary history not only comes alive, it becomes the means to understand, and ultimately influence, our body’s future.”
—Neil Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish
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“Fascinating. . . . A readable introduction to the whole field and great on the making of our physicality.”
—Nature
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“Sweeping. . . . Convincingly makes the case for a wholesale rethinking of how we live our modern lives.’”
—CommonHealth, WBUR
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“Riveting, enlightening, and more than a little frightening. . . . No one understands the human body like Daniel Lieberman or tells its story more eloquently.”
—Christopher McDougall, author of Born to Run
“These are not debates to gloss over or reduce to simple statements of cause and effect—they are stories with scientific complexity and tremendous, sometimes contradictory accumulations of evidence and detail. The Story of the Human Body does full justice to those stories, to that evidence and to that detail, and brings them to bear on daily health and well-being, individual and collective.”
—The Washington Post
“[Lieberman] is a true expert in a system where architecture and history intersect: the human foot. He ably describes how behavior and anatomy can lead to foot injuries in long-distance runners.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“The ultimate science-based Paleo investigation. . . . Convincing. . . . A great read, and I recommend it highly for those of you who are interested in learning the facts about our biological roots, and how we can rationally apply ‘Paleo’ concepts to prevent and reverse modern ‘mismatch’ diseases.”
—Dr. Ronald Hoffman, The Hoffman Center/Health Talk
“Eloquent and precise . . . Lieberman is the first to point out that modern living and technology have made our lives better in many ways. Still, a look back at where we came from can tell us a lot about where we’re headed, he says—and how we might alter that course for the better.”
—Grist
“A doozy. . . . That humans are poorly adapted to our modern lifestyle of convenience foods, flat screens, and desk jobs isn’t very controversial. But how we best cope with this new reality often is. Lieberman takes on many popular notions, including barefoot running, the paleo diet, epigenetics, and a host of hot topics ranging from obesity and chronic disease to Nanny State politics.”
—Outside
“[Lieberman’s] evolutionary approach produces some counterintuitive surprises. . . . The Story of the Human Body is a reliable guide to a problem that is going to get worse before it gets better.”
—The Guardian
“In thoroughly enjoyable and edifying prose, Lieberman . . . leads a fascinating journey through human evolution. He comprehensively explains how evolutionary forces have shaped the human species as we know it. . . . He balances a historical perspective with a contemporary one . . . while asking how we might control the destiny of our species. He argues persuasively that ‘cultural evolution is now the dominant force of evolutionary change acting on the human body.’”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Lieberman gracefully combines paleontology, anatomy, physiology, and experimental biomechanics to clarify how the human body has evolved and how evolutionary design now clashes with the particularities of modern society. . . . An important book.”
—Library Journal
“Lieberman holds nothing back. . . . He cleverly and comprehensively points out the perils of possessing Paleolithic anatomy and physiology in a modern world and bemoans ‘just how out of touch we have become with our bodies.’. . . If we want to continue our phenomenal run as a species, it is essential to understand (and embrace) our evolutionary legacy.”
—Booklist
“A massive review of where we came from and what ails us now . . . Would that industry and governments take heed.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
130 of 136 people found the following review helpful.
Deep, detailed, wise, and very much worth while
By Dennis Littrell
The first part of the book is about human evolution from apes to Homo sapiens with a lot of interesting information about hominins (AKA hominids) and how we became bipedal and developed language and culture. The second part is about how the rise of agriculture and then the industrial revolution changed the health of our bodies for better and for worse. The third part is about how to cope with what Lieberman calls "mismatch diseases" and "dysevolution."
Lieberman's style is surprisingly readable considering that he has written scores of articles for peer-reviewed journals. There is some repetition (some of it on the same page!) but most of it is didactic because Lieberman is a teacher and he wants us to understand the great environmental and cultural changes that have taken place in the last 50,000 years or so since we became behaviorally modern humans. He is an expert on the human body, especially the head and the feet. Known as "the barefoot professor" at Harvard where he is the head of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Lieberman is at the pinnacle of his profession and so what he writes about the human body and the environment is highly significant.
To give us as much information as possible, Lieberman begins in Part I with the Australopithecus apes and examines how they got around on two legs as they gradually evolved into the various archaic humans and finally into Homo sapiens. This early part of the book, about one-third of the total, gives the reader a good, contemporary understanding of the various early hominids such as Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo rudolfensis, etc. and how their bodies and habits differed from one another and from Homo sapiens. For example he notes how humans were better at throwing spears and rocks than apes and Neanderthals and how this ability (among other talents) helped humans to survive while the Neanderthal did not.
The beginning of Part II is about the discovery and growth of agriculture and animal husbandry and how that caused an explosion in human populations while bringing about new hardships and diseases. He calls this "The Fruits and Follies of Becoming Farmers." On page 181 he quotes Jared Diamond who claimed that farming was the "worse mistake in the history of the human race." Chapter 9 of Part II examines how the industrial revolution brought about new diseases, hardships, challenges and the beginning of hitherto undreamed of riches for humans and of course the real beginning of the massive pollution that is threatening the planet.
Part III is about chronic disease and other ailments of the modern world and how to cope in an environment radically different from the paleolithic one in which we evolved. It is here that Lieberman elucidates his concept of mismatch disease and dysevolution. The former refers to diseases of too much energy (over eating) and not enough physical activity that leads to obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, etc. that is epidemic in developed countries. The latter (dyevolution) is the phenomenon by which we address the symptoms of these chronic ailments instead of the causes thereby perpetuating the diseases.
An important point that Lieberman makes in the introduction and repeats elsewhere is that "many human adaptations did not necessarily evolve to promote physical or mental well-being." They evolved to "promote relative reproductive success (fitness)." (p. 13) On page 167 he expresses it this way: "we sometimes get sick because natural selection favors fertility over health, meaning we didn't necessarily evolve to be healthy." (!) This means that the tendency to get diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes, and even Alzheimer's--diseases that do not reduce reproductive success until it becomes a moot point as we grow older--are mostly not selected against. The evolutionary mechanism that fashioned us simply turns a blind eye to diseases that mainly affect us after the prime reproductive years of our lives.
Another important point is that because humans evolved to be hunter-gatherers we are consequently optimally adapted to the way of life of a hunter-gatherer. This strongly suggests that (and is the main thrust of Lieberman's contention) we are NOT optimally adapted to either life in the big city or life on the farm. It may surprise some readers to learn that humans took a step backward in terms of easy living when we began to rely primarily on farming for subsistence. Lieberman refers to studies that show that not only did the instance of infectious disease increase as we became dependent on farming, but we actually got shorter in stature. We became more subject to a feast and famine way of life that led to more pain and suffering than hunter and gatherers experienced.
Lieberman dismisses several of the explanations for why we became bipedal, such as seeing over tall grasses, freeing our forelimbs for carrying things, etc. He believes that climate change from forested land to savannahs "spurred selection for bipedalism in order to improve early hominins' ability to acquire fallback foods...when fruit was not available." (See the section entitled "Why Be a Biped" in Chapter 2, "Understanding Apes.") "Fallback foods" are roots, tubers, animals like turtles, etc. The salient point is that being bipedal allowed the early apes to cover larger amounts of ground in search of food, whereas tree-dwelling apes could not because knuckle walking is not nearly as efficient as walking upright on two legs.
Among the wealth of insights that Lieberman makes about being human is this one about cooperation. "..[H]unter-gatherers are highly egalitarian and they place great stock in reciprocity.... In their "highly cooperative world...not sharing and being uncooperative can mean the difference between life and death. Group cooperation has probably been fundamental to the hunter-gatherer way of life for more than two million years." (pp. 75-76)
There's a lot of information about nutrition, physical activity and lifestyle choices beginning in Chapter 10 "The Vicious Circle of Too Much." On a point of much contention among nutritionists Lieberman concludes: "Insulin thus makes you fatter, regardless of whether the fat comes from eating carbohydrates or fat." (See the entire argument in the section "How and Why We Are Getting Fatter?")
As a means of fighting the mismatch diseases of obesity, type 2 diabetes, etc. Lieberman introduces in Chapter 13, "The Survival of the Fitter," the idea of "soft paternalism" by which he means governmental intervention to help discourage or tax unhealthy consumption of sodas and other highly processed junk foods. I'm not sure how I feel about this idea but I know many people would oppose it. What Lieberman does not present as a way to lessen human suffering is legal and assisted suicide.
One last quote: "If there is any one most useful lesson to learn from our species' rich and complex evolutionary history, it is that culture does not allow us to transcend our biology." (p. 366)
--Dennis Littrell, author of "Understanding Evolution and Ourselves"
63 of 68 people found the following review helpful.
Solid Science and Strong Arguments
By Danno
'The Story of the Human Body' is a well-written book tailored for the curious nonscientist who wants to learn more about how our evolutionary history influences the sorts of ailments that we suffer from, particularly those that we often attribute to simple aging. This is a book primarily for the layman - if you've taken a good general life science course as a high school or college student you'll be able to survive the jargon just fine - and it's to author Daniel Lieberman's credit that he was able to write such an engaging, conversation book without overly simplifying the science behind his argument. The science itself is noncontroversial, and Lieberman does a great job distinguishing between the indisputable facts of the fossil record and what we can infer and assume based on our understanding of modern primitive peoples. Lieberman's central argument won't be new to anyone who's studied evolutionary theory and health sciences, but it's probably one that most people have not considered before.
I'm particularly impressed with the last chapter of the book. Most recent science books I've read that are written for a nonprofessional audience tend to either fall apart toward the end or have ridiculous wrapups that have little connection to the text that preceeded it. The last chapter of this book, on the other hand, reads like an extended essay examining the pragmatism of implementing our evolutionary knowledge to many of the potential solutions to improve our health. Truth be told, unless we're going to abandon civilization en masse and return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, any changes we make to get closer to the lifestyles that our bodies evolved for are going to necessarily be incomplete. But they will be for the better. And while I don't agree with all of Lieberman's arguments, it's difficult to contradict his primary conclusions.
This isn't an overly easy read, and it isn't going to lead to an overnight improvement in your health, but it's well worth the effort you put into reading this book. Set aside a week or so to read it slowly.
59 of 67 people found the following review helpful.
Our physiological & cultural evolution since Australopithecus
By William Garrison Jr.
"The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease" by Daniel Lieberman (Oct. 2013), [approx. 370 pages of text, & another 60 pages of notes]. Okay, yes, this is a study of the evolution and development of us: mankind. The author doesn't start by hypothesizing how "man" evolved by some fish deciding to become a beachcomber and then standing upright. He avoids the "early" Darwin picture. Instead, the author fast-forwards his journey by picking up mankind's evolutionary traits "about six million years or so to a forest somewhere in Africa" (p.21).
But where is this journey going to take us? As the author postulates: "We didn't evolve to be healthy, but instead we were selected to have as many offspring as possible under diverse, challenging conditions. As a consequence, we never evolved to make rational choices about what to eat or how to exercise in conditions of abundance and comfort... If we wish to halt this vicious circle [of continuing to pass `bad' genes to our children] then we need to figure out how to respectfully and sensibly nudge, push, and sometimes oblige ourselves to eat foods that promote health...." (p. xii).
No, this is not some health-fanatic's book urging us to eating several wheel-barrels full of veggies every day. The author notes how we differ from our knuckle-dragging ancestors, such as we lost our earlier heavily powerful jaw muscles and bulky jaws as our forefathers began eating meats rather than subsisting totally on nuts, fruits, and tubers.
As the "Look Inside" feature was not available at the time of this review, following are the chapter contents, which really present a very good review of the innards of this book.
(Chpt. 1) Introduction: What are humans adapted for?
(Part I: Apes and Humans) [The author discusses the changes between: Australopiths, Homo habilis, H. rudolphensis, Homo erectus, H. heidelbergensis, H. floresiensis, H. neanderthalenis, and Modern humans.]
(2) Upstanding Apes: How we became bipeds.
(3 ) Much depends on dinner: How the Australopiths partly weaned us off fruit.
(4) The first hunter-gatherers: How nearly modern bodies evolved in the human genus.
(5) Energy in the Ice Age: How we evolved big brains along with large, fat, gradually growing bodies.
(6) A very cultured species: How modern humans colonized the world with a combination of brains plus brawn.
(Pat II: Farming and the Industrial Revolution.)
(7) Progress, mismatch, and dysevolution: The consequences-- good and bad --of having Paleolithic bodies in a post-Paleolithic world. [Cavities begin to appear in the time of the Neolithic farmer.]
(8) Paradise Lost?: The fruits and follies of becoming farmers. ["Humans have unleashed upon ourselves a frightening array of horrid diseases ... that we acquired by living in close contact with animals" (p. 201)]
(9) Modern Times, Modern Bodies: The paradox of human health in the Industrial Era.
(Part III: The Present, the Future)
(10) The Vicious Circle of Too Much: Why too much energy can make us sick.
(11) Disuse: Why we are losing it by not using it.
(12) The hidden dangers of novelty and comfort: Why everyday innovations can damage us.
(13) Survival of the Fitter: Can evolutionary logic help cultivate a better future for the human body?
This is not a book about human physiology: how blood flows throughout or body or how our kidneys work. But it does discuss how we picked up human parasites (lice, pin worms, etc.) and diseases (malaria, yaws, syphilis, etc.). This book isn't just about comparing the brain sizes of our early ancestors with ours; just a few factoids to make this topic interesting. This book is more about how human choices have impacted mankind's lifestyles, such as our increased consumption of sugar-loaded foods and how that impacts upon our insulin receptors, glucose molecules, glucose transporters and insulin-resistant stuff. And discussion about our increasing levels of "triglycerides from excess visceral fat." Yummy!
And the author reviews CT scans of Egyptian mummies to study the development of early LDL and HDL influences in some plaque-plugged veins of the Pharaohs.
The author concludes (in part): "If these is any one most useful lesson to learn from our species' rich and complex evolutionary history, it is that culture does not allow us to transcend our biology ... The human body's past was molded by the survival of the fitter, but your body's future depends on how you use it" (p. 367). This book is an easy, enjoyable read, and a wonderful, very informative look at our evolutionary development.
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