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Reviews
Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live by Marlene Zuk
urban_mermaid's review
4.0
3.5 stars. She is basically using the title as a way to get people involved in a book about evolution. It was interesting but a slow read. There are other books on the topic that are slightly more interesting.
spoerk's review
3.0
Eh?
I didn't love it. I didn't hate it. Great information, but I just couldn't get into her writing style.
I didn't love it. I didn't hate it. Great information, but I just couldn't get into her writing style.
meghan_is_reading's review
evolution is more complicated than your paleofantasies of cavemen + women
ali_str's review against another edition
4.0
A thorough overview of false beliefs in diet, sports, child rearing, etc. that originate from incomplete or skewed understanding of evolution. A must read if you have ever been exposed to anything paleo or want to vaccinate yourself beforehand.
davidr's review against another edition
4.0
Hundreds of thousands of people try to practice a "paleo" lifestyle, where "paleo" is short for "paleolithic", and is a euphemism for "caveman". They eat mostly meat, thinking that this is what our ancestors thrived on for tens, or even hundreds of thousands of years. They believe that humans ate this way and evolved to take advantage of this type of diet. They believe that humans have not had enough time, since the agricultural revolution, to evolve toward a more modern type of diet. Some practitioners of the paleo lifestyle take their approach much further. Some, for example, donate blood frequently, in order to mimic the results of being wounded frequently. And, some do other strange things. But they don't necessarily refuse to vaccinate themselves (although some do), in order to prevent the scourges of yesteryear, like smallpox, polio, measles, and so on. But they are not always consistent; they wear modern clothes instead of skins, they don't live in caves, and they don't use bear teeth to incur blood loss, and they wear eyeglasses.
Marlene Zuk's builds up a pretty convincing argument to back up her main premise, that humans have indeed had time to evolve significantly since the "first" agricultural revolution, about 12,000 years ago. She is an evolutionary biologist and behavioral ecologist. So, she actively does research in related fields.
Some anthropologists study isolated "primitive" tribes in order to improve understanding of prehistorical humans. But, this approach is fraught with issues. Today's isolated tribes have been influenced by modern society in many ways, and are not as isolated as many would think. They do help anthropologists to understand small-scale societies, but not earlier stages of evolution.
Evolution can be rapid. There is an interesting story about how a group of crickets in Hawaii evolved in twenty generations to suppress their singing, to be quiet, to avoid a parasitic fly. There is a similar story about an experiment that showed rapid evolution of guppies in eleven years.
The ability for some people to drink milk makes it the poster child for rapid evolution in humans. These people have developed a tolerance for lactose in milk. Lactose tolerance is an advantage in high latitudes. Lactose tolerance allows a more efficient uptake of calcium, that is otherwise prevented where sunlight is low, and vitamin D is difficult to obtain. Some societies in northern Africa have also developed lactose tolerance, which must have evolved independently from those in northern Europe. A hypothesis for this evolution is that the ability to drink milk from animals gives people a source of uncontaminated fluid, in a region where water is scarce. So, this is an example of convergent evolution, where a functionality has evolved in multiple places at multiple times, independently. Zuk remarks that one cannot refuse to drink milk in a paleo diet, because lactose tolerance depends on one's genes, and these genes have changed.
Convergent evolution also occurred in societies that lived in high altitudes. Some people in the Andes mountains have developed high hemoglobin concentrations in their blood. On the other hand, people in Tibet who live at altitudes at 13,000 feet above sea level don't have high hemoglobin levels. Instead, they have evolved faster breathing rates, in order to distribute enough oxygen to their bodies.
A central question in this book, is whether a paleo diet really is the "one and only diet that ideally fits our genetic makeup." Early humans often ate roots, tubers, and other starchy foods. Prehistoric humans and Neandertals ate grains, and sometimes cooked their food. They ate a wide variety of plants, and even made crackers! So, the suggestion that we should eat a paleo diet consisting of meat and fish, and not fruits and vegetables and grains, is plainly wrong. It is also true that the proportion of meat eaten increased about 30,000 years ago, after the invention of the bow and arrow. However, big-game hunting was an unreliable as a sole source of support for a family. I just love Zuk's comment; "Saying you want to maintain your wife and children on it is the ancestral equivalent of claiming that you will support your family by playing lead guitar in a band."
I enjoyed this book, and it seems to cover some aspects of paleolithic diet trends. But I wasn't wholly convinced by the arguments. It is very difficult to quantify how much meat vs. how much plant food was eaten in prehistoric times. The remains of plants don't fossilize, and the evidence for grains and plants in prehistoric diets is sporadic. I think that a more complete understanding will require evidence from archaeology. (By the way, I am a vegan, so I certainly do not buy the arguments to follow a paleo diet.)
Marlene Zuk's builds up a pretty convincing argument to back up her main premise, that humans have indeed had time to evolve significantly since the "first" agricultural revolution, about 12,000 years ago. She is an evolutionary biologist and behavioral ecologist. So, she actively does research in related fields.
Some anthropologists study isolated "primitive" tribes in order to improve understanding of prehistorical humans. But, this approach is fraught with issues. Today's isolated tribes have been influenced by modern society in many ways, and are not as isolated as many would think. They do help anthropologists to understand small-scale societies, but not earlier stages of evolution.
Evolution can be rapid. There is an interesting story about how a group of crickets in Hawaii evolved in twenty generations to suppress their singing, to be quiet, to avoid a parasitic fly. There is a similar story about an experiment that showed rapid evolution of guppies in eleven years.
The ability for some people to drink milk makes it the poster child for rapid evolution in humans. These people have developed a tolerance for lactose in milk. Lactose tolerance is an advantage in high latitudes. Lactose tolerance allows a more efficient uptake of calcium, that is otherwise prevented where sunlight is low, and vitamin D is difficult to obtain. Some societies in northern Africa have also developed lactose tolerance, which must have evolved independently from those in northern Europe. A hypothesis for this evolution is that the ability to drink milk from animals gives people a source of uncontaminated fluid, in a region where water is scarce. So, this is an example of convergent evolution, where a functionality has evolved in multiple places at multiple times, independently. Zuk remarks that one cannot refuse to drink milk in a paleo diet, because lactose tolerance depends on one's genes, and these genes have changed.
Convergent evolution also occurred in societies that lived in high altitudes. Some people in the Andes mountains have developed high hemoglobin concentrations in their blood. On the other hand, people in Tibet who live at altitudes at 13,000 feet above sea level don't have high hemoglobin levels. Instead, they have evolved faster breathing rates, in order to distribute enough oxygen to their bodies.
A central question in this book, is whether a paleo diet really is the "one and only diet that ideally fits our genetic makeup." Early humans often ate roots, tubers, and other starchy foods. Prehistoric humans and Neandertals ate grains, and sometimes cooked their food. They ate a wide variety of plants, and even made crackers! So, the suggestion that we should eat a paleo diet consisting of meat and fish, and not fruits and vegetables and grains, is plainly wrong. It is also true that the proportion of meat eaten increased about 30,000 years ago, after the invention of the bow and arrow. However, big-game hunting was an unreliable as a sole source of support for a family. I just love Zuk's comment; "Saying you want to maintain your wife and children on it is the ancestral equivalent of claiming that you will support your family by playing lead guitar in a band."
I enjoyed this book, and it seems to cover some aspects of paleolithic diet trends. But I wasn't wholly convinced by the arguments. It is very difficult to quantify how much meat vs. how much plant food was eaten in prehistoric times. The remains of plants don't fossilize, and the evidence for grains and plants in prehistoric diets is sporadic. I think that a more complete understanding will require evidence from archaeology. (By the way, I am a vegan, so I certainly do not buy the arguments to follow a paleo diet.)
jar7709's review against another edition
2.0
I hate it when I agree with a book and still find myself not wanting to finish it.
alijc's review against another edition
3.0
It was written as a rebuttal to the 'caveman' fad - the belief that it's best for us to eat and exercise as our stone-age ancestors did, before the advent of agriculture. The main problem with this, well, other than the fact that we don't really know what are ancestors ate, and even if we did, those foods might no longer be available, is that our evolution didn't come to a head in the Paleolithic era and then halt. We have been evolving since we were single-cell organisms, and have continued to do so in recent times. (For 'recent' = '~100 generations')
As examples of recent evolution, she cited the mutations that allow some people to digest milk in adulthood, and that (might have) protected (some) Europeans from the Black Death and that now help to protect their descendants from AIDS. (Except that now they think it's wasn't bubonic plague that concentrated the mutation. Smallpox maybe.)
As examples of recent evolution, she cited the mutations that allow some people to digest milk in adulthood, and that (might have) protected (some) Europeans from the Black Death and that now help to protect their descendants from AIDS. (Except that now they think it's wasn't bubonic plague that concentrated the mutation. Smallpox maybe.)
archytas's review against another edition
4.5
I'm working my way through most of the popular books on the market about human evolution, and I would without hesitation recommend this as the first book to someone interested. I rejected reading it for some time because of the `paleofantasy' marketing angle: so I thought it would be mostly full of the all-too-easy cheap shots at the paleo diet crowd, but this book goes far deeper than that. Zuk lays out an evolutionary biologist understanding of human evolution, what we're pretty sure of (how patterns work to create evolution, some things that our species is more specialised in, and that humans are good adapters to wildly different conditions) and what we don't know (what pre-human ancestors were actually like).
Unfortunately, many reviewers seem to not get past the fact that Zuk did not prove a Paleo diet is bad for you: completely missing that the book was never about that.
Which is not to say that there aren't cheap shots. Zuk seems largely motivated by annoyance at the way various movements have sought to return to a particular moment in our evolution when we were perfectly suited to our lifestyle. She has enormous fun with a group of NYC Cavemen, who run barefoot, eat raw meat and give blood regularly to imitate blood loss from wounds. But it isn't just the dieters, she also takes on hunter-man, childrearer-woman brigade, and attachment parenting. Zuk uses her biology knowledge to explain at length that no species is ever perfectly adapted; that like us, our primate genetic ancestors have always had highly varied ways of living, eating and organising their families, and, perhaps most powerfully, that we are still evolving.
Zuk also has a keen understanding of the way our society governs our science. She somewhat caustically remarks early on that if we want to make a dangerous or harmful choice - whether that be cheating on a partner, or eating a meal we know is bad for us, it makes it easier to blame our genes. In discussing the infamous chimp/bonobo divide, she comments that many assume if we had studied bonobos earlier, in the 70s, we would have a different view of human nature, but adds: 'This is one possibility; the other is that if we had known about bonobos earlier, we would have characterized them as more violent and warlike than we do now, simply because anthropologists and primatologists in the 1960s and ’70s were disposed to emphasize male aggression, which bonobos do exhibit, albeit to a lesser extent than chimps do.'
Along the way, she provides a wonderful crash course in genetics; paleoanthropology; and some aspects of basic human biology. Each chapter is packed with enough content about current scholarship to power a book. There are some real gems in here: and once Zuk has schooled us on the proper way to speculate about the past, she allows herself to indulge in some speculation, from the possible survival advance of active elders in child rearing; through polygamy as a result of agriculture in some societies, or whether smallpox resulted in a great step forward for European immune systems (by wiping out so many without them). I may not have agreed with every conclusion, but I had the freedom to disagree as Zuk explains the evidence, the arguments and the detracting arguments for each she raises, and the footnotes were excellent*. Zuk loves science, takes it seriously, and most of all wants us to know that our past doesn't constrain us: it can tell us how we got here, but not where to go next. As she puts it: 'Rather than trying to use our past to proscribe our present, or our future, we can use it as a way to understand where we came from ... whatever we choose has consequences, and choices have to be made. We do not have genes plunked wholesale into one environment or another, whether Paleolithic, medieval, or industrial; we have genes that respond to that environment and to each other.'
*One exception: they weren't linked in the ebook, necessitating a tedious process of looking them up. Thankfully this is getting rarer, but it is irritating.
Unfortunately, many reviewers seem to not get past the fact that Zuk did not prove a Paleo diet is bad for you: completely missing that the book was never about that.
Which is not to say that there aren't cheap shots. Zuk seems largely motivated by annoyance at the way various movements have sought to return to a particular moment in our evolution when we were perfectly suited to our lifestyle. She has enormous fun with a group of NYC Cavemen, who run barefoot, eat raw meat and give blood regularly to imitate blood loss from wounds. But it isn't just the dieters, she also takes on hunter-man, childrearer-woman brigade, and attachment parenting. Zuk uses her biology knowledge to explain at length that no species is ever perfectly adapted; that like us, our primate genetic ancestors have always had highly varied ways of living, eating and organising their families, and, perhaps most powerfully, that we are still evolving.
Zuk also has a keen understanding of the way our society governs our science. She somewhat caustically remarks early on that if we want to make a dangerous or harmful choice - whether that be cheating on a partner, or eating a meal we know is bad for us, it makes it easier to blame our genes. In discussing the infamous chimp/bonobo divide, she comments that many assume if we had studied bonobos earlier, in the 70s, we would have a different view of human nature, but adds: 'This is one possibility; the other is that if we had known about bonobos earlier, we would have characterized them as more violent and warlike than we do now, simply because anthropologists and primatologists in the 1960s and ’70s were disposed to emphasize male aggression, which bonobos do exhibit, albeit to a lesser extent than chimps do.'
Along the way, she provides a wonderful crash course in genetics; paleoanthropology; and some aspects of basic human biology. Each chapter is packed with enough content about current scholarship to power a book. There are some real gems in here: and once Zuk has schooled us on the proper way to speculate about the past, she allows herself to indulge in some speculation, from the possible survival advance of active elders in child rearing; through polygamy as a result of agriculture in some societies, or whether smallpox resulted in a great step forward for European immune systems (by wiping out so many without them). I may not have agreed with every conclusion, but I had the freedom to disagree as Zuk explains the evidence, the arguments and the detracting arguments for each she raises, and the footnotes were excellent*. Zuk loves science, takes it seriously, and most of all wants us to know that our past doesn't constrain us: it can tell us how we got here, but not where to go next. As she puts it: 'Rather than trying to use our past to proscribe our present, or our future, we can use it as a way to understand where we came from ... whatever we choose has consequences, and choices have to be made. We do not have genes plunked wholesale into one environment or another, whether Paleolithic, medieval, or industrial; we have genes that respond to that environment and to each other.'
*One exception: they weren't linked in the ebook, necessitating a tedious process of looking them up. Thankfully this is getting rarer, but it is irritating.
jkh107's review against another edition
4.0
A good look at the differences between what science tells us about the evolution/history of human diet, health, exercise, and families, and the popular myths about it--and how adapted we are, or not, to the environment of yesteryear. With some dry humor on the side. An enjoyable and informative read.