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A review by dansumption
Primate Change: How the World We Made Is Remaking Us by Vybarr Cregan-Reid
4.0
This book speeds through the history of the human race, talking about the changes we have made to our environment at each stage, and how those changes have in turn affected our bodies. Our eveolution of opposable thumbs is often spoken of, but one of many things I learnt from this book is how much our feet evolved over generations of early hominids.
The arrival of agriculture, some 12,000 years ago, sparks many changes: differing diets affect our teeth and digestion, the arrival of cities reduces the amount of exercise many people get, and once the industrial revolution arrives, highly repetitive tasks tax our bodies in new ways they have not evolved to deal with. I was most surprised by the section on chairs - something very few of us used prior to 200 years ago, but which schools now train us to spend most of our days semi-immobile in. Chairs, it seems, are one of the worst things humans have ever inflicted upon ourselves.
Moving closer to the modern day, the book looks at how our use of our hands has increased enormously in the digital age (and there's an amusing section on voice recognition - a technology that's almost but not quite ready to take some of the stress away from our hands).
Primate Change is a strange mixture of paleoanthropology, anatomy, and self-help book. It's a relatively easy read full of fascinating insights, though I'm not convinced that all of the science behind it is sound.
The arrival of agriculture, some 12,000 years ago, sparks many changes: differing diets affect our teeth and digestion, the arrival of cities reduces the amount of exercise many people get, and once the industrial revolution arrives, highly repetitive tasks tax our bodies in new ways they have not evolved to deal with. I was most surprised by the section on chairs - something very few of us used prior to 200 years ago, but which schools now train us to spend most of our days semi-immobile in. Chairs, it seems, are one of the worst things humans have ever inflicted upon ourselves.
Moving closer to the modern day, the book looks at how our use of our hands has increased enormously in the digital age (and there's an amusing section on voice recognition - a technology that's almost but not quite ready to take some of the stress away from our hands).
Primate Change is a strange mixture of paleoanthropology, anatomy, and self-help book. It's a relatively easy read full of fascinating insights, though I'm not convinced that all of the science behind it is sound.