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A review by greeniezona
Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live by Marlene Zuk
3.0
Everything about this subject matter should be directly up my alley, and indeed, there were a number of sections that were fascinating. And yet still, for some reason I kept having to force myself to pick this book back up. Maybe I was just too easily convinced of the premise (that just because our ancestors may (or may not) have done X, that does not mean we should still be doing X now), so additional argumentation quickly became unnecessary.
The sections I found most interesting were generally those offering evidence for "modern" evolution of the human race. On the flip-side, if figuring out how recently an evolutionary change has happened is important, the science of how to make that determinations should have been explained less haphazardly. One technique was repeatedly described so vaguely that I was frustrated and distracted, trying to remember from my college genetics class 16 years ago why it should work out that way, until, two or three chapters later, a more thorough explanation was finally given.
I don't know, the paleo fad annoys me and I'm happy to be able to better articulate why, but largely I wish I'd spent the time reading Sarah Blaffer Hrdy instead.
The sections I found most interesting were generally those offering evidence for "modern" evolution of the human race. On the flip-side, if figuring out how recently an evolutionary change has happened is important, the science of how to make that determinations should have been explained less haphazardly. One technique was repeatedly described so vaguely that I was frustrated and distracted, trying to remember from my college genetics class 16 years ago why it should work out that way, until, two or three chapters later, a more thorough explanation was finally given.
I don't know, the paleo fad annoys me and I'm happy to be able to better articulate why, but largely I wish I'd spent the time reading Sarah Blaffer Hrdy instead.