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ISBN : B00EZ4CTGK
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In this landmark book of popular science, Daniel E. Lieberman - chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a leader in the field - gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years, even as it shows how the increasing disparity between the jumble of adaptations in our Stone Age bodies and advancements in the modern world is occasioning this paradox: greater longevity but increased chronic disease.
The Story of the Human Body brilliantly illuminates as never before the major transformations that contributed key adaptations to the body: the rise of bipedalism; the shift to a non-fruit-based diet; the advent of hunting and gathering, leading to our superlative endurance athleticism; the development of a very large brain; and the incipience of cultural proficiencies. Lieberman also elucidates how cultural evolution differs from biological evolution, and how our bodies were further transformed during the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions.
While these ongoing changes have brought about many benefits, they have also created conditions to which our bodies are not entirely adapted, Lieberman argues, resulting in the growing incidence of obesity and new but avoidable diseases, such as type 2 diabetes. Lieberman proposes that many of these chronic illnesses persist and in some cases are intensifying because of "dysevolution," a pernicious dynamic whereby only the symptoms rather than the causes of these maladies are treated. 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.
Books with free ebook downloads available Free The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition]
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 14 hours and 58 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Random House Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: October 1, 2013
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00EZ4CTGK
Free The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease
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.
"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?
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