One of the central ideas in the field of evolutionary psychology is that of “evolutionary mismatch”. Put simply, we evolved in a very different environment from the one in which we now find ourselves. As a result, our brains, bodies and instincts are poorly matched to their surroundings.
Once they start thinking about evolutionary psychology at The Guardian then they’re lost. Birds not wanting careers, gender pay gaps, men never doing the washing up. They’re all just there, the explanations. But they contradict so much with the base Guardian thought pattern…..
Yeah but we’ve built the environment in which we live. We changed the world in which we live and adapt to it.
Anyway dogs can now watch television. How’s that for evolution, eh ?
‘Adaptation’ What’s that? Sounds like dodgy theorising to us….
Guardian journalists are evolutionarily maladapted to being Guardian journalists. That explains so much.
Guardian journalists are evolutionarily maladapted to reality!
FTFY
“we evolved in a very different environment”
Christ, they can’t even get that right. We evolved in different environments. Plural, see?
In this case they’re contrasting exactly two things: [the environment each individual finds himself in now] with [the environment we all evolved in]. Although there’s many of us, which would suggest plural, we each evolved in one environment (the article contends), so singular is required.
Were environments before the ice age different enough in ways that mattered to ape evolution that you couldn’t consider them to all-intents-and-purposes to be the same environment? You would have to leave that to an evolutionary biologist, but the fact that humans haven’t speciated (and indeed bred the Neanderthals to extinction like the Mallards are doing to the Hawaiian Duck) suggests they weren’t.
Why on earth restrict the question to pre-Ice Age? Evolution presumably hurries up when there are lots of humans breeding, and inter-breeding, like buggery e.g. in the early agricultural age.
It’s an interesting question, because one could easily speculate that evolution slows down as civilisation removes or reduces selective pressures like “winter”, “mammoths”, “wolves” and “neighbouring tribes coming to kill your men and take your food and women”. And I say that genuinely, it’s an interesting question and one that I don’t know the answer to either way.
I (arbitrarily) picked the pre-ice-age because that’s roughly the last time human-like-apes really lived without language, social groups beyond the size where everybody knows each other, and so on, which seemed (to me) to be the kind of new phenomena the article was talking about.
If your brain, body and instincts are poorly matched to your surroundings, bugger off back to Somalia or Syria or Sudan or wherever the hell you come from.
Well we all evolved to interact with 100-200 people, so I don’t think Sudan is going to be far enough.
Not going to read any of it. I always assume books like this are justifications for communism.
“At the same time, anthropologists estimate that human genetics and anatomy have remained largely unchanged for about 100,000 years.”
“Largely” unchanged. Yes, but human genetics and anatomy includes Frank Bruno, Albert Einstein and Mel Brooks. And my guess is that we probably have a bit less of the Frank Brunos.
But knowledge of human genetics and anatomy are so passé for anthropologists.
“Physical anthropology” sneers the modern anthropologist.
Persistant lactose tolerence emerged in various populations about 10,000 years ago. Sickle cell malarial immunity emerged about 7,000 years ago.
The abilities to thrive at high altitude are, some of them, thought to be recent i.e. in the Andes and Ethiopia. In the Tibetans it’s thought that the ability is either (i) recent, or (ii) something to do with interbreeding with Denisovans. It’ll be interesting to see the latter one resolved.
Interesting, since reportedly the other traces of Denisovans are in South-east asia (mostly low-lying0 and Pacific Islands