Evolutionary Mismatch

An evolutionary mismatch centers on the hypothesis that modern humans did not evolve with modern grain-based, processed diet, and lack of daily long-distance functional movements. What this suggests that when humans eat foods that are radically different from those we evolved to eat and fail to move long distances while using our muscles daily, health problems can, and will occur, and our bodies become out of balance leading to one, or multiple chronic disease syndromes.

An example of this occurred about 12,500 years ago as humankind began to transition become agriculturalists, and consuming a higher grain-based diet, during what is called the Neolithic Revolution, in upper Mesopotamia, modern day Turkey, called the Fertile Crescent.

The Fertile Crescent is a crescent-shaped region in the Middle East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, together with the northern region of Kuwait, southeastern region of Turkey and the western portion of Iran where farming, and animal husbandry began, and one of many evolutionary clashes.

By analyzing teeth and bones from Neolithic samples, Paleoanthropologists have observed a general trend of declining health among Neolithic people in comparison to their hunter-gatherer, Paleolithic predecessors.

Neolithic populations generally had poorer nutrition, shorter life expectancies, and a more labor-intensive, (worked-longer hours), lifestyle than hunter-gatherers. In addition, agriculturalists moved animals into proximity to where they lived which allowed diseases, (zoonotic), to jumped from animals to humans. Agriculturalists suffered from more anemia, vitamin deficiencies, spinal deformations, and dental pathologies than hunter gathers.

In modern humans, metabolic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and obesity are all on the rise. There is a clear, potential evolutionary reason, our diet, and our activity level are mismatched to our current environment – we are hunters by nature, meaning moving all day long, designed for survival.

Before the industrialization, transportation, and farming, humans walked for water, to find ripe fruits, nuts, seeds, to fish and to hunt prey, they were up at sunrise ready for the day, this lifestyle forced our bodies to produce strong bones, muscles, and a great metabolism.

Nature Got It Right

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