Evolving Health

Human illnesses can be understood as damage to those adaptations that we took on at various stages in our evolution from pre-life molecules to modern Homo sapiens. Preventing these illnesses entails avoiding what causes the damage–– which too frequently are the everyday hazards of twenty-first-century life, as the chart below shows:

Human illnesses can be understood as damage to those adaptations that we took on at various stages in our evolution from pre-life molecules to modern Homo sapiens. Preventing these illnesses entails avoiding what causes the damage— which too frequently are the everyday hazards of twenty-first-century life, as the chart below shows:

Level of Evolution

Cause of adaptive failure

resulting disease or problem

Pre-life

Environmental poisons

Certain birth defects

Single cell (bacteria and amoeba-like)

Viral infection

Colds/flu/HIV

Morula (sponge-like)

Cellular stress

Cancer

Chordate

Physical stress

Back pain

Fish

Excess dietary salt

Hypertension/heart disease

Amphibian

Tobacco smoke

Lung cancer/emphysema

Lower primate

Excess dietary sugar

Diabetes mellitus

Higher primate

Vitamin C deficiency

Scurvy

Ape

Excess dietary protein

Gout

Homo sapiens

Reduced dietary variety

Nutritionaldiseases/food allergies

NOEL BOAZ, Ph.D., Biological Anthropologist, is the founder and Director of the International Institute for Human Evolutionary Research and Professor of Anatomy at Ross University School of Medicine. He is the author of more than fifty scientific papers, the leading textbook in biological anthropology, and two popular science books, Quarry and Eco Homo.