As I may have
mentioned, I managed, thanks to AP courses, to complete my college education without
taking any math or science and very little social science. However, that stuff turns out to be useful
and interesting, perhaps even more so when there are no grades involved. The family rule on books is that we all have
first right of refusal on any book that might be purged from anyone’s personal
shelf, which is how I happened to acquire Introduction
to Physical Anthropology by Robert Jurmain, Lynn Kilgore, Wenda Trevathan,
and Russell L. Ciochon.
I found it more
than a little frightening that so much of the text had to be spent on defining
and defending the processes of science, articulating the facts that underlie
the concept of evolution, and outlining the very real threats posed to our
collective survival by climate change.
Apparently, the culture wars have had numerous casualties and our
children, on the whole, need to be reminded of or introduced to some basics.
That said, it was
fascinating to look at a different kind of fitness. Evolutionary fitness does not care about how
much weight one can lift or how far one can bike. It cares a little bit about how fast one can
run, but only if a predator is involved.
What matters in the larger fitness context is whether or not a creature
produces another generation.
Evolutionary history is essentially a series of experiments about how
best to produce that next generation in a variety of environmental contexts.
Most of the book
concerns the origins of humans, with progressively more ink spent on closer
species. Because the book is about
anthropology, the interplay between biology and culture becomes increasingly
relevant. In fact, the authors posit
that our culture may have changed more than our biology can handle.
We are creatures
like all the other inhabitants of our planet.
We are in the unique position of being able to wreck it all for
everyone. We have a responsibility not
to screw it all up.
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