And just a personal note: I met a zillion amazing people while at AHS – from people I draw information and inspiration from to Evolvify readers. I definitely didn’t get to spend enough time with everyone, and my friends are already tired of me name-dropping y’all, but oh well.

While I had the good fortune to have talked with other attendees about various talks right after seeing them in person, this collection isn’t meant to be some sort of barometer on the consensus of attendees. The list is my subjective list of areas of inquiry in the evolutionary health and fitness realm that I feel have the most room for exploration and application. That isn’t to say that these talks necessarily contained the most important information of the Ancestral Health Symposium. Oh and… this definitely isn’t a pure “Best Of” list because I still haven’t had a chance to watch all the talks.

AHS 2011 Awards

Best Tip of the Economics Iceberg

“Sustainability of paleo diets” by Matt Metzgar, PhD
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27926609 w=640&h=480]
Comments
This topic is so massive that it’s impossible to cover it in a < 50 minute talk. Dr. Metzgar lays out a framework for quantifying and analyzing paleo in terms of sustainability and economics. The talk is both oversimplified in terms of economics and overly detailed in terms of systemization, and will probably lose some people. However, the project is ambitious and important. This should be viewed as what it is: a work in progress that has plenty of room to progress and find broad application by synthetic thinkers.

Extending the Idea

• The feasibility of a Paleolithic diet for low-income consumers [full-text PDF]

Best Obvious Sounding Title that Applies to Depths of Life You Don’t Yet Realize

“The Lost Art of Play” by Mark Sisson
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27648777 w=640&h=480]
Comments
Yeah, “play more”,  it sounds so simple. The implications of play lost to the regimentation and systemization of agriculture and industrialization are many. This isn’t just a touchy feely concept, but something that influences our individual psychology and social interactions in ways nobody fully understands.

Extending the Idea

• Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga
• Play as a Foundation for Hunter-Gatherer Social Existence [full-text PDF]

Best Primatology Informs Anthropology

“Great Apes and the Evolution of Human Diet” by Craig Stanford, PhD

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27678635 w=640&h=480]
Comments
Since we don’t have video footage from the Paleolithic, sometimes the best we can do is attempt to triangulate truth from whatever data points we do have available. The morphology and behavior of our closest relatives is one of the best avenues to pursue knowledge about our evolutionary past. I would have liked to replace a few of the speakers who talked about sugar/carbs with more applied evolutionary theory and anthropology.

Extending the Idea

• The Evolution of Hominin Diets
• Dr. Craig B. Stanford’s books on Amazon 

Best Stealth Introduction to the Best Academic Field You’ve Never Heard of: Ethology

“Wild animals, zoos, and you: The influence of habitat on health” by John Durant

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27935632 w=640&h=480]

“Ethology is a combination of laboratory and field science, with a strong relation to certain other disciplines such as neuroanatomy, ecology, and evolution. Ethologists are typically interested in a behavioral process rather than in a particular animal group, and often study one type of behavior (e.g. aggression) in a number of unrelated animals.” –Wikipedia

Comments
For anyone who’s into applying evolutionary theory, but happens to be afraid of evolutionary psychology, ethology is a fruitful alternative. For those who are into evolutionary psychology, ethology can help clarify ideas and incite new lines of thought. In other words, ethology is powerful for anyone who desires to level-up their understanding of evolution as it pertains to behavior.

I don’t remember John explicitly mentioning ethology, but it’s an implicit bridge between his talk and Erwan’s “zoo humans” concept. Rats in cages have smaller brains than rats in “enhanced environments” which have smaller brains than rats in the wild. It’s infinitely naive to think our modern environment doesn’t impact us in very real ways (beyond diet) as well.

Extending the Idea

• Journal of Ethology
• Human Ethology by Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt

Best Potential to Leverage the Paleo Health & Fitness Message in the Business World

“Resilliency: Human-Friendly Pathways to Optimal Physical and Mental Health” by Emily Deans, MD and Jamie Scott

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27669824 w=640&h=480]
Comments
Institutional interfaces with health and fitness practitioners is much more prevalent and has much more impact than many of us realize. Because of the efficiency of paleo concepts, this may be the next level in increasing global health through better engagement with the paleo community.

Best “I Wish I Had Tucker’s Research Notes So I Could Get to the Bottom of the Psychology of This” and Ascertain its Myriad Implications

*Talk starts at 21:35
“From cave to cage: Mixed martial arts in ancestral health” by Tucker Max

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27930992 w=640&h=480]
Comments
One of the emergent properties of modern civilization can loosely be characterized as “status ambiguity”. Hunter-gatherers tended to always know where they stood with respect to individuals in their lives. Our conceptions of self are largely influenced by indirect comparisons to abstracted archetypes of humans at the extreme long-tails of the further abstracted economic spectrum. Further, our “real” interactions are also in relation to a disproportionate number of strangers who also exist in a state of their own status ambiguity. The multiple, nested levels of abstraction result in a reality in which has very intersection of the real as it pertains to what our genes expect. Physical training and combat provide a channel to a different reality than our world tends to provide otherwise.

Best Integration of Applied Evolutionary Health, Fitness, and Science

“Body by science” by Doug McGuff, MD

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27962168 w=640&h=480]
Comment
There are moments at which I think Dr. McGuff is totally wrong, and moments I’m totally wrong about him being wrong. A lot of his stuff makes sense on a level that likely dovetails with the concepts in Tucker’s talk and Mark’s talk (both above). I’m not sure the pieces are fully connected, but my brain can’t help but weave the concepts together.

Extending the Idea

• Body by Science book by Doug McGuff

Miscellaneous Important Ideas

As I said, the above videos don’t necessarily contain all of the important topics. There were a lot of ideas that are much more important to people who aren’t me. For the most part, the talks hammering the fringes and overlap between carbs and obesity and disease are mostly lost on me… as are the general talks about paleo that seek to convince newbies or fence-sitters that all of this is a good idea. As such, I’ve unfairly left out a lot of great talks.

Talk that I Already Pretty Much Agree with and Therefore Wished Was More Philosophical

“MovNat: evolutionarily natural fitness” by Erwan LeCorre
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27930009 w=640&h=480]
Comments
Erwan’s talk is a nice introduction to MovNat. It kind of felt like a promo video for something I’m already sold on. That isn’t meant to be a slight at all. I’m just pretty confident that there’s a lot of interesting conceptual underpinning bouncing around in Erwan’s head that the world (and I, in particular) would appreciate. This reference won’t have the gravity it needs without an explanation deeper than I have time to present here, but there’s value in Simon Sinek’s (TED Talk) “Start With Why” (Book) concept that’s overlooked in the talk. It’s not a matter of quality (there’s plenty), but of resonance.

Talk that I Didn’t Watch Because I Know I Already Pretty Much Agree with It, But Think Is Still Super-Important

“The Trouble with Fructose: a Darwinian Perspective” by Robert Lustig, MD
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27563465 w=640&h=480]
Comments
Much like lactose intolerance, it’s surprising to me that so many people are quick to rubber stamp consumption of fructose. Especially when some regional populations have 14%+ rates of fructose malabsorption. Clearly there are individual differences, and qualifiers such as delivery vehicle. Primates lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C because of excessive fruit intake, it’s possible that populations lost the ability to readily metabolize fructose because of minimal fruit intake… and the biochemistry provides some support for this concern.

Talk Other than Mat Lalonde’s that I’m Most Conflicted About

“Self-experimentation: the best science” by Richard Nikoley
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27798705 w=640&h=480]
Comments
Okay, I’m not really conflicted about Richard’s talk, but I’m conflicted about the concept of self-experimentation and the whole n=1 “meme”. The conflict is simple: It’s a brilliant and important concept, but I don’t think most people are capable of executing it in a meaningful way. I too often see people talking about self-experimentation in terms of how they “feel” after doing something or changing something, or whatever. Unless the measure is objective (time, distance, etc.), it’s likely so influenced by cognitive bias that it’s either totally useless, or counter-productive. This is particularly true when talking about dietary compounds that have a short-term psychoactive effect on the brain (neurotransmitters, etc.), in longer durations that introduce stealth and unexpected confounds, or otherwise decouple inputs from outputs or experience. Poorly executed, then continuously recited, N=1 experimentation is an endless fountain of misleading anecdotes that are assigned more value than they warrant.

In other words, watch the talk and practice self-experimentation. But if, and ONLY IF, you pay close attention to the parts about scientific method, and are religious about using only [more or less] objective measures. Even if you manage that, you’re still exposed to a range of biases and need to temper and discount the reliability of your findings more than you’ll want to.

Example of almost totally useless “objective” measure… weight. Throw away your damned scale. You’re better off with a digital camera.

Uncategorized

There are three talks that I really appreciated, but don’t really have much to add to, and are proving hard to categorize along the same metrics as the above videos, so… just watch ’em:

• “Heart Disease and Molecular Degeneration” by Chris Masterjohn
• “Clues from the colon: How this organ illuminates our digestive evolution and microniche” by Melissa McEwen
• “Primal mind: nutrition & mental health—improving the way you feel & function & cultivating an ageless mind” by Nora Gedgaudas

What were your favorite talks? What kind of speakers and topics do you hope to see at AHS 2012 next August at Harvard?

I’m not exactly sure how I’d answer that, but I have a vision of some sort of mega applied evolutionary theory conference. Something between the Ancestral Health Symposium‘s focus on health and fitness, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference, and the Applied Evolutionary Psychology Society‘s conference. Since that framework doesn’t exist, I do wonder to what extent the behavioral/psychological research from evolutionary theory would integrate with future AHS events.

It’s tempting to think about evolution as a function of time. This makes some intuitive sense because evolution happens over time, and longer periods of time theoretically allows for more mutations, which theoretically allows for more adaptations. However, it is misleading to use time as a heuristic for thinking about evolution in an individual species, or when making comparisons between species.

Before we dive in too far, here are some obvious qualifiers: Of course, evolution literally happens over time, and is bound by time to some extent. Thus, time isn’t completely irrelevant in the function of evolution. And again, more time generally means more mutations, which means more fodder for adaptation via selection pressures. So yes, time is a factor, but it’s not really that important when thinking about evolution. In fact, there are examples species that haven’t undergone any noticeable evolutionary change. But why not?

The fossil record does include examples of organisms changing gradually over time and undergoing speciation. However, the fossil record also includes examples of near stasis, and examples of rapid evolutionary change. No lesser names than Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould have disagreed on the rapid vs. gradual debate in evolutionary biolog. While it’s currently understood that gradual and rapid change simultaneously fit into the neo-Darwinian synthesis, debates have raged on the issue even within the last decade.

As it pertains to humans, much of the discussion of evolutionary change orbits around the ~ 6 million years separating humans from our most recent common ancestor (MRCA) with chimps/bonobos. Also commonly mentioned are our MRCA with other Great Apes (~10 MYA) and the earliest primates (~65 MYA). How are these misleading in terms of context?

Living fossils

For our purposes, we’ll roughly take “living fossils” to mean species still living today that haven’t changed much in physical structure over long periods of time (morphological stasis). There remain many examples of living fossils. At more than double the time between humans and MRCA, we find Colombian fish that haven’t noticeably undergone evolutionary change in 15 million years (Lundberg, et al. 1986). With these fish as a backdrop, if we were thinking about things in terms of time, we’d have to say that humans, chimps, gorillas, and even orangutans aren’t simply like humans, we’d have to say that they’re the same as humans. If that isn’t enough of an illustration, some species of lamprey haven’t really changed in 350 million years. That’s only a couple hundred million years before the “Jurassic” part of Jurassic Park. Using this period of stasis as analogy, if we were to compare evolution in terms of time, that would make humans the same as dogs, cats, horses, and pretty much all other mammals.

If we wanted to dig deeper into this, we could drum up mathematical models about mutation rates over time. We’d factor in things like the number of chromosomes and genes and crunch that into a formula that took into the account the time each generation takes to reach reproductive age, how long they remain in reproductive age, how many offspring they have, how many survive, et cetera. To make comparisons between species, we’d normalize all of those things across species and try to make predictions about how much evolution should have occurred. Yet, even with models taking species specific mutation loads and reproductive potential into consideration, knowing the amount of time would leave us unable to reliably predict morphological change. The main thing all the modeling and calculation and extrapolation would tell us is a probabilistic potential for evolution. But we’re still missing the crucial component.

Selection pressure

The selection pressure placed on an organism by its environment is the crucial component for thinking about evolution. More accurately, the interaction of multiple selection pressures of varying strength within an organisms total ecology over time is the crucial component for thinking about evolution. Some Colombian fish and some species of lamprey have been reproducing for millions of generations. Each generation across that time has seen a semi-reliable and reasonably predictable mutation load. Yet, we see virtually no change. Without selection pressure from the environment, the genetic material underlying phenotypic expression can simply be averaged-out over time.

Note: this isn’t to say that morphological change can’t happen over time absent selection pressure. Indeed, genetic drift can cause significant change, but it’s rather unpredictable, and doesn’t necessitate change. Further, if a species is already well adapted to its environment, negative selection may keep genetic drift in check, preventing significant change.

Let’s look at it the other way around. Think about the difference between humans and chimps that have evolved over the last ~ 6 MYA. Knowing that mutations in generations of lamprey have been happening for 350 million years, what would we expect to see in the lamprey if we multiplied the difference between humans and chimps over 350 MY? Not only would lamprey have developed electric defense mechanisms, but perhaps also the ability to fly, play Guitar Hero, and lay golden eggs.

Another way to think about the irrelevance of time is to consider a scenario in which a highly contagious and fatal pathogen sweeps through a human population. If there is a genetic immune system variance in 17% of that population that renders individuals resistant to the pathogen, you can have strong selection that may act almost instantaneously in a single generation. If the pathogen manages to survive for longer than 9 months, it will likely further exert selection pressure on the next generation – strengthening the inheritance component of the adaptation.  Between this near instantaneous (in terms of evolutionary time) adaptation, and that of the 350 million years of (relative) stasis in lamprey, we have enough to throw time out the window as a relevant factor in evolutionary heuristic thinking.

Humans aren’t cats. Neanderthal were more closely related to humans than chimps, yet Neanderthals are dead, and chimps aren’t. Lamprey don’t have superpowers. When thinking about evolutionary theory, you’ll get better mileage by thinking about how a species fits in its environment (or range of environments) than you will by thinking about time. Corollary: Think about how it doesn’t fit into its environment.

Also, it’s wise to beware of those trying to “prove” similarity or dissimilarity simply by reciting evolutionary time separating them, and without the complex context of their respective environments over that time.

References
Dawkins, R. (1986). The Blind Watchmaker. Society. [link]

Gess, R. W., Coates, M. I., & Rubidge, B. S. (2006). A lamprey from the Devonian period of South Africa. Nature, 443(7114), 981-984. [abstract]

Lundberg, J. G., Machado-Allison, A., & Kay, R. F. (1986). Miocene Characid Fishes from Colombia: Evolutionary Stasis and Extirpation . Science , 234 (4773 ), 208-209. [abstract]

Of course, we could easily swap out the animal references above with examples of conspicuous displays — and that’s where we can find some insight into our fellow humans. There’s a tendency to assume that showing-off is some sort of cultural imperative that inclines us (men in particular, or so goes the stereotype) to engage in risky, wasteful, and expensive (along various axes) behaviors. It would be one thing (and a true thing) to say that showing-off occurs in all cultures, but recognizing that animals with tiny brains also engage in it allows for deeper perspective.

There’s an immutable law of evolutionary theory that every piece referencing sexual selection or signaling is required to mention the peacocks’ tail. Here goes: peacock tail. The problem with the peacocks, for our purposes, is that tails aren’t obviously related to “showing-off” that’s consciously controlled. Basically, peacocks are good examples for this (oversimplified) reason: it takes a healthy peacock to grow and groom an impeccable tail. I’ll tie this physical form of signaling to humans below, but the best theory we have for peacocks tails also explains behavioral signals. To connect those dots, we’ll need other examples.

The bowerbird demonstrates the irresistible allure of a well designed bachelor pad…

Imagine we’re in the woods together and come across a bear. There’s a saying for that scenario: “I don’t have to run faster than the bear, I just have to run faster than you.” That’s not bad in theory, but in an environment with finite resources, conducting races to the death is inefficient for both the predator and all of the would-be prey that are faster than the slowest in the group. Wouldn’t it be easier if I could just communicate to the bear, in a legitimate way that the bear could understand, that I was faster than you so he might as well save us all a bunch of trouble and just chase you down? Gazelles have such a method of communication with predator cats.

The behavior, called stotting, is when a gazelle spots a predator and starts jumping vertically (more or less in one place). While commonly misunderstood as a warning signal to the other gazelles, it is really a way to say to the predator, “Hey, you can try and chase me, but I’m in top shape and you’ll probably end up wasting a lot of energy and fail anyway. So why don’t you move along to somebody else?” An injured, unhealthy, or otherwise ‘inferior’ gazelle may be either unable to stot, or do it less convincingly than other individuals. Note the distinct difference between running and stotting (in this clip, the stotting is not a signal to a predator, and is for illustration only)

This isn’t simply conjecture, data have shown that cheetahs more often abandon hunts when the gazelle stots, and if they do give chase, they are far less likely to succeed in a kill. Enter the framework foundational in evolutionarily informed understanding of human interaction — in business and all social interactions…

Costly Signaling Framework

The common thread in the examples above is that they act as a form of non-verbal communication. Not only is this appropriate in species without language, it can help humans avoid the ease of being lied to verbally. However, it’s also possible to fake non-verbal signals in some instances. Being outed for wearing knock-off designer clothes can be as socially damning as acquiring a reputation as a liar. The bulk of costly signaling theory comes from Amotz Zahavi’s handicap principle. Basically, the theory explains that only individuals with sufficient phenotypic quality can afford to display handicaps — whether physical or behavioral. This “quality” may be in terms of resistance to pathogens, developmental stability, behaviors improving resource control or collection, et cetera. Without digging too deeply into the theory, here are the three principles that separate legitimate show-offs from the fakers:

“Taken together, signaling models lead to a series of empirical expectations, or predictions, about the nature of animal signaling systems. These predictions are:

1. that receivers will respond to signals,
2. that signals are reliable enough to justify receiver response, and
3. that signals are costly in a way that explains why they are reliable.” (Searcy & Nowicki, 2005)

These three qualifications are not arbitrary rules informed by intuition. They are the key points in the theoretical framework that has been studied in evolutionary biology for more than three decades. They have been scrutinized, subjected to, and vindicated by empirical data and mathematical models. If you’re going to engage in showing-off (and you are, even if in a non-conscious behavioral way or in terms of gene expression), you need to ask these three questions for optimal effectiveness.

Do receivers respond to the signal?

In modern spectacular society, the number of signals available to each individual is nearly limitless. The plethora of signal choices combined with the naivete of costly signal theory quickly leads to effort wasted on signals that elicit no (or negative) response. Another inherent property of this question is that signals can be tailored in such a way that only subgroups understand them enough to respond.

Is the signal reliable enough to justify a response in others?

This is the faker detection question. Rather than engage in the arms race between faking signals and determining faked signals, there’s always an advantage to genuine signals. The more genuine a signal appears, the more likely a receiver is to respond.

Does the cost of the signal explain its reliability?

It’s not enough for a signal to be costly. It must also relate to the particular quality it seeks to communicate to the receiver. A clue to the relevant domain of the signal must be intertwined with its cost. Signals requiring economic cost will explain the reliability of the economic signal, but may not signal anything about the willingness to share economic resources with a mate or offspring; signals costly in terms of time may signal the converse.

Application

One of the first points to realize is that human behaviors are seldom as arbitrary as they may seem. Things that seem ridiculous from our perspective certainly may fail to be signals worthy of response, but it’s also possible that we don’t understand the signal or are out-group relative to the desired targets of the signal.

When investing in signals (time, money, etc.), it makes sense to consciously consider whether or not the signal can be understood, believed, and reliably acted upon. When interpreting signals, it’s important to assess the signals along the same criteria. This bi-directional analysis can be applied in both social and business messages (marketing, branding, etc.).

Next time in Part II: In terms of the costly signaling framework, is “strong the new skinny”, or does skinny remain a more reliable signal? Does anyone care about your deadlift max or Crossfit Fran time, or is your physique a more reliable signal? Which of these signals are failed or inferior attempts at communication, and which are effective?

What does the way you dress communicate about you? What’s the advantage of sticking out our fitting in?

Aside from all that, what other misdirected or unreliable signals can you think of? Subscribe via RSS and comment below…

References Searcy,William A., Nowicki, Stephen. The Evolution of Animal Communication: Reliability and Deception in Signaling Systems. Princeton University Press. (2005)

Zahavi, Amotz. Mate selection — A selection for a handicap. Journal of Theoretical Biology. Volume 53, Issue 1, September 1975, Pages 205-214 [pdf]

Zahavi, A., Zahavi, A., Zahavi-Ely, N., & Ely, M. The Handicap Principle. Oxford University Press. (1999)

Aside from Richard Dawkins interviewing Stephen Pinker, there’s not a lot of evolutionary psychology related video content online. So I was pretty excited to find this recent talk from Wonderfest. An added bonus is that it’s not by evolutionary psychologists, but a pair of paleoanthropologists. Since critiques of evolutionary psychology are often levied by non-anthropologists by dismissing EvPsych for making too many assumptions about life in the paleolithic, this has a different flavor of credibility.

One point that I appreciated was Dr. Gilbert’s view on the “job” of scientists. Some scientists (and its critics) are fond of implying that us laymen should just sit around and wait for scraps of knowledge to be tossed our way. Here’s a more enlightened view:

“[As scientists], our business is not to speculate stories that you can then think about. Our business is to give you empirical evidence that you can go home and have all that fun of speculation yourself.”  – Henry Gilbert, PhD.

Protagonists

David DeGusta is a Research Paleontologist at the Paleoanthropology Institute.

Henry Gilbert is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at California State University, East Bay.

[cft format=0]
[Link (from RSS feed)]

Topics

• Studying the Evolution of Human Traits
• The Science of Human Origins
• Examining How Evolution Has Shaped Behavior
• Landmarks in Human Evolution
• The History of Evolutionary Psychology
• The Rise of Behaviorism
• Cognitive Psychology and the Refinement of Adaptationism
• Nature vs. Nurture and Modern Evolutionary Psychology
• The Dangers of Discussing Hardwired Behavior
• Studying the Evolutionary Origins of Language
• Studying Language Through the Fossil Record
• Studying Language Through the Genetic Record
• Studying Language Through the Archaeological Record
• Discussion on the Evolution of Language
• Studying the Evolution of Culture
• Possible Causes for the Development of Culture
• Discussion on the Evolution of Culture
• The Evolutionary Origins of Art
• Signs of Neanderthal Culture and Language
• Animals and the Neurological Basis of Lan

I highly recommend investing an hour into watching this video. It’s a great archaeology/anthropology introduction for everyone interested in modern diets. It touches on a lot of the main concepts necessary to understand what the heck is being talked about when referencing the methods used to figure out what was going on during the paleolithic era. The talk is super-approachable for intro purposes, but Teresa Steele is also an actual scientist, so more advanced folks will probably appreciate some of what she discusses.

The Australopithecus afarensis to Agriculture Talk (3.4 million – 10,000 years ago)

One concept that seems obvious, but I’d never consciously considered is the size of animals eaten by humans vs. other primates. It’s easy to look at a timeline of the paleolithic and see that human ancestors ate some meat, but there’s a key distinction. Humans eat animals much larger than themselves, while all other primates eat animals much smaller than themselves. Thus, talking about primates as “meat eaters” is factually true, but it ignores a huge difference between Homo sapiens and other surviving species. Hunting large game necessitates a degree of cooperation that is on an entirely different level than the individuality of hunting small game. Since we know Homo neanderthalensis also hunted in groups, we can start to make some interesting comparisons with the rest of the Homo lineage.

“I’d like to add to that one of the things that’s unique about humans among primates is how much meat we consume. A large percentage of our calories come from meat on average – compared to other primates. Amongst primates, chimpanzees eat the most amount of meat. And humans on average eat about 10x the amount of meat as other primates.”

The interesting question professor Steele attempts to address in her research and in this talk is: “When did the differences in human and chimpanzee diets evolve?” The implications of this answer impact us in terms of social organization, evolved behavior, and optimal diets in the modern context. A big factor in determining this is that there is little evidence of hominin plant consumption during the Acheulean (~1.6 m – 100,000 years ago) period of the paleolithic. Admittedly, part of this is because plant evidence doesn’t fossilize as well as bones, but it’s interesting that the plant eating assumption persists on such small amounts of evidence. As usual, this refutes the vegetarian position in terms of evolutionary biology.

“Humans specialize in nutrient dense, hard to extract sources, while chimpanzees specialize in ripe fruits and plants that have low nutrient density which are also easily collected.”

The relative difficulty of resource extraction also carries implications for human society versus primates. This impacts the necessity of tool use and social organization to sustain expanding populations. Thomas Malthus’ famous prediction that human population would be restricted by a linear growth in the food supply compared to an exponential growth in population comes to mind. The Malthusian limit suffers from an assumption that humans are stuck in the chimpanzee mode of resource collection. To be fair to Malthus, it’s still possible that there is a limit on production that is simply beyond the date he predicted. Thus, the growth in production and population since his prediction doesn’t completely refute his hypothesis. The questions raised by Malthus remain at the foundations of geopolitical debates to this day.

Looking at this from the perspective of adaptive evolution, we also see foundations for hypotheses to explain the explosive growth in human brain size over the paleolithic. Dealing with the problems of tools and groups certainly placed different pressures on the evolution of humans. In other words, the information in this video underpins everything I write about on evolvify. Watch it. Love it.

Methods of study

1. Archaeological record (tools, artifacts, bones)
2. Skeletal morphology (bone mechanics & dental structure)
3. bone chemistry

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• Human Diet Unique in High Meat Content
• Australopithecus afarensis Diet
• Cut-Marked Bones 2.5 Million Years Ago
• Evidence of Ancient Hominids Eating Aquatic Animals
• Acheulean Hunting and Scavenging (Homo erectus)
• Exceptional Preservation Sites with Wood Spears
• Neandertals in Europe
• Bone Chemistry Findings
• Hunting Technology
• Middle Stone Age in Africa
• Modern Humans in Europe
• Plant Use
• Intensification of Resource Extraction
• Why Humans Replaced Neandertals
• Conclusive Evidence of Cut Marks
• Ratio of Fatty Acids in Diet and Brain Size

I hate postmodern feminism. As a man by birth, not by choice, I call shenanigans on the idea of a vast male conspiracy in which I’m hopelessly complicit. The charge that I am conditioned from birth to oppress all of the women I love, all of the women I know, and all of the women on the planet is not one with which I’m likely to acquiesce. The notion that I’m doomed to omni-directional socialization smacks of Christianity’s putrid communicable mind-disease of “Original Sin”. But while Christianity offers potential salvation through authoritarian subjugation of our minds and the rest of our human nature after a life of guilt, postmodern feminism offers nothing more than perpetual guilt and a labryinthian trial of futility that would lead Josef K to rejoice in the relative clarity of his nightmare of Kafka’s prison. Like the magical monotheisms’ strategic defense by placing its rules outside the observable world and beyond the understanding of feeble brains, postmodern feminism holds its truths just on the other side of spectacular society’s aim or grasp. We are all inside the conspiracy, and thus, forever powerless to question its pervasive hold with our tainted minds.

But let’s get to the bad news…

Apparently, I am guilty as charged. I openly view women as different from men… and I like it. What’s worse, I have been known to love women precisely because of their femininity. And I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I have been successful in being smitten by oppressing women to degree that they have appreciated my undying appreciation of said femininity. Thus, I have apparently pulled off the masterstroke of Pavlovian conditioning by convincing women that there is something special different about them worthy of distinction, and that that inherent beauty defect is a point of delineation warranting irrepressible affection and admiration objectification.

Yet despite my actual loathing for postmodern feminism, and tongue-in-cheek embrace of their accusatory program, I consider myself a Darwinian feminist. Let’s be clear… that is a political position of feminist bias influenced by Darwinian science. This is not to be confused with the scientific position of feminist Darwinism, in which scientific hypotheses are formed through the perspective gained by freeing oneself from the scientific community’s irrepressible patriarchy (Vandermassen 2008). I take this position of political bias because since the agricultural revolution, feminists have an indisputable point (generally speaking). One of the first sociopolitical developments of agricultural society was property. Besides land, women were subjected to the forefront of the legal ownership construct. It’s difficult to disentangle the development of agriculture, writing, law, oppression, and theistic religion. This difficulty is explained in their mutually supportive natures (the Matrix beta version?).

In my overlap into the paleosphere, I wonder about the influence of gendered conflagrations of caveman romanticism. I think the first of Melissa McEwan’s posts I ever read was on the question of ‘Sexism and Paleo‘. Though I disagree with a few of the points in that piece, I share a disdain for the popularized caveman stereotype. On one level, I’ve wandered around a lot of wilderness looking for caves, and I can verify that they’re not a reliable strategy for shelter from the elements or protection from predators. Thus, I vote for burying the “caveman” concept along with agricultural dominance hierarchies and the vegetarian myth. On the psychosocial level, I see the caveman image of a clubbed woman being dragged off to be used as a reproduction machine as an overt misogynistic cultural amplification of testosterone-drunk wish-thinking. As a man, I’m also not going to pretend that I can’t imagine where that impulse comes from. If you take that last sentence as a justification, you don’t understand me and should probably stop reading now.

*Much of what follows was influenced by a 4-participant, 5-article throwdown in the “Feminist Forum” feature on the intersection of feminism and Darwinism in a 2008 issue of Sex Roles…  a peer-reviewed, openly feminist leaning journal. The journal is offering free and direct access through December 31, 2010. Rebecca Hannagan wrote the target article which was reponded to by feminists Laurett Liesen, Griet Vandermassen, and Celeste Condit. Hannagan also provides a follow-up on the others’ comments.

“Ignorant” Evolutionary Psychology vs. “Ignorant” Feminism

And thus begins the typical impasse between evolutionary psychology and feminism. Feminists charge evolutionary psychologists with indiscriminate justification of evil, and evolutionary psychologists accuse feminists of misunderstanding that the “job of scientists is to find out how things work, to try to be evenhanded with the evidence, and to present their findings…” (Vandermassen 2008). The project of science is understanding. The project of evolutionary psychology is understanding psychology in the context of evolution. Beware anyone who conflates understanding with justification.

“Evolutionary psychologists’ continued ignorance of feminism and their ongoing failure to recognize the vast contributions by feminist evolutionists is at worst the continuation of male bias, and at best scholarly negligence.” (Liesen 2008)

“[P]reviously considered an “archaic debate” [, genetic determinism], turned out to be a real concern still in the minds of many feminists. As Jonathan Waage and Patricia Gowaty (1997) write in their conclusion, “[t]erminology, politics, and ignorance are, inretrospect, major barriers to the dialectic of feminism and evolutionary biology” (p. 585).” (Vandermassen 2008)

Darwin: More Feminist than the Feminists

Darwin’s world-view was certainly steeped in a world of Victorian ideals. As such, he tended to ethnocentrize, anthropomorphize, and Victorianify a bit too frequently. However, behind the now anachronistic veneer, his wisdom was potent.

“Darwin also attributed a more important evolutionary role to females than did most evolutionists for nearly a century after him: female choice in sexual selection. Since females bear the greater parental investment through pregnancy and lactation, they have more to gain from being highly selective about with whom to mate than do males. As a result, certain traits are selected for in males if, over time, females choose to mate with the males that bear those traits more than those who do not.” (Hannagan 2008)

That first sentence could have also read, “Darwin also attributed a more important evolutionary role to females than did most feminists for nearly a century after him.” In the concept of sexual selection, we have a solid foundation from which to sweep away all attempts to legitimize gendered patriarchy. In the concept of sexual selection, we have a power structure that, excepting violence, is nearly irrefutable for men. Across the millions of species of the animal kingdom, females exercise ultimate say in selecting with whom to reproduce. The whims of females have given us everything from the peacocks’ tail (Darwin 1972) to the bowerbirds fantastic nests and 12 foot antlers of the Irish elk (Coyne 2009) to our very creativity and intelligence (Miller 2001). Sexual selection is almost universally ignored, and when it is considered, is often misunderstood as a patriarchal mechanism for herding women. Competition between men acts as a fitness cue that aids women in selecting mates (intrasexual sexual selection). Direct displays by men to women also act as fitness cues to aid women in selecting mates (intersexual sexual selection). This isn’t to say that dominance hierarchies don’t exist in various species, but it is necessary to question the assumption that intrasexual selection is a dominance hierarchy rather than a fitness cue. Intersexual selection is always the latter.

The positive implications of sexual selection for a Darwinian feminism are many. Yet ironically, and to the detriment of their program, postmodern feminism has attacked evolutionary biology after missing the point.

Another area that’s often ignored or assigned to the evils of patriarchy is competition between females. It would be naive to assume that sexual selection is unidirectional. It is true that females have the highest degree of choice, but men also gain reproductive advantage by choosing the “best” mate. Intrasexual female competition has serious negative consequences. Stereotypically female behaviors from fashion to makeup to anorexia have been attributed to competition between females (Li, et al. 2010). Interestingly, Li, et al also found this intrasexual competition functioning similarly in homosexual men. Activities motivated by intrasexual female competition have traditionally been prime targets for postmodern feminists to assign to patriarchal power structures. However, it seems that this may be a misguided confusion of intrasexual and intersexual competition.

Men and Women Are Different

That is not a claim or implication that a male brain or a female brain is better, it is a statement of fact. While – Top 5 target of anti-evolutionary psychology deniers – Steven Pinker had already convincingly refuted “blank slate” conflagrations in his 2001 book, “The Blank Slate” (linked below), neuroscience has since been demonstrating differences via fMRI and other brain studies. Sexual dimorphism (differences) in brain development have been observed to be directly influenced by differences in XX vs. XY chromosome factors (that is at the genetic, pre-hormonal level), and by gonadal hormone differences (e.g. testosterone) (Arnold 2004).

“Genes that are found on the sex chromosomes influence sexually dimorphic brain development both by causing sex differences in gonadal secretions and by acting in brain cells themselves to differentiate XX and XY brains. Because it is easier to manipulate hormone levels than the expression of sex chromosome genes, the effects of hormones have been studied much more extensively, and are much better understood, than the direct actions in the brain of sex chromosome genes. Although the differentiating effects of gonadal secretions seem to be dominant, the theories and findings discussed above support the idea that sex differences in neural expression of X and Y genes significantly contribute to sex differences in brain functions and disease.” (Arnold 2004) [emphasis mine]

“Many neurological and psychological diseases vary in incidence or severity between the sexes. Some of these diseases are known to involve X-linked genes. The vulnerability of males to mutations of X-linked genes is an obvious source of sex differences in diseases. However, more subtle variation of the same loci probably accounts for some of the differences in psychological and neural function among populations of males and females.Recent improvements in methods to manipulate and measure gene action will lead to further insights on the role of X and Y genes in brain gender.” (Arnold 2004)

Recent theoretical developments in neuronal plasticity have given the postmodern feminists and other blank-slaters a new angle to make us all the same. Some now claim that the overarching and nefarious social construct causes brains to physically develop gender identities based on patriarchal domination by way of language faculty alteration (Kaiser, et al. 2009). That’s right folks, males are so crafty that we’ve figured out how to physically alter the neuronal structure of women’s minds to do our bidding as hapless automatons. To say that gender bias goes deep is apparently an understatement of mind-bending proportions. Curiously, all such studies seem to recognize, or ignore, sex differences in the brains of all other animal species, but resort to neck-down Darwinism when considering humans. Again, the postmodern feminist position parallels that of religion in its insistence that evil forces corrupt us on unseen levels, and by excluding the human brain as the one thing Darwinian considerations can’t mustn’t be applied to.

Years after Pinker’s work, Hannagan is still comfortable enough about sex differences to say: “Broad personality constructs, such as neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness, are heritable and there are small but consistent differences between men and women on two of the big five personality constructs—extraversion and agreeableness.” (Hannagan 2008b) [emphasis mine]

This is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg regarding physical (brain included) and psychological differences.

Against the Caveman Mystique

It’s hard for me to imagine the caveman stereotype existing without the logically flawed, but evolutionarily advantageous, human cognitive availability bias (or heuristic). In short, since we find evidence of humans in many caves, but not out in the open, we tend to assume humans were more often inhabiting caves than out in the open. The art and human remains found in caves are not found there because a majority of our ancestors were “cavemen”. They are found there because caves offer protective value for preservation, and because caves are geographically obvious places to look. Thus, the probability we’ll look in caves multiplied by the probability of evidence being preserved in caves skews cave evidence to secure an artificially elevated place in our consciousness. It’s also the case that human remains are dragged to caves by whatever ate them, or humans died in caves by becoming trapped. All of this is further multiplied by the caveman narrative in culture… it’s easy to picture, and therefore remember, and therefore spreads.

The following excerpt is from a review of the apparently poorly received book, ‘The Caveman Mystique‘ by Martha McCaughey. While it’s directed at the McCaughey’s view of the caveman stereotype, I suggest that it should also be tested against feminist theory.

Perhaps the most curious omission in the book is any discussion of the evolutionary psychological view of the human female. We are repeatedly told the dubious notion that the evolutionary view of the male is that of the stereotypical caveman who drags women off by the hair for sex. But what is the corresponding picture of the female? Evidently McCaughey doesn’t think this is informative. If men are interested in having sex with as many women as possible, what does this say about women? It is a fact of simple arithmetic that the average number of sexual partners must be identical for males and females (assuming a 50-50 sex ratio). So if men have X female partners on average, the average woman must also have X male partners. What does this logic imply about the female side of mating? (McBurney 2009)

Hunter-Gatherers: Hierarchy vs. Egalitarianism

The hunter-gatherer stereotype often does no better than the caveman tripe. Rather than the overt “masculinity” of clubbing all women of one’s choosing, it’s replaced by the overt “masculinity” of killing a wily beast and the implied “masculine” domination associated with bestowing such a gift upon the rest of the band. Unfortunately, the “Man the Hunter” hypothesis that was forwarded to explain human cognitive development has been considered inaccurate almost consistently since the 1970s (Hannagan 2008).

In discussing sexual selection above, I argued that there is a fundamental refutation of patriarchy inherent in the Darwinian framework. That itself should sound the death knell for any attempts at misogyny or gendered political dominance. However, pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer existence takes that a step further. It is likely that the prevailing form of social arrangement for the bulk of human evolution was social anarchism in the context of small hunter-gatherer bands. It is important not to assume contemporary stereotypes of socialism and anarchy here.

As found by anthropological studies of recent hunter-gatherer bands, hunter-gatherer bands exhibit high levels of communitarian and cooperative behaviors combined with an often explicit rejection of hierarchy. To observe this clearly, we also need to make a distinction between immediate-return hunter-gatherers and delayed-return hunter-gatherers. The immediate vs. delayed distinction refers initially to the timeframe in which they consume hunted and gathered food. With immediate-return bands, we see daily consumption of most food, little storage, and a tendency to an almost perpetually nomadic existence. Delayed-return hunter-gatherer bands tend to differ in that they are geographically isolated, or have borders imposed upon them by surrounding populations . In this transitional stage between ancestral hunter-gatherer existence and agriculture, we see more evidence of hierarchy, despite a lack of private property relative to modern agrarian cultures (Gray 2009).

Overall, we see a general lack of ownership or conceptions of private-property within hunter-gatherer social arrangements. The division of labor is an economic strategy that benefits both individuals and the group. Value is not necessarily assigned a priori to male or female, or to hunter or gatherer.

In some examples, anthropologists have noted a significant degree of male group control over “marriages”. This is often imposed not by potential suitors, but by the male family members of the woman. This is misleading as it’s often an ethnocentric assignment of our notions of monogamy on cultures which don’t necessarily share the same sexual norms. Even in societies with supposed marriages, females exercise a high degree of mate choice when it comes to actual reproduction:

“Having high status as a good hunter has been shown to raise a man’s reproductive success everywhere the relationship has been investigated, one of the pathways being that it gains him sexual access to more and higher quality women, whether officially or in extra-marital affairs.” (Vandermassen 2008) [emphasis mine]

At first glance, this would seem to refute my comment a couple paragraphs back about non-assignment of value to the hunter role. However, it merely reinforces my qualification that such value is not assigned a priori. Hunters, as a category, do not automatically benefit. Hunters who excel are assigned a higher fitness value and therefore tend to be selected by females to father offspring. This does however, refute the claim that arranged marriages act as true control over women’s reproduction.

Autonomy

In another word, freedom. Why is every sovereign individual (by that I mean every individual) in the 21st century born not as a human, but as a proprietary asset on the balance sheet of a nation-state? Why do all agricultural societies suffer from drastically diminished levels of freedom? Why do geographically and otherwise isolated delayed-return hunter-gatherer bands tend toward political hierarchy while their immediate-return analogues do not? The atomization of individuals within the supra-organism of culture has been elevated over the autonomy our ancestors were born with, but why?

For 99%+ of human evolution, every able-bodied human has had the option of leaving oppressive regimes. Every individual had the choice to opt out of social games stacked against them. The fact of human migration across the totality of earth is proof that this strategy was employed many times. However, it would have happened more rapidly if remaining in a group was not generally more advantageous for each individual. The ability to round up a group of like-minded individuals to leave was somewhat balanced by the group’s recognition of a general strength in numbers. Call it the invisible hand of exploration, or call it migration, but it acted as a perpetual check on all forms of unwelcome domination. Their complete lack of the geographical and legal boundaries we’re faced with today allowed an entirely different paradigm for human social interaction. This concept is not new. The right to cross all borders to leave oppression is legitimized in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, it is ignored by every country on earth for reasons beyond the scope of this piece. Further, the concept loses its actual value when there is no more frontier, but only trading one domination hierarchy for the flag of another.

The temptation to form in-groups and out-groups along lines of gender, ethnicity, education, running skills, or other coin flips is a curse of a stone age brain in an information age world. Yielding to such temptations will invariably lead to error. The unbearable lightness of paranoia that accompanies postmodernist cynicism is a direct path to your own distracted energy. You’re all formally invited to ditch the postmodern feminist doomsday machine for a refreshing trip to the history of the Galapagos…

Hey! I finished in under 4,000 words! Is this the part where I get called a misogynist then burned at the altar of Margaret Mead, or… perhaps you have other thoughts? (If you have questions or comments that you think are too far off topic, you can also post ’em in the forum.)

References
Arnold, Arthur P. “Sex chromosomes and brain gender..” Nature reviews. Neuroscience 5, no. 9 (September 2004): 701-8.
Curry, Oliver. “Who’ s Afraid of the Naturalistic Fallacy?”. Evolutionary Psychology (2006): 234-247.
Gray, Peter. “Play as a Foundation for Hunter- Gatherer Social Existence s.” The American Journal of Play 1, no. 4 (2009): 476-522.
Hannagan, Rebecca J. “Gendered political behavior: A Darwinian feminist approach.” Sex Roles 59, no. 7/8 (2008).
Hannagan, Rebecca J. “Genes, Brains and Gendered Behavior: Rethinking Power and Politics in Response to Condit, Liesen, and Vandermassen.” Sex Roles 59, no. 7-8 (September 2008): 504-511.
Kaiser, Anelis, Sven Haller, Sigrid Schmitz, and Cordula Nitsch. “On sex/gender related similarities and differences in fMRI language research..” Brain research reviews 61, no. 2 (October 2009): 49-59.
Li, N. P., Smith, A. R., Griskevicius, V., Cason, M. J., & Bryan, A. (2010). Intrasexual competition and eating restriction in heterosexual and homosexual individuals. Evolution and Human Behavior, 31(5), 365-372.
Liesen, Laurette T. “The Evolution of Gendered Political Behavior: Contributions from Feminist Evolutionists.” Sex Roles 59, no. 7-8 (July 2008): 476-481.
McBurney, Donald H. “REVIEW – The Caveman Mystique: Pop Darwinism and the Debates over Sex, Violence, and Science.” Sex Roles 62, no. 1-2 (June 2009): 138-140.
Trivers, R.L. . Parental investment and sexual selection. In B. Campbell (Ed.), Sexual selection and the descent of man, 1871-1971 (1972) : 136-179. Chicago, IL: Aldine. ISBN 0-435-62157-2
Vandermassen, Griet. “Can Darwinian Feminism Save Female Autonomy and Leadership in Egalitarian Society?.” Sex Roles 59, no. 7-8 (August 2008): 482-491.
Waage, J., & Gowaty, P. (1997). Myths of genetic determinism. In P. Gowaty (Ed.), Feminism and evolutionary biology: Boundaries, intersections, and frontiers (pp. 585–613). New York: Chapman & Hall.
Walter, Alex. “The Anti-naturalistic Fallacy : Evolutionary Moral Psychology and the Insistence of Brute Facts.” Evolutionary Psychology, no. 1999 (2006): 33-48.
Wilson, David Sloan, Eric Dietrich, and Anne B Clark. “On the inappropriate use of the naturalistic fallacy in evolutionary psychology.” Evolutionary Psychology (2003): 669-682.

From a speciation standpoint, this wouldn’t be unprecedented. Whales evolved to their current iterations from land mammals. Though not a direct evolutionary ancestor, think about the modern hippo. They spend the bulk of their time in the water… even for mating. Interesting evolutionary side-note: Did you know whales have vestigial hips and legs embedded in their bodies… similar to our tailbones? Did you also know that whales are sometimes born with external legs through peculiar gene expressions?

As you watch the video, keep in mind that the hypothesis doesn’t say that we evolved from apes who had moved into aquatic areas and became fully adapted to aquatic life. It merely suggests that our ancestors spent a significant amount of time in the water for hundreds of thousands of years (guessing)… or just long enough to begin to develop adaptations for “a life aquatic”. Compelling evidence is our slightly webbed fingers and toes, and our ability to consciously override our breath control. The latter is key for diving and isn’t found in the majority of mammalian species. It’s also related to our ability to speak, a la voice control.

However, the mammalian dive reflex doesn’t really fit with the hypothesis. Since it’s found in nearly all mammals, there’s no reason to believe that the hominin line evolved it during the Paleolithic.

Did I mention this theory is almost universally ignored? Did I mention I don’t think there’s currently any compelling reason to believe it? Oh well, it’s interesting. It also attempts to explain some things that aren’t necessarily 100%  explained by the strict African savanna hunter-gatherer hypothesis. As such, I think it’s an interesting exercise in testing our assumptions…

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Edit: I was sent the following video via a friend on Twitter:

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Whatchya think?

Dr. Disotell received his Ph.D. and Masters degrees from Harvard University, and his Bachelor’s degree from Cornell University.

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Tools. [The End]

The folks whose eating habits are informed by evolutionary biology have all but subsumed the meaning of “paleo” in pop-culture. Since our minds begin to make associations at the mention of a word, this shift in meaning directly impacts how we think. Thus, for many people, the paleolithic era is mentally associated with hunters, gatherers, and grain hating. As one of them, that’s not a judgment, just an assumption that influences the rest of this piece.

For those steeped in the nuances of Pleistocene and Paleolithic research, please excuse me for a moment so we might indoctrinate any newbies: Pleistocene is a geological term which refers to the the planet and its physical properties across a particular period of time.  Paleolithic is an archaeological term that refers to humans (hominin, to be more accurate) across a particular period of time. Pleistocene and Paleolithic refer to roughly the same period of time, but they look at different things. Basically, the former looks at the world, the latter looks at the humans in it. That’s why Paleolithic is the term humans are most fond of. And… why we’ll drop Pleistocene for the rest of today. Paleolithic derives from the Greek: palaios, “old”; and lithos, “stone”. Thus, its etymological translation amounts to  “old age of the stone” or “Old Stone Age.” The reason stone is in there is because the material used to make the most advanced tools of the time was stone.

If the Paleolithic Era is archaeologically defined by hominid development of stone tools, how can we jettison the stone part and claim all tools are paleo? I prefer a different, but I think equally (if not more) accurate perspective. The psychologically important development in the Paleolithic wasn’t stone, but the tools. Surprise! …stone existed before the Paleolithic, but hominids didn’t make tools out of it, or anything else, really (and don’t try to derail the discussion by saying gravity was a tool, thank you very much). Stone didn’t change, our brains evolved to use it. That reveals the crux of my argument: the concept of tools is paleo. Now, that could rightly be passed off as linguistic trickery if we restricted “Paleolithic” to its archaeological roots. But as I mentioned above, we’ve expanded its use to encompass a period of human evolutionary biology and thus, by default, evolutionary psychology. It’s in the overlap of archaeology, evolutionary biology, and evolutionary psychology that the concept of tools gets significant in a major way.

A study by a team of archaeologists and anthropologists pinned down human brain size as a key factor that kept the hominid line in the stone tool making mindset for millions of years (Faisal 2010). That makes sense, and we know that brain size expanded significantly between the beginning of the paleolithic to its end. However, archaeology says nothing about the adaptive pressures required for evolutionary selection to effect such a change. To explain why our brains got bigger, we need to think about it from a different perspective.

From the standpoint of evolution, the development most important to humans in the Paleolithic was not the stone tools themselves, but the concept of tools. Across this period, humans developed what Marshal McLuhan would later refer to as “extensions of man”. Humans’ manipulation of their surroundings became the dominant strategy upon which evolution exerted its adaptive pressure. Human brains grew as man’s external manipulation abilities proved more efficient than biological “weapons”. We didn’t need to grow bigger, stronger, and faster than surrounding predators once this evolutionary cascade kicked into high gear. Further, once tool use becomes a strategy, it precludes (to varying degrees) biological evolution. McLuhan’s extensions become de facto solutions for the majority of adaptive problems. Every time something is used as a tool it serves as a proxy for evolution. Think surgical solutions to appendicitis, chemical solutions to infertility and impotence, condoms, guns, microwaves, refrigeration, tractors, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.

Not only the tools themselves arise in the Paleolithic, but the psychological impulse to solve problems of survival and reproduction through the use of tools, arose during that time as well. Our brains were wired up for tools. So… what does this mean? If we look at this from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, our natural inclination to formulate tool strategies to solve problems is just as “paleo” as eating meats, fruits, and vegetables. This yields some paradoxical outcomes between the historicity of the paleo diet versus the pervasiveness of paleo psychology.

• Paleo diet enemy: Wheat (agriculture more generally) is, quite literally, a tool. The domestication of wheat was a human extension to solve problems of caloric inconsistency. Paradox!
• Industrial food processing is a tool.
• Chemical preservatives are tools.
• Corn-feeding animals is a tool.
• Alcohol is a tool! That’s right, people… Tools don’t have to serve an obviously adaptive purpose (though maybe we can pontificate on the reproductive “benefits” of alcohol related reproduction).

Not all tools are such anathemas to the health of humans. I make the illustration to open a space for questioning what is paleo in the historical sense versus what’s paleo in the sense of the shift of hominid conceptualization of tools. And obviously, some tools are amazingly beneficial.

• Is protein powder historically paleo? Not a chance. Is protein powder a tool that can be utilized for specific purposes?
• Is coconut oil historically paleo? Again, definitely not. And again… we use it as a tool.
• Are vitamin D supplements historically paleo? Until we find archaeological evidence of white lab coats in the paleolithic, it’s safe to say no. However, they serve a valid purpose as an absolutely beneficial tool for many modern humans.

So when we talk about paleo being a logical framework, and not a historical reenactment, these are the kind of questions we’re discussing. What historically “incorrect” or #notpaleo or #faileo tools that we have at our disposal should we be using? What are the costs and benefits associated with their use? In reference to paleolithic based diets, it makes sense to talk about the things we ingest, have injected into our veins, or absorb through our skin. That said, this logical framework can be extended to our physical activities, the way we design our lives, the spaces we choose to inhabit, how we interact with one another, and how we spend every moment. Since the question of the best way to optimize our lives is a ridiculously difficult undertaking spanning centuries of thought may be beyond the scope of this article, I’ll save it for the following three zillion posts [subscribe via RSS].

Our Paleolithic ancestors didn’t eat what they ate because they were nutrition experts. They didn’t do what they did because they possessed a superior level of philosophical knowledge or wisdom. [Perspective: speech as we know it didn’t exist for more than 2 million years (~85%) of the Paleolithic] Our ancestors simply did what they had to do with what they had available. They died when they did it wrong, and we are the benefactors of those who made the right decisions. We’re lying to ourselves if we think they wouldn’t have utilized many of the tools we have today… both nutritionally and otherwise. And that is a prime reason why romanticizing our Paleolithic progenitors and emulating a historical reenactment completely misses the important point of the Paleolithic. Look at everything that’s available and use the best tool at hand… That’s paleo logic in the modern world. And that’s still only half of the logic… next time…

References

Aldo Faisal, Dietrich Stout, Jan Apel, Bruce Bradley. The Manipulative Complexity of Lower Paleolithic Stone Toolmaking. PLoS ONE, 2010; 5 (11)

Target

The seeds of this article have been on my mind for a while, but its timing is a reaction to an article I saw yesterday in the Chicago Sun Times titled “Meaty fad diet goes back to Stone Age“. Here we go… Back to the 3.4 million year “fad”. The author added to the fad rhetoric by calling the paleo diet “silly”. That sort of title is pretty common in the anti-paleo polemics that circulate in the blogosphere. However, this was from what I presumed to be a nominally significant traditional media outlet. It was clearly written by a non-journalist, which is fine I guess, but it struck me as particularly poorly researched. There were no online responses when I read it, so I fired off a hasty, but I think accurate, comment. At the time of this writing, it’s the first of a few comments, but who knows what whims might change that.

Semi-Irrelevant Backstory

When I first read the article, I read every word, but stopped at the 2nd to last sentence of the piece: “Cornell McClellan is the owner of Naturally Fit… a personal training and wellness facility.” Maybe it’s not fair nor accurate, but when I think gym owner / personal trainer, I envision a wall of supplements and meal replacement bars and powders… you know…. merchandise that needs to be “moved”. Thus, I tend to take their advice on nutrition with a grain of yeah, right. In missing the last sentence, I missed something that would have changed my comment somewhat. Here’s that non-trivial sentence: “He is also the fitness trainer for the President of the United States and the First Lady.” Yes, you may {insert scratching record sound here}.

Let it be known that I am was in no way hostile to the Obama administration when I read the article. Sure, I could work up a reasonable critique of a dozen or so things I think were bad policy decisions, but my critiques of the Bush Jr. administration would be measured in hundreds or thousands. For reasons mentioned by neither Democrats nor Republicans, I find the health care bill to be flawed. It also strikes me as unconstitutional, but I went to the law school of James Spader and William Shatner. To the Presiden’ts credit, as a non-theist, the following may be my favorite quote by any U.S. President since James Madison:

“I’m somebody who deeply believes that the bedrock strength of this country is that it embraces people of many faiths and no faith. This is a country that is still predominantly Christian, but we have… atheists, agnostics… that we have to revere and respect….” Barack Obama, September 28, 2010.<

The only reason I’m writing this article is that I got curious and googled Cornell McClellan. It was then that I found out he’s 1 of 16 official members of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition. It was only after finding that page that I went back to the article and connected all of the dots. I remain skeptical of its claim that Mr. McClellan has an “extensive knowledge of the human body and nutrition.”

The Meat of It

Cornell McClellan’s article really is garbage. I do encourage you to read the whole thing to take in the totality of its emptiness. The portrait of the paleo diet that he paints is more a cartoonish mischaracterization of the Atkins diet than paleo. And to be fair to the Atkins folks, it’s not a fair representation of them either.

The problem with this sort of article is that the average person sincerely looking for a way to improve their health is not likely to see through the unsupported assertions made by someone who’s a professional personal trainer backed by the President and officially promoted as an outstanding exemplar by the United States government. My thoughts and references follow each of the quoted snippets.

“a recent study has come out that refutes some of [the paleo diet’s] basic tenets. Findings from archeological digs in Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic suggest that cavemen did not only rely on meat for sustenance, as evidenced by traces of starch grains found on stones used for grinding and preparing food.”

Well at least Mr. McClellan did go so far as to read the Reuters blurb on this and maybe even the NYT piece [“page not found” error as of this writing]. However, the actual study did not reveal evidence of “grains” in the sense that would be appropriate for a paleo diet discussion of grains… namely, cereal grains such as wheat, barley, amaranth, millet, et cetera. The grains being referred to are grains in the sense that they are particulates; that is, the result of grinding. The popular science media misconstrued this research ad nauseum when it was first published. Its implications for paleo dieters are approximately zero. It’s been refuted many times, but Melissa McEwen provides my favorite critique thus far. It’s based on the actual study, not the other journalists’ general audience pieces, and she even bothered to include a relevant chart from the study that shows the non-grain plants in question.

Not trivial in the media coverage of this study was the post-publishing opining by some of the article’s authors. At least one made a wild and unsubstantiated guess that they used the ground plant material to make bread. I ask again, who among you thinks mashed potatoes are the same as bread? Perhaps we have to be scientists to make such a determination?

Archeologists were shocked to discover that our carnivorous ancestors actually were making and preparing foods such as roots, vegetables and perhaps even cracker-like foods.

Now this is just ridiculous. First of all, no serious scientist currently thinks our ancestors were “carnivores”. It is widely accepted by archaeologists and anthropologists that humans evolved as omnivores. I’d let laymen off the hook on this distinction, but Mr. McClellan knows better and is exaggerating for effect. The paleo diet approach simply echoes a range of foods our omnivorous ancestors would have had access to. Second, there are longstanding hypotheses and evidence of hominid “preparation” of roots and vegetables. The rest of us know that crackers were invented by the Keebler elves, no earlier than the First Age of Middle-Earth. Proving that humans made crackers in the paleolithic is about as likely as leading us to a magical elven forest.

These recent findings suggest that man cannot live on meat alone, but that hasn’t stopped thousands of people from signing up for the Paleo Diet.

Now we’re getting ridiculous-er. The paleolithic diet doesn’t suggest that anyone could, should, or would survive on meat alone.  I’m sure someone could make a case that humans could survive on meat alone, but it would remain a question of how long and how well. Scientists do hypothesize that Neanderthals were mostly carnivorous, but they’re a separate species and that argument is beside the point.

a meat-heavy diet isn’t recommended for most people. Not only do I discourage any diet that disallows entire food groups, but cholesterol levels are directly linked to the ingestion of animal products.

Meat-heavy is vague, unhelpful, and pejorative in a way the author clearly intended. Here we also have a legitimate disagreement on what constitutes a food group. Grain might be a Food Group, but it is not a group of foods or nutrients required for human health. There are no essential nutrients found in grains that are not found in dramatically higher concentrations in the other “food groups”. Yes, grains, as a practical matter, are necessary to sustain the massive current global population of Homo sapiens with the current agribusiness-dominated farming system, but they are by no means necessary for individual people. Please examine your assumptions, Mr. McClellan.

The final claim about cholesterol and animal products is too big to discuss here. I’ll blindly assert his unsupported claim has been sufficiently refuted and address references should they be provided at some future time.

Eating a steak three times a day can potentially whittle your waistline, but the impact it’s having on your insides might not be as attractive. Sadly, Paleo dieters also are encouraged to limit fruit to small helpings, as it believed that our ancestors didn’t have access to the amazing produce offerings that we now do.

Until I see a citation for the “steak three times a day” charge, I’m going to assume that it’s again made up for dramatization of the author’s non-point. While our ancestors did eat a lot of meat when it was available, it wasn’t available in steak form three times a day. Such is life when you don’t have refrigeration and a pantry.

Paleo dieters are encouraged to adjust fruit consumption based on their current body composition and how much exercise they’re getting. Fruit generally has naturally high levels of sugar. Is it really sad to suggest that obese, sedentary individuals throttle back on their intake of sugar, while marathon runners shovel it down as needed?

Not only are these diet choices somewhat questionable, it’s also worth pointing out that our Stone Age ancestors were not eating factory-farmed meat, which is full of chemicals and hormones. Unless you have a spear handy and access to unlimited buffalo, you are going to have a hard time truly eating like a caveman.

Yes, the mythical all meat diet that excludes spuriously essential food groups and bans fruit would definitely be questionable. Unfortunately for the arguments of Mr. McClellan, that isn’t the paleo diet. The paleolithic dieters are fully aware of the problems with factory farmed, chemically-treated meat and make it a point to eat naturally fed (typically grass or pastured) meats. And yes, such meats are difficult to find at a fast food window, but they are often available at standard grocery stores. And as I’ve said before, paleo is a logical framework applied to modern humans, not a historical reenactment.

Finally, any diet that is as restrictive as the Paleo Diet is problematic because it requires cavemen-sized willpower, which means many people will soon abandon their hunks of meat for a modern-day helping of lasagna.

The willpower problem is a modern diet carbohydrate addiction problem, not a paleolithic problem. Direct links have been demonstrated between carbohydrate cravings and obesity (Spring 2008). In effect, suggesting that sufficient willpower is too difficult implies that we should all simply give up and submit to an unbreakable cycle of carbohydrate addiction. The cool thing about paleolithic diets is that most people find the addiction and cravings go away. Indeed, you find yourself quite full if you eat ample amounts of meat, fruit, and vegetables.

After discovering the naive nutritional understanding of “The First Trainer”, I’m a little worried for the President. I hope his doctors aren’t using similarly anachronistic, post-medieval methods. Nobody likes leeches and bloodletting.

McClellan’s sagelike advice? Don’t eat “Big Macs”. Deet deeeet deeet deet deeeet… This just in off the news wire.

Dear President Obama, myself and many others in the paleo community would be happy to update your nutrition regime. P.S. Please tell President Clinton he could probably use a bit more protein these days. Bonus: Many of us have a natural immune system resistance to TV and radio pundits. Which brings me to my next point…

Religion

Religion (in some forms) is fundamentally anti-paleo. Obvious culprits in this regard are Creationists. While I formally and warmly invite them to apply paleolithic ideas to their eating and exercise habits, it’s also pretty obvious that the paleo diet relies on the logic of Darwinian evolution. Some folks who believe in “intelligent” design may also be inclined to reject the logic of the paleo diet. The adaptive power of natural selection in evolutionary theory is a foundation of the paleo diet. If a divine force was guiding the process, adaptation would be irrelevant. It could be claimed that the “intelligence” knew all along that humans would need grain to force an artificially large population explosion, and therefore, paleolithic habits would be irrelevant.

I personally know Creationists who have been quite successful on the paleo diet. I wonder how they ignore the implications there. If their holy books tell them eating bread is a good thing, how do they reconcile that unhealthy advice with reality?

Corporate Interests

I don’t want to get all conspiratorial, but I think it’s at least worth considering financial influence in politics as it relates to pushback against paleolithic dieting. As the famous quote from the 1976 film All the President’s Men says, “Follow the money”. And lookey here, we just happen to be talking about one of the President’s men. The list below highlights a few publicly traded companies with direct financial interest in producing, fertilizing, transporting, and/or distributing paleo-unfriendly wheat & corn products for human consumption [2010 Fortune 500 Rank, $Revenue]. Major direct producers in bold.

• Wal-Mart [1]
• Exxon Mobil [2]
• Chevron [3]
• ConocoPhillips [6]
• CVS Caremark [18]
• Procter & Gamble [22]
• Kroger [23]
• Costco Wholesale [25]
• Walgreen [32]
• Marathon Oil [41]
• PepsiCo [50, $43 billion]
• Safeway [52]
• Kraft Foods [53, $40 billion]
• Sysco [55, $37 billion]
• Coca-Cola [72, $31 billion]
• Tyson Foods [87, $27 billion]
• Rite Aid [89]
• Publix Super Markets [99]
• Deere [107]
• McDonald’s [108, $23 billion]
• Coca-Cola Enterprises [113, $22 billion]
• Tesoro [139]
• General Mills [155 $15 billion]
• Smithfield Foods [163, $14 billion]
• Pepsi Bottling [174, $13 billion]
• ConAgra Foods [178, $13 billion]
• Sara Lee [180, $13 billion]
• Kellog [184, $13 billion]
• Monsanto [197]

I’ll just leave it at that for now. Government subsidies of the crops in question raises an entirely different, yet equally important level of questioning. If I get requests to flesh this out further, maybe I’ll put some more work into it.

Vegan / Vegetarian

Noooooo… Not again! There are a lot of veg*ans out there. They’re politically active, they like to team up, and they [some] hate that other people eat meat.

Guilt by Association / Ad Hominem

We see this time and again in propagandists rallying against those of unknown motives trying to quash the idea that eating grains is bad (see the reference to Gwyneth Paltrow in the intro here). This is true in attacks on anti-gluten folks and anti-paleo folks.  Indeed Cornell McClellan injects this approach into his piece, “celebrities such as Megan Fox are rumored to owe their hot bodies to this ancient diet plan… there is no secret behind the body of your favorite celebrity”. Dismissing something as a celebrity fad is itself a fad and it carries with it a very real sign (in the semiotic sense) value. Its cultural meaning instantly evokes mental images of superficiality, imminent expiration, and flakiness. Thus, accusing something of being a celebrity fad associates the idea of hollow vapidity to whatever is linked to it. Propaganda 101, baby.

Conclusion

We have good reason to question the personal business motivations, political motivations, and religious motivations of individuals launching derisive attacks at paleo. The financial stakes alone are in the hundreds of billions (more likely trillions) annually. The perceived religious stakes are just as powerful and perhaps more, if slightly less lucrative and less…um… what’s the word I’m looking for here? The stakes for vegetarians can be just as powerful and personal.

There are reasonable arguments within the scientific community that are worth having. However, when pieces such as McClellan’s hit the media with such a gaping chasm between the known science and the claims, red flags should go off and alarm bells should ring.

Yes, our knowledge of the paleolithic environment in which humans evolved is less than 100% complete. However, we know a lot more about it than Mr. McClellan and other politically motivated paleo haters would lead you to believe. We know enough to help people in a very real and immediate way. I’ll link up a couple books below, and feel free to ask me questions if you’re not sure about where to start or where to go next.

Slainte,

Andrew

UPDATE: Cornell McClellan is a vegan advocate!

References

Spring, B., Schneider, K., Smith, M., Kendzor, D., Appelhans, B., Hedeker, D., et al. (2008). Abuse potential of carbohydrates for overweight carbohydrate cravers. Psychopharmacology, 197(4), 637-647.