Paleofantasy Week 3

            Paleofantasy has incorporated many evolutionary concepts that we have covered in class. These concepts are especially prevalent in the chapter where Zuk focuses on the shift of humans from being hunter-gatherers to using agriculture.  Zuk talks about how with the shift to agriculture, the average human height decreased and people started accumulating diseases because of malnutrition since their diet did not have as much variety as before. However, they eventually returned to pre-agricultural conditions because they started adapting and food distribution improved. I thought Zuk did a good job explaining how the population explosion that occurred because of agriculture also benefited evolution. She compared mutations to lottery tickets and said that even though most tickets aren’t worth anything, the chance of winning increases by buying more, referring to the idea that a larger population allows for a greater chance of beneficial mutations. Another connection to course material was when Zuk mentioned that “evolution is continuous but it is not goal-oriented” when explaining why the rise of agriculture was not necessarily bad since humans were not even evolving towards a state of perfection in the first place. She also explained Sewall Wright’s concept of adaptive landscapes very well and said that this shows that evolution is not static but keeps changing. She connected this to counter the argument that we are stuck in bodies adapted to the Paleolithic age, saying that sometimes changes in the environment cause people to be in a valley but this does not mean it is impossible for them to eventually rise to a peak again. Overall, I liked how Zuk described and incorporated evolutionary concepts to explain her view that although we may currently be mismatched to our environment, this is impermanent because of how evolution works.