In a recent research paper co-authored with Daniel Longman, … [evolutionary anthropologist Colin Shaw] argues that the extensive environmental shifts of the Anthropocene have undermined human evolutionary fitness. Evolutionary success of a species amounts to survival and reproduction, and, according to the authors, both factors have been severely compromised in the last 300 years since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. …
“In our ancestral state, we were well-adapted to deal with acute stress to evade or confront predators. Fight or flight. The lion would come around occasionally, and you had to be ready to defend yourself – or run,” Shaw explains. …
This acute stress response was ideal for mobilizing adrenaline and cortisol while fighting for survival in our hunter-gatherer past. However, it is mismatched for today’s steady stream of challenges. … “Whether it’s a difficult discussion with your partner or your boss, or traffic noise, your stress response system is still pretty much the same as if you were facing lion after lion after lion. As a result, you have this very powerful response from your nervous system, but no comedown.”
“From an evolutionary perspective, if people are dying from chronic stress or stress-related diseases, you could say that this is natural selection taking place. If you let that go on for hundreds of generations, people would probably become better able to deal with chronic stress,” he says. Clearly, that’s not a feasible solution to our current predicament – a physiological conundrum with no quick evolutionary fix.
Share this article
