A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life

Classrooms are effectively sterile boxes removed from the world. It is difficult to learn in such a situation, because you won’t run into the things that you need to learn but that cannot be taught—things like how to survive tree falls, boat…

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Let siblings (and friends) teach each other, and do not intervene whenever they have a disagreement or altercation. If they ramp up their arguments so that you have to get involved, do not reward such behavior. They…

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Authority is not to be used as a bludgeon to shut down the exchange of ideas. Bob Trivers, evolutionary biologist par excellence, and our mentor in college, once advised us to seek positions in which we taught undergraduates. His reasoning was this: Undergrads do not yet know the field, and so are likely to ask questions that you aren’t expecting,

Listen to your body, remembering that pain evolved to protect you. Pain is information about the environment, and how your body is responding to it. Some injuries require professional treatment, but some can be monitored without intervention. Pain is both unpleasant and adaptive; think twice before shutting down its message.

In all mammals, and in that majority of birds in which parental care is the rule, offspring are fed and protected by their parents.

Look out for Chesterton’s fence and invoke the Precautionary principle when messing with ancestral systems. Remember this: “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

Adaptive evolution improves the “fit” of creatures to their environment.

For straight women: Do not succumb to social pressure to embrace easy sex. If you aren’t interested in sleeping with a guy within hours or days of meeting him, and he passes you by for someone who is—what have you lost? You have lost access to a guy dedicated to strategy three. You are better off looking for a good guy who is capable of, and intere

Allow celestial bodies to set your sleep-wake pattern. Wake with the sun. Know the phases of the moon. Navigate sometimes by the light of the full moon. Navigate sometimes as dawn emerges, or as dusk falls, paying attention to the shifting of your senses as light becomes more, or less, available. Spend time outside, letting your body take cues from

Monogamy: individuals of both sexes have just one partner at a time