Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body

the long body is far more expansive. It’s the totality of the short body plus its life-supporting systems of habitat, tribe, and culture. It includes the myriad plants, animals, people, microbes, memes, emotions, and ideas that flow through the larger system. It also includes the ancient history of our species, circulating in the collective unconsc

we’ll see that culture has left its marks all over our bodies, shaping the genetic evolution of our feet, legs, calves, hips, stomachs, ribs, fingers, ligaments, jaws, throats, teeth, eyes, tongues, and much more. It has also made us powerful throwers and long-distance runners who are otherwise physically weak and fat.

When our story begins, the cell divides and organizes in what is referred to as a primitive streak or midline. The notochord or primitive axis emerges, evolving into the vertebral column, which enfolds the spinal cord and gut brain. Our body emerges out from this midline, budding arms and legs. The story of our beginning tells us that all movement