Sublime

We are exercised about exercise.

In other words, typical hunter-gatherers are about as physically active as Americans or Europeans who include about an hour of exercise in their daily routine.

“Humans really are obligatorily required to do aerobic exercise in order to stay healthy, and I think that has deep roots in our evolutionary history,” Dr. Lieberman said. “If there’s any magic bullet to make human beings healthy, it’s to run.”

Okay, so exercise is paradoxical: salubrious but abnormal, intrinsically free but highly commodified, a source of pleasure and health but a cause of discomfort, guilt, and opprobrium. Why did this realization motivate me to write this book? And why might you wish to read it?

Without seeming like a madman or an idiot, how would I explain to a hunter-gatherer, a farmer in Pemja, or even my great-great-great-grandparents that I spend most of my days sitting in chairs and then compensate for my idleness by paying money to go to a gym to make myself sweaty, tired, and uncomfortable on a machine that forces me to struggle to

Today, the human body is changing in ways that have nothing to do with the “survival of the fittest.” Instead, we’re adopting and passing down traits that are detrimental to our health. This concept, called dysevolution, was made popular by Harvard biologist Daniel Lieberman, and it explains why our backs ache, feet hurt, and bones are growing more

Genetically speaking, we are still identical to our hunter-gatherer ancestors so these behaviors remain universal. Though we are unchanged, our world is not.