Paleofantasy What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex Diet And How We Live

Author : Marlene Zuk
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 039308986X
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live written by Marlene Zuk and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-03-18 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “With . . . evidence from recent genetic and anthropological research, [Zuk] offers a dose of paleoreality.”—Erin Wayman, Science News We evolved to eat berries rather than bagels, to live in mud huts rather than condos, to sprint barefoot rather than play football—or did we? Are our bodies and brains truly at odds with modern life? Although it may seem as though we have barely had time to shed our hunter-gatherer legacy, biologist Marlene Zuk reveals that the story is not so simple. Popular theories about how our ancestors lived—and why we should emulate them—are often based on speculation, not scientific evidence. Armed with a razor-sharp wit and brilliant, eye-opening research, Zuk takes us to the cutting edge of biology to show that evolution can work much faster than was previously realized, meaning that we are not biologically the same as our caveman ancestors. Contrary to what the glossy magazines would have us believe, we do not enjoy potato chips because they crunch just like the insects our forebears snacked on. And women don’t go into shoe-shopping frenzies because their prehistoric foremothers gathered resources for their clans. As Zuk compellingly argues, such beliefs incorrectly assume that we’re stuck—finished evolving—and have been for tens of thousands of years. She draws on fascinating evidence that examines everything from adults’ ability to drink milk to the texture of our ear wax to show that we’ve actually never stopped evolving. Our nostalgic visions of an ideal evolutionary past in which we ate, lived, and reproduced as we were “meant to” fail to recognize that we were never perfectly suited to our environment. Evolution is about change, and every organism is full of trade-offs. From debunking the caveman diet to unraveling gender stereotypes, Zuk delivers an engrossing analysis of widespread paleofantasies and the scientific evidence that undermines them, all the while broadening our understanding of our origins and what they can really tell us about our present and our future.

Author : Marlene Zuk
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393081370
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live written by Marlene Zuk and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A whip-smart, brilliantly researched expos of pseudoscientific myths about the evolutionary past and how people should live today.

Author : Marlene Zuk
Publisher : HMH
ISBN 13 : 0547549172
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sex on Six Legs written by Marlene Zuk and published by HMH. This book was released on 2011-08-02 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biologist presents a “consistently delightful” look at the mysteries of insect behavior (The New York Times Book Review). Insects have inspired fear, fascination, and enlightenment for centuries. They are capable of incredibly complex behavior, even with brains often the size of a poppy seed. How do they accomplish feats that look like human activity—personality, language, childcare—with completely different pathways from our own? What is going on inside the mind of those ants that march like boot-camp graduates across your kitchen floor? How does the lead ant know exactly where to take her colony, to that one bread crumb that your nightly sweep missed? Can insects be taught new skills as easily as your new puppy? Sex on Six Legs is a startling and exciting book that provides answers to these questions and many more, examining not only the bedroom lives of creepy crawlies but also some of our own long-held assumptions about learning, the nature of personality, and what our own large brains might be for. “Smart, engaging . . . Zuk approaches her subject with such humor and enthusiasm for the intricacies of insect life, even bug-phobes will relish her account.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Author : Amy Tan
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101202955
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Bonesetter's Daughter written by Amy Tan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-02-19 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mother and daughter find what they share in their bones in this compelling novel from the bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir. Ruth Young and her widowed mother have always had a difficult relationship. But when she discovers writings that vividly describe her mother’s tumultuous life growing up in China, Ruth discovers a side of LuLing that she never knew existed. Transported to a backwoods village known as Immortal Heart, Ruth learns of secrets passed along by a mute nursemaid, Precious Auntie; of a cave where dragon bones are mined; of the crumbling ravine known as the End of the World; and of the curse that LuLing believes she released through betrayal. Within the calligraphied pages awaits the truth about a mother's heart, secrets she cannot tell her daughter, yet hopes she will never forget... Conjuring the pain of broken dreams and the power of myths, The Bonesetter’s Daughter is an excavation of the human spirit: the past, its deepest wounds, its most profound hopes.

Author : Mohamed A. F. Noor
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691203938
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Live Long and Evolve written by Mohamed A. F. Noor and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Star Trek, crew members travel to unusual planets, meet diverse beings, and encounter unique civilizations. In these remarkable space adventures, does Star Trek reflect biology and evolution as we know it? What can the science in the science fiction of Star Trek teach us?"--Back cover

Author : Jonathan B. Losos
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691171874
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How Evolution Shapes Our Lives written by Jonathan B. Losos and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " It is easy to think of evolution as something that happened long ago, or that occurs only in "nature," or that is so slow that its ongoing impact is virtually nonexistent when viewed from the perspective of a single human lifetime. But we now know that when natural selection is strong, evolutionary change can be very rapid. In this book, some of the world's leading scientists explore the implications of this reality for human life and society. With some twenty-five essays, this volume provides authoritative yet accessible explorations of why understanding evolution is crucial to human life--from dealing with climate change and ensuring our food supply, health, and economic survival to developing a richer and more accurate comprehension of society, culture, and even what it means to be human itself. Combining new essays with ones revised and updated from the acclaimed Princeton Guide to Evolution, this collection addresses the role of evolution in aging, cognition, cooperation, religion, the media, engineering, computer science, and many other areas. The result is a compelling and important book about how evolution matters to humans today. The contributors include Francisco J. Ayala, Dieter Ebert, Elizabeth Hannon, Richard E. Lenski, Tim Lewens, Jonathan B. Losos, Jacob A. Moorad, Mark Pagel, Robert T. Pennock, Daniel E. L. Promislow, Robert C. Richardson, Alan R. Templeton, and Carl Zimmer."--

Author : Lee Alan Dugatkin
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022659971X
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog) written by Lee Alan Dugatkin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-04-14 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tucked away in Siberia, there are furry, four-legged creatures with wagging tails and floppy ears that are as docile and friendly as any lapdog. But, despite appearances, these are not dogs—they are foxes. They are the result of the most astonishing experiment in breeding ever undertaken—imagine speeding up thousands of years of evolution into a few decades. In 1959, biologists Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut set out to do just that, by starting with a few dozen silver foxes from fox farms in the USSR and attempting to recreate the evolution of wolves into dogs in real time in order to witness the process of domestication. This is the extraordinary, untold story of this remarkable undertaking. Most accounts of the natural evolution of wolves place it over a span of about 15,000 years, but within a decade, Belyaev and Trut’s fox breeding experiments had resulted in puppy-like foxes with floppy ears, piebald spots, and curly tails. Along with these physical changes came genetic and behavioral changes, as well. The foxes were bred using selection criteria for tameness, and with each generation, they became increasingly interested in human companionship. Trut has been there the whole time, and has been the lead scientist on this work since Belyaev’s death in 1985, and with Lee Dugatkin, biologist and science writer, she tells the story of the adventure, science, politics, and love behind it all. In How to Tame a Fox, Dugatkin and Trut take us inside this path-breaking experiment in the midst of the brutal winters of Siberia to reveal how scientific history is made and continues to be made today. To date, fifty-six generations of foxes have been domesticated, and we continue to learn significant lessons from them about the genetic and behavioral evolution of domesticated animals. How to Tame a Fox offers an incredible tale of scientists at work, while also celebrating the deep attachments that have brought humans and animals together throughout time.

Author : Harvey Levenstein
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226473740
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Fear of Food written by Harvey Levenstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-03-08 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These include Nobel Prize-winner Eli Metchnikoff, who advised that yogurt would enable people to live to be 140, and Elmer McCollum, the "discoverer" of vitamins, who tailored his warnings about vitamin deficiencies to suit the food producers who funded him. Levenstein also highlights how large food companies have taken advantage of these concerns by marketing their products to combat the fear of the moment. Such examples include the co-opting of the "natural foods" movement, which grew out of the belief that inhabitants of a remote Himalayan Shangri-la enjoyed remarkable health by avoiding the very kinds of processed food these corporations produced, and the physiologist Ancel Keys, originator of the Mediterranean Diet, who provided the basis for a powerful coalition of scientists, doctors, food producers, and others to convince Americans that high-fat foods were deadly.

Author : Loren Cordain
Publisher : Rodale
ISBN 13 : 160961917X
Total Pages : 355 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Paleo Diet for Athletes written by Loren Cordain and published by Rodale. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adapts the author's nutritional program to the needs of athletes in a diet based on natural selection and evolution that promotes weight loss, normalizes blood cholesterol, increases energy levels, and enhances overall fitness.

Author : Tanya M. Smith
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262348934
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Tales Teeth Tell written by Tanya M. Smith and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What teeth can tell us about human evolution, development, and behavior. Our teeth have intriguing stories to tell. These sophisticated time machines record growth, diet, and evolutionary history as clearly as tree rings map a redwood's lifespan. Each day of childhood is etched into tooth crowns and roots—capturing birth, nursing history, environmental clues, and illnesses. The study of ancient, fossilized teeth sheds light on how our ancestors grew up, how we evolved, and how prehistoric cultural transitions continue to affect humans today. In The Tales Teeth Tell, biological anthropologist Tanya Smith offers an engaging and surprising look at what teeth tell us about the evolution of primates—including our own uniqueness. Humans' impressive set of varied teeth provides a multipurpose toolkit honed by the diet choices of our mammalian ancestors. Fossil teeth, highly resilient because of their substantial mineral content, are all that is left of some long-extinct species. Smith explains how researchers employ painstaking techniques to coax microscopic secrets from these enigmatic remains. Counting tiny daily lines provides a way to estimate age that is more powerful than any other forensic technique. Dental plaque—so carefully removed by dental hygienists today—records our ancestors' behavior and health in the form of fossilized food particles and bacteria, including their DNA. Smith also traces the grisly origins of dentistry, reveals that the urge to pick one's teeth is not unique to humans, and illuminates the age-old pursuit of “dental art.” The book is generously illustrated with original photographs, many in color.