Saturday, January 24, 2009

The Evolutionary Search for Our Perfect Past

A thoughtful essay by Marlene Zuk in the NYTimes.
Did our cave-dwelling forebears feel nostalgia for the days before they were bipedal? Were hunter-gatherers convinced that swiping a gazelle from a lion was superior to that newfangled business of running it down yourself? And why stop there? Why not long to be aquatic, since life arose in the sea? For that matter, it might be nice to be unicellular: after all, cancer arises because our differentiated tissues run amok. Single cells don’t get cancer.

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