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Meller is a modern physician with an eye on the Stone Age. His book offers practical medical and health advice with evolutionary justifications that range from plausible to fanciful.
Meller accepts the premises of evolutionary psychology, a controversial school of thought grounded in the assumption that our bodies and brains evolved to handle Stone Age conditions. Though he sometimes strains to connect illnesses, diet and behavior to their presumed prehistoric roots, he nonetheless provides sensible guidance on preventing disease and promoting health.
Much evidence suggests that Stone Age people ate foods rich in protein and fats, not carbohydrates, for example. Citing this work, Meller recommends a diet tilted toward meat, fish and vegetables.
Because Stone Age people lived in far-flung bands, the spread of bacteria and viruses was dampened. Today vaccinations, including flu shots, prove invaluable to prevent disease transmission, he says. But Meller advises readers not to rely on over-the-counter cold remedies, noting they contain no ingredients to shorten the infection.
Some of Meller’s claims are questionable. In a chapter offering advice about relationships and sex, he asserts that Stone Age women preferred mating with bald guys — because signs of maturity were sexy in a world where the weak died young. That sounds like male-pattern wishful thinking.
Still, this book, which includes contributions from Science News biomedical writer Nathan Seppa, contains prudent suggestions for healthy living in the Information Age.
Perigee, 2009, 309 p., $24.95.
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Since life span was short this, what we today call infatuation or love, may have lasted for the length of their life in most cases.
Without the PILL they were pregnant continuously and mostly died from exhaustion in child birth. Older more experienced men were the common target for the fathers or mothers who helped to find a rich mate (who could feed them and protect them and help the parents also) for their daughters.
Assumption that our bodies and brains evolved to handle Stone Age conditions are easy to see if we look at how women behave with men.
Some of their behavior goes back even more to a more animal-wise attitude, like dancing, wiggling their asses at men in dance bars. I remember seeing hens doing this with cocks.
Stone Age people ate foods rich in protein and fats, and that is a valuable addition to our diets. That is easily verified by looking at our diets and what it does or does not do for us.
So the book may be with some veritable facts and lacking others. No surprise when we try to write about where we get our talents positive and negative, from.
seslichat
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