There are other inventions that defy the way our human body has evolved. One of them is the toilet used in most western countries. Instead of sitting on a throne, we’ve evolved to squat when emptying our bowels. One of the advantages of squatting is that the angle between anus and rectum is straightened, which makes defecation easier. That’s because …
An ancient system
Our brains have evolved over millions of years and over that time, developed mechanisms that helped us survive different challenges. However, the changes we make in the world aren’t accompanied by evolutions in our brains – our technological development happens too quickly for our bodies to catch up! Here I want to mention one example of that. Until not so …
Envying gnus
As mentioned previously, the traits that animals gained through evolution can be messy. Sometimes, they work against each other. Don’t you sometimes envy a gnu? When the gnu cow has her calf, it will be standing and ready to walk within an hour! But our human babies need months until they even attempt to get up. So we applaud when …
Comparing ourselves to roses
Take a look at the tree of life below. It illustrates our connection to the other living beings on this planet from one common ancestor, that would be in the ‘Earth Birth’ circle of the image below. If you click on the image to see it full size, you’ll find us humans on the left side, at the bottom. I …
Evolution?
I find evolution a fascinating subject and it will come up quite a few times. Maybe you aren’t interested or don’t believe it happened. Especially for these readers, I’ll borrow this quotation from Jane Goodall’s “Reason for Hope”: “You may not believe in evolution and that is all right. How we humans came to be the way we are is …