In many ways it seems that culture has enabled us to transcend most of the limitations our biology imposes on us. But that biology was shaped during millions of years of evolution in environments very different from those in which most of us live today. There is, to a great extent, a lack of fit or a “mismatch” between our biology and our twenty-first-century cultural environments. Our expectations that scientists can easily and quickly discover a “magic bullet” to enable us to resist any disease that arises have been painfully dashed as death tolls from AIDS reach catastrophic levels in many parts of the world. Obesity and related disorders are beginning to have a greater impact on human lives than undernutrition and infectious diseases. Socioeconomic and political concerns also have powerful effects on our species today. Whether you die of starvation or succumb to disorders associated with overconsumption depends a great deal on where you live, what your socioeconomic status is, and how much power and control you have over your life—factors not related to biology. These factors also affect whether you’ll be killed in a war or spend most of your life in a safe, comfortable community. Your chances of being exposed to one of the “new” (or newly virulent) pathogens—such as HIV, the coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome [SARS], or tuberculosis—have a lot to do with your lifestyle and other cultural factors. But your chances of dying of the disease or failing to reproduce because of it still have a lot to do with your biology. The 4.3 million children dying annually from respiratory infections are primarily those in the developing world, with limited access to adequate medical care—clearly a cultural factor. But in those same areas, lacking that same medical care, are millions of other children who aren’t getting the infections or aren’t dying from them. Presumably among the factors affecting this difference is resistance afforded by genes. It is clear that human gene frequencies are still changing from one generation to the next in response to selective agents such as disease; thus our species is still evolving.
We can’t predict whether we will become a different species or become extinct as a species (remember that this has been the fate of almost every species that has ever existed). Will our brains get larger, or will our hands evolve solely to push buttons? Or will we change genetically so that we no longer have to eat food? This is the stuff of science fiction, not anthropology. But as long as new pathogens appear or new environments are introduced by technology, there’s little doubt that just like every other species on earth, the human species will either continue to evolve or become extinct. Has our evolutionary history prepared us for the twenty-first century? We have discussed a number of the disconnections between our evolved biologies and contemporary lives, but we have also emphasized that one of the most significant legacies from our evolutionary history is our biological and behavioral flexibility, provided in part by the all-important phenomenon of culture. Culture has enabled us to transcend many limits imposed by our biology. Today, people who never would have been able to do so in the past are surviving and having children. This in itself means that we are adapting and evolving. How many of you would be reading this text if you had been born under the health and economic conditions prevalent 500 years ago?