Paleofantasy – Marlene Zuk ***

We all enjoy seeing smug people who tell us how to live being taken down a peg, and in Paleofantasy, subtitled ‘what evolution really tells us about sex, diet and how we live’, Marlene Zuk lays into those who promote a ‘paleo diet’ or ‘caveman lifestyle.’ As the book entertainingly makes clear, these concepts are based on a total misunderstanding.

The idea behind the paleofantasy, particularly popular, it seems, among the New York chatterati, is that we ought to try to live more like our Palaeolithic forebears, because this was the lifestyle and diet we evolved for, where now we live in a very ‘unnatural’ environment. Zuk tears this idea to shreds, showing how evolution doesn’t evolve ‘for’ anything, how we weren’t particularly well matched to our Palaeolithic environment anyway, how we’ve evolved since and how the ideas of what, for instance, people of that period ate are wrong both because, for instance, they did seem to eat grains, and also because they weren’t a single population in a single environment, but actually had many, widely differing lifestyles.

This much is brilliant, but the reason I can only give the book three stars is that it really does feel like this part of the content is more a long article than a book, so it then had to be stretched. This produces a couple of problems. One is that Zuk keeps going back to what the people on ‘Caveman’ forums and the likes say, to compare with the science, and after the initial fun, we don’t care. It’s a bit like writing a book on climate change and using the non-science that Nigel Lawson puts forward all the way through as a straw man, rather than briefly mentioning and dismissing it at the start. It gives the paleofantasists who are, after all, a tiny minority, particularly outside the US, more weight than they deserve.

The other problem is that to fill it out there is an awful lot about the specifics of human evolution (or not) and what we can learn from genetics about our behaviour and illnesses and so on that somehow doesn’t quite work. Unlike the early, fun part of the book, it becomes a less interesting read. Perhaps it’s just me, but I couldn’t get engaged with the material.

Don’t get me wrong, there is lots of interesting science in there, from the genetics of different forms of earwax (though this mostly seems to be in to make a good chapter title, as when it comes down to it, the story is rather uninspiring) to the origins and nature of the structure of the human family, but the way it is presented just didn’t get me excited. It’s a book that’s well worth reading, nonetheless.

Paperback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Meteorite Hunters - Joshua Howgego *****

This is an extremely engaging read on a subject that everyone is aware of, but few of us know much detail about. Usually, if I'm honest, geology tends to be one of the least entertaining scientific subjects but here (I suppose, given that geo- refers to the Earth it ought to be astrology... but that might be a touch misleading). Here, though, there is plenty of opportunity to capture our interest. The first part of the book takes us both to see meteorites and to hear stories of meteorite hunters, whose exploits vary from erudite science trips to something more like an Indiana Jones outing. Joshua Howgego takes us back to the earliest observations and discoveries of meteorites and the initial doubt that they could have extraterrestrial sources, through to explorations of deserts and the Antarctic - both locations where it tends to be easier to find them. I, certainly, had no idea about the use of camera networks to track incoming meteors, which not only try to estimate where they wi...

Against the Odds - John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin ****

The number of women working in STEM subjects has expanded dramatically, but as John and Mary Gribbin make clear, in the history of science this is a very recent occurrence. Here, they bring us the stories of 12 women, from Eunice Newton Foote, born in 1819, to Vera Rubin, born in 1928 - effectively covering nearly 200 years in that Rubin died as recently as 2016. There are some names that will already be familiar from popular science histories (and deservedly so). You will find, for instance, Dorothy Hodgkin and Rosalind Franklin represented. But there are plenty like Foote that few will have come across, including Inge Lehmann, Chien-Sung Wu and Lucy Slater. While arguably Foote is there primarily to demonstrate the difficulties she faced (her discovery of an aspect of greenhouse gas behaviour was independently bettered within weeks), the rest have all made significant discoveries or developments against the odds and often missed out the recognition the deserved. The most prominent ob...

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...

Search This Blog