Daniel Lieberman

"This highly engaging landmark work, a natural history of exercise--by the author of the best seller The Story of the Human Body--seeks to answer a fundamental question: were you born to run or rest The first three parts of Exercised roughly follow the evolutionary story of human physical activity and inactivity, even as each chapter shatters a particular myth about exercise. Because we cannot understand physical activity without understanding its absence, Part One begins with physical inactivity. What are our bodies doing when we take it easy, including when we sit or sleep? Part Two explores physical activities that require speed, strength, and power, such as sprinting, lifting, and fighting. Part Three surveys physical activities that involve endurance, such as walking, running, or dancing, as well as their effect on aging. Part Four considers how anthropological and evolutionary approaches can help us exercise better in the modern world. How can we more effectively manage to exercise, and in what ways? To what extent, how, and why do different types and durations of exercise help prevent or treat the major diseases that are likely to make us sick and kill us?"--

Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding

Exercised

In this landmark book of popular science, Daniel E. Lieberman—chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a leader in the field—gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years, even as it shows how the increasing disparity between the jumble of adaptations in our Stone Age bodies and advancements in the modern world is occasioning this paradox: greater longevity but increased chronic disease. The Story of the Human Body brilliantly illuminates as never before the major transformations that contributed key adaptations to the body: the rise of bipedalism; the shift to a non-fruit-based diet; the advent of hunting and gathering, leading to our superlative endurance athleticism; the development of a very large brain; and the incipience of cultural proficiencies. Lieberman also elucidates how cultural evolution differs from biological evolution, and how our bodies were further transformed during the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. While these ongoing changes have brought about many benefits, they have also created conditions to which our bodies are not entirely adapted, Lieberman argues, resulting in the growing incidence of obesity and new but avoidable diseases, such as type 2 diabetes. Lieberman proposes that many of these chronic illnesses persist and in some cases are intensifying because of “dysevolution,” a pernicious dynamic whereby only the symptoms rather than the causes of these maladies are treated. And finally—provocatively—he advocates the use of evolutionary information to help nudge, push, and sometimes even compel us to create a more salubrious environment. (With charts and line drawings throughout.)

Evolution, Health, and Disease

The Story of the Human Body

The Science of Physical Activity, Rest and Health

If exercise is healthy (so good for you!), why do many people dislike or avoid it? These engaging stories and explanations will revolutionize the way you think about exercising—not to mention sitting, sleeping, sprinting, weight lifting, playing, fighting, walking, jogging, and even dancing. “Strikes a perfect balance of scholarship, wit, and enthusiasm.” —Bill Bryson, New York Times best-selling author of The Body • If we are born to walk and run, why do most of us take it easy whenever possible? • Does running ruin your knees? • Should we do weights, cardio, or high-intensity training? • Is sitting really the new smoking? • Can you lose weight by walking? • And how do we make sense of the conflicting, anxiety-inducing information about rest, physical activity, and exercise with which we are bombarded? In this myth-busting book, Daniel Lieberman, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a pioneering researcher on the evolution of human physical activity, tells the story of how we never evolved to exercise—to do voluntary physical activity for the sake of health. Using his own research and experiences throughout the world, Lieberman recounts without jargon how and why humans evolved to walk, run, dig, and do other necessary and rewarding physical activities while avoiding needless exertion. Exercised is entertaining and enlightening but also constructive. As our increasingly sedentary lifestyles have contributed to skyrocketing rates of obesity and diseases such as diabetes, Lieberman audaciously argues that to become more active we need to do more than medicalize and commodify exercise. Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology and anthropology, Lieberman suggests how we can make exercise more enjoyable, rather than shaming and blaming people for avoiding it. He also tackles the question of whether you can exercise too much, even as he explains why exercise can reduce our vulnerability to the diseases mostly likely to make us sick and kill us.

Dan Lieberman has written an innovative, exhaustively researched and carefully argued book dealing with the evolution of the human head. In it he addresses three interrelated questions. First, why does the human head look the way it does? Second, why did these transformations occur? And third, how is something as complex and vital as the head so variable and evolvable? This book addresses these questions in three sections. The first set of chapters review how human and ape heads grow, both in terms of individual parts (organs and regions) and as an integrated whole. The second section reviews how the head performs its major functions: housing the brain, chewing, swallowing, breathing, vocalizing, thermoregulating, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and balancing during locomotion. The final set of chapters review the fossil evidence for major transformations of the head during human evolution from the divergence of the human and ape lineages through the origins of Homo sapiens. These chapters use developmental and functional insights from the first two sections to speculate on the developmental and selective bases for these transformations.

The Evolution of the Human Head

Richard J. Smith

Jay Kelley

This volume reviews major topics in human, primate, and mammalian evolution with an emphasis on systematic paleoenvironmental and behavioral questions, and the epistemological problems of interpreting the past with fossil data.

Essays on Human, Primate, and Mammal Evolution in Honor of David Pilbeam

Interpreting the Past

Matthias Jonas

Zbigniew Nahorski

Sten Nilsson

Uncertainty analysis is a key component of national greenhouse gases inventory analyses. The issues that are raised by the authors in this volume, and the role that uncertainty analysis plays in many of their arguments and/or proposals, highlight the importance of such efforts. Coverage includes: bottom-up versus top-down emission inventory approaches, compliance and verification issues, and the role of uncertainty in emissions trading schemes.

Uncertainty in Greenhouse Gas Inventories - Verification, Compliance, and Trading

Accounting for Climate Change

A natural history of exercise seeking to answer a fundamental question: were you born to run or rest? Follows the evolutionary story of human physical activity and inactivity and considers how anthropological and evolutionary approaches can help us exercise better in the modern world

Why We Never Evolved to Exercise and What to Do about It

The Truth about Exercise

>> „Lidskému tělu nikdo nerozumí tak jako Daniel Lieberman. A nikdo o něm neumí tak výřečně vyprávět. Příběh, který se skrývá uvnitř, doslova pod naší kůží, je fascinující, poučný a trochu i děsivý.“ << – Christopher McDougall, autor knihy Zrozeni k běhu (Born to Run) Daniel E. Lieberman, vedoucí katedry lidské evoluční biologie na Harvardově univerzitě a přední osobnost oboru, v této zásadní knize srozumitelně a poutavě popisuje vývoj, kterým lidské tělo za miliony let prošlo. Přitom vysvětluje, jak narůstající nesoulad mezi směsicí adaptací našich těl z doby kamenné a pokrokem moderního světa vede k paradoxu – souběžnému nárůstu dlouhověkosti a chronické nemocnosti. Příběh lidského těla brilantně osvětluje transformace, které přispěly ke klíčovým adaptacím těla: osvojení chůze po dvou; přechod na jinou než ovocnou stravu; opatřování potravy lovem a sběrem, díky kterému máme tak mimořádné předpoklady pro vytrvalostní disciplíny; vývoj velmi velkého mozku; vzestup kulturních dovedností. Lieberman dále objasňuje, jak se kulturní evoluce liší od biologické evoluce a jakou další proměnou prošla naše těla v průběhu zemědělské a průmyslové revoluce. Lieberman se domnívá, že mnohé z chronických nemocí přetrvávají a v některých případech i zesilují v důsledku „dysevoluce“, zhoubné dynamiky, kdy se léčí jen příznaky těchto chorob, a ne jejich příčiny. Navrhuje, abychom se nechali poznatky o evoluci postrkávat, tlačit a třeba i donutit k vytvoření zdravějšího prostředí. # V knize se také dozvíte: - jak tlak evoluce stvořil tělo dnešního člověka – a že jeho evoluce zdaleka neskončila - co jsou to onemocnění z nesouladu s evolucí a jak jim předcházet - jaké jsou dobré i špatné důsledky života s paleolitickým tělem v moderním světě plném pohodlí - které prvky v rámci konceptu populární paleo a raw stravy dávají smysl a které ne - proč jsou chůze a běh naboso tak zásadně jiné proti chůzi a běhu v obuvi a jak nám může - chození naboso pomoci - proč nám mnohé inovace všedního života včetně výtahů a elektrických otvíráčů konzerv tak škodí - jak nám evoluční logika může pomoci předcházet chronickým onemocněním těla i psychiky a starat se o naše zdraví # O autorovi DANIEL E. LIEBERMAN je profesor lidské evoluční biologie a profesor biologických věd Edwina M. Lernera II na Harvardu. Napsal více než stovku článků, z nichž mnohé vyšly v odborných časopisech Nature a Science. Je obzvlášť proslulý svým výzkumem na téma evoluce lidské hlavy a evoluce běhání, zejména běhání naboso (což mu vyneslo přezdívku Bosý profesor). Jeho výzkumům a objevům se dostalo značné pozornosti v novinách, časopisech, knihách, zpravodajských a dokumentárních pořadech # Více o knize http://www.melvil.cz/kniha-pribeh-lidskeho-tela Sdílejte s hashtagem #pribehlidskehotela

Evoluce, zdraví, onemocnění

Příběh lidského těla

Évolution, dysévolution et nouvelles maladies Dans cet ouvrage qui fera date dans la vulgarisation scientifique, Daniel E. Lieberman nous propose un compte rendu passionnant de la manière dont le corps humain a évolué au fil de millions d’années, tout en aboutissant à ce paradoxe : une augmentation de la longévité, mais une progression des maladies chroniques. L'Histoire du corps humain éclaire d’une lumière inédite les transformations majeures qui ont impulsé des adaptations capitales : le passage à la bipédie, l’abandon d’une alimentation exclusivement à base de fruits, l’avènement de la chasse-cueillette, qui a conduit à notre exceptionnelle endurance physique, le développement d’un très volumineux cerveau et l’essor des aptitudes culturelles. Lieberman nous explique aussi en quoi l’évolution culturelle diffère de l’évolution biologique et comment notre corps a continué de se transformer pendant les révolutions agricole et industrielle. Si ces changements continuels ont certes apporté beaucoup d’avantages, ils ont aussi créé des conditions auxquelles notre corps n’est pas complètement adapté, ce qui, d’après Lieberman, explique l’incidence croissante de l’obésité et de maladies nouvelles mais évitables, comme le diabète type 2. Lieberman avance que beaucoup de ces maladies chroniques persistent et dans certains cas s’intensifient à cause de la dysévolution, une dynamique pernicieuse dans laquelle on ne traite que les symptômes, et non les causes de ces maladies. Enfin, il préconise audacieusement le recours à une pédagogie évolutionniste pour contribuer à nous inciter, à nous pousser voire à nous forcer à créer un environnement plus salubre. Traduit de l’anglais par Bernard Sigaud

Daniel Lieberman

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