Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live

We evolved to eat berries rather than bagels, to live in caves rather than cities, to run barefoot rather than play rugby—or did we? As Marlene Zuk reveals, theories about how our ancestors lived—and why we should emulate them—are often based on pseudoscience and speculation rather than actual research. Taking us to the cutting edge of biology, Zuk explains that evolution can work much faster than was previously realized, meaning that we are not biologically the same as our caveman ancestors. She shows how our fetishized visions of an ideal evolutionary past in which we ate, lived, and reproduced as we were “meant to” can lead us astray and distract us from more interesting considerations of how we differ from our ancestors. Along the way, she debunks the caveman diet, discusses whether we're really designed to run barefoot, and considers modern-day courtship and child-rearing practices in the context of how our ancestors lived.