Did we evolve to exercise?
Evolutionary anthropology helps bust a common myth
Hello there,
How many times have you tried to work out, only to throw that idea into the dustbin and find yourself gorging on a 10-kg pack of Balaji wafers?
Quite often, I believe, if you are a regular human being.
We get chastised and reminded about our disgusting physique every time we demonstrate such behaviors.
We’re shamed by friends, ads, influencers, hoardings, fitness gurus, and their pet Dobermans for being lazy and indolent.
But are you really that lazy a**hole who can’t get shit done in life? Are you really all that useless?
Well, you were just not feeling like exerting all that energy at the moment. Or maybe you were tired. That’s all there is to it. You wonder why that has to mean you’re a useless waste of life.
And you know what? There’s an element of truth to that line of reasoning.
Honestly, all you are is an animal with a deep, evolutionary past that makes you crave certain behaviors and resist others.
Studying those behaviors reveals something very important, and it busts a few all-pervasive myths.
To be more specific, learnings from evolutionary anthropology reveal that we DID NOT evolve to exercise.
There is nothing natural about the idea of taking out 30 minutes to purposely put yourself through a physically taxing routine every day. Heck, even the treadmill was initially used as a torture device in Victorian-era Britain.
But before you get all excited and cancel your gym plan for the year and throw your whey protein box out the window, please know that this is not a defense of sloth. Neither does it imply that you should continue to be lazy.
Having read that bitter disclaimer, let’s understand what’s really going on here.
When we analyze the physical health of hunter-gatherers, they appear to be extremely lean and fit. Those people barely die of the maladies that typically kill most of us (like diabetes, heart attack, and cancer) and seem much more geared to perform arduous, physical work.
Watching them engage in arduous physical activities like running and other physical rituals, we believe that humans have evolved to exercise and that modern humans have unfortunately lost the plot and become impotent sloths.
The truth is that the idea of exercise- of engaging in physical activity for the purpose of achieving health benefits- never really evolved in humans (and, hence, in HGs).
The reason they’re great runners and so fit is that their entire life revolves around doing things that require them to be physically active.
Hunting, foraging, digging, fighting, carrying children- you can imagine how spending 8 hours a day on these every single day would endow any human with a certain level of physical fitness.
If you go to an HG tribe, put on your running shoes, and go for a jog, they’d shoot you a quizzical look. “Why the hell would you make yourself run when there’s no need to” they would wonder!
From their perspective, the question makes perfect sense. Really, why would you put yourself through pointless physical labor? The only reason an HG would run is if he’s chasing a goat, or running away from a leopard that’s feeling snacky.
But many tribes, like the Tarahumara of Mexico, have interesting rituals which are quite similar to marathons. They’re famous for running 80 miles continuously, chasing something akin to a golf ball which they keep kicking as they run the entire distance. As they do this, they’re cheered by their community members.
Such rituals have led many observers to believe that this is nothing but a demonstration of how we are born to exercise- or else these practices would never have emerged.
But the truth, as anthropologists have discovered, is that these rituals have evolved for communal or spiritual reasons- helping them bond with the tribe members and connect with the spirits. (You can see how the runners’ high conveniently helps with the latter point)
In fact, this particular ritual also has immense adaptive value because it simulates the chase that a hunter has to go through while tracking their prey over a tremendously long distance. Tracking the ball while chasing it for so many miles is an ingenious way to develop hunting skills essential for survival. This might offer a much more convincing reason for the origin of such rituals.
These rituals, therefore, never evolved as forms of exercise…because the HGs never needed anything like that. The very structure of life offered enough exercise so there was no need for a separate ritual to achieve the end goal of physical wellbeing.
This brings us to this piece's “Oh damn!” moment. If you have followed the arguments so far, you’d already have figured out that exercising is a very recent, modern invention.
Humans never really needed anything like it, but only when we started using machines to automate more and more of our work did we start leading inactive, sedentary, and unhealthy lives- and thus required something like a workout to ensure we’d remain healthy.
You see, our bodies have just not evolved to function normally as we sit all day in luxurious chairs with backrests (which is a very recent phenomenon). We need to be physically active to lead healthy lives. That explains the emergence of the idea of workouts.
Back in the day, only a handful of kings and queens could afford to avoid physical exercise. Almost every person had to exert themselves to get by in life.
But in a dramatic reversal, we now live in an age where most of us, thanks to the rise and rise of machines & technology, can get by with as little physical work as possible. We now possess luxuries that no king of the past could match, but that very luxury also sows the seeds of our future medical problems.
So now you know why dragging yourself down for a jog is such a herculean task. It’s just not something we evolved to do. But that’s only part of the equation. We also have deep incentives to be lazy- which compounds the problem of getting yourself to work out.
Why do you think that happens? You’ll find out in a follow-up piece very soon.
Till then, don’t miss your workouts, no matter how unnatural they may feel!
Thanks for reading today’s piece. If you wish to read the second part to satisfy your curious thirst, get onto the email list already.