The Evolutionary Discordance Working Hypothesis: A Useful Heuristic for Tracking Down Causes of Modern Disturbances of Human Physical, Mental, and Social Health

“…our genome evolved to adapt to conditions that no longer exist.” (Eaton and Konner, 2010)

In retrospect, it turns out that most of what I’ve posted in Grundvilk over the last three years can be reasonably classified as preliminary, additional reports on the predictive power of the evolutionary discordance hypothesis, a scientific model first promulgated in 1985 by Eaton and Konner. 

The two originators of the hypothesis, physicians with anthropological and archeological training, proposed that the “illnesses of civilization” (e.g., atherosclerosis, coronary heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, dental caries, COPD, and some lung and colon cancers) were evoked by the conservatively stubborn inflexibility of a genome painstakingly created and stored in genus Homo over the 2,800,000 or so years of the Pleistocene.  The 10,000 or so measly years passing since the Agricultural Revolution took place, and the 250 or so even more paltry years that have elapsed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, have not, according to the model, been nearly long enough to permit H. sapiens to arrive close to a new genetic equilibrium with its new nutritional environment.  The consequent mismatch between the basic metabolism and dietary requirements evolved within the genus Homo to meet the rigors of the Pleistocene, and the strikingly different nourishment provided by foodstuffs generally consumed nowadays, have been – it is believed by Eaton and Konner – powerful enough to account for the development, growth, and continuing intensification of the “illnesses of civilization”.

Note that much support for this early premise of the evolutionary discordance hypothesis has been obtained in repeated and quite consistent demonstrations of rapid reversals of many of the civilization-associated illnesses by simple adoption of eating habits more consistent with those of pre-agricultural human life (Eaton and Konner, 1985, 2010.) It appears that Eaton and Konner were on to something critically important in 1985.

Konner and Eaton later augmented their original model slightly to give  attention to the contrast in amounts of daily physical activity carried out by the Pleistocene and Holocene general human phenotypes.¹ Their Tables below qualitatively and quantitatively summarize (2022) the basic life style differences they have determined to exist between Pleistocene man (and modern hunter-gatherers) on one hand -- and most of post-Pleistocene humanity on the other.

Circling back to my recent recognition that the last three years of reading and Grundvilk writing have unconsciously been following the Eaton-Konner evolutionary discordance hypothesis, and incidentally providing additional support for that hypothesis, I now think of this scientific model as an almost universally-applicable, heuristic ‘secret decoder ring’ when it comes to ferreting out the origins and major causes of most modern human problems.

Source.  Captain Midnight’s secret squadron decoder ring.  A very apt symbol of the Eaton-Konner evolutionary discordance working hypothesis.

More to follow.

1. This physical activity factor, now largely missing from everyday civilized life, is discussed here and here in Grundvilk.