New Book - Pandora's Seed

Brief writeup at NewScientist:

Quote :

Farmed to Death: The Cost of Civilization.

In Pandora's Seed, Spencer Wells traces the chain of events that began with the advent of settled communities and the rise of agriculture 10 to 12,000 years ago and results in the mismatches between our biology and the conditions of life in today's post-agricultural world. Wells, an anthropologist and geneticist well known for his genetic studies of the modern human dispersal from Africa, notes that many of the genes that have been selected for over the past 10,000 years of human evolution have been those involved in metabolising food - highlighting the profound change that sedentary food production has had on our species.

Daily Show interview with the author:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Spencer Wells
www.thedailyshow.com
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Stewart seems to have a strange understanding of evolution and no concept of carrying capacity. A population explosion such as ours can only be measured as a "success" the same way a brain tumor can in brain. Looks like an interesting read.