Humans in the industrialized world have undergone a form of evolution that is unique not only to humankind, but unique among the 7,000 or so generations of humans who have ever inhabited the earth, says Robert W. Fogel, Chicago professor and Nobel laureate.
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“Over the past 300 years, and particularly during the 20th century Human biology has changed,” Fogel says. People in the industrialized world are taller, heavier and stronger. They're more resistant to disease and more likely to overcome it when they do get sick. They live longer, their lives less fraught with chronic ailments. Along with colleague Dora Costa, Fogel has dubbed this process of improvement 'technophysio evolution'.
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Technophysio evolution is the result of a synergism between technological and physiological improvements that has produced a form of human evolution that is biological but not genetic, rapid, culturally transmitted, and not necessarily stable. This process is still ongoing in both rich and developing countries. Unlike the genetic theory of evolution through natural selection, which applies to the whole history of life on earth, technophysio evolution applies only to the last 300 years of human history, and particularly to the last century.
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Human height has increased dramatically. In industrialized countries, where food is abundant, we've grown taller by 4 inches (ten centimeters). Not only have we expanded upward though, we've expanded outward as well, and every country on Earth has seen its obesity rates rise. In total, 2.2 billion people world wide are classified as overweight or obese, and adults are three times more likely to be obese than they were back in 1975.
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To compare aging 100 years ago versus today, Fogel and his colleagues analyzed old Civil War records in National Archives. The results show people living dramatically longer than they did a century ago. In 1900, only 13% of 65 year old folks would live to be 85. Today, nearly half will live that long. Moreover, chronic ailments like heart disease, lung disease and arthritis occur 10 to 25 years later in individuals today.
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In this same time frame domestic species that we raise for food, like pigs and cows, for instance, were growing faster and larger than at any time in history. Since the 1960s, turkeys have more than doubled in size, and since the 1950s, broiler chickens have quadrupled.
There is a consequence to this. As we've deliberately grown larger animals for food, our appetites have grown as well. In 1960, the average American ate 12.7 kilograms of chicken a year, today that number has jumped to 40.8 kilograms, more than three times as much. The average consumption of both red meat and poultry in 1960 was 75.3 kilograms, in 2017 is was projected at 98.8.
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The total US food supply provides 500 more calories per day per person than it did in the 1970s, an increase of 24%. In fast-food restaurants, portions are two to five times larger today than in the 1980s.
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Longer life. Less disease. Less disability. The trends have continued for more than a century as humans have become bigger, stronger and healthier. But can they – will they- keep going? Or is there some counter trend- obesity or an overuse of medications perhaps that will turn the statistics around?
References
- Gina Kolata, “Living large and healthy, but how long can it go on,” The New York Times, July 30, 2006
- The human equation,” The University of Chicago Magazine, 99 (5), May-June 2007
- Robert W. Fogel, “Biotechnology and the burden of age-related diseases,” presented at Washington University Department of Economics, St. Louis, MO, November 21, 2002
- Ziya Tong, The Reality Bubble, Penguin Random House, 2019)
- "Professor Robert W. Fogel: A new kind of historian,” Alliance for Aging Research, Washington, DC
- Jess Blumberg et al. “Livin large,” Smithsonian, 38 (9), 128, September 2007
