Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes

by Nathan H. Lents

Human anatomy is beautiful, no doubt about it. We are very well adapted to our environment, but we are not perfectly adapted. Little imperfections exist. It’s possible that, if our ancestors had lived the hunter-gatherer life for a longer time before moving into the modern era of vaccines and surgery, evolution would have continued to perfect human anatomy. However, that environment, like all environments, was so dynamic that evolution would simply have substituted our current imperfections for others. Evolution is a continual process—never quite complete. Evolution and adaptation are more like running on a treadmill than running on a track: we must keep adapting in order to avoid extinction, but it can feel like we never really get anywhere.