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Evolution

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Publié par	Pinter & Martin
Date de parution	01 janvier 0001
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781780660981
Langue	English

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CHILDBIRTH AND THE EVOLUTION OF HOMO SAPIENS
MICHEL ODENT
CHILDBIRTH AND THE EVOLUTION OF HOMO SAPIENS
Childbirth and the Evolution of Homo sapiens
First published as Childbirth and the Future of Homo sapiens in Great Britain by Pinter & Martin Ltd 2013
This second edition published in Great Britain by Pinter & Martin Ltd 2014
2014 Michel Odent
Michel Odent has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-78066-210-7 (paperback)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade and otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher s prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Set in Minion
Pinter & Martin Ltd 6 Effra Parade London SW2 1PS
www.pinterandmartin.com
CONTENTS
1 Ecce Homo
2 Evolution revisited
3 The future of the human oxytocin system
An underused physiological system
The capacity to give birth
The capacity to breastfeed
Genital sexuality
Capacity for empathy
Should we learn from bulldogs?
4 A landmark in the evolution of brain size?
Inextensible limits
Pulverized limits
5 ‘Microbes Maketh Man’
6 Should we criminalize planned vaginal birth?
Two important steps
Measuring the safety of caesareans
7 That is the question
Answer
Multiple functions of the Primal Health Research Database
The concept of critical period
8 Active management of human evolution
The reasons for a new question
Active management needs objectives
9 Physiology v cultural conditioning
Understanding the laws of Nature
Deep-rooted cultural conditioning
Reinforced cultural conditioning
10 Reasonable optimism
Before a spectacular scientific discovery
The discovery
Immediate implications of the discovery
11 Avenues for research
A basic simple physiological concept
The concept of neocortical inhibition
12 Repressed common sense
If…
Analysing a concrete scenario
The science-common sense collusion
13 The story is not finished
14 Labour pain revisited
A protective physiological system
Meanwhile
15 No paradigm shift without language shift
Towards a new vocabulary
Avoidable terms
‘Gestational diabetes’ as a typical example
Other examples
16 Love as an evolutionary handicap
The concept of critical period in the light of anthropology
Giving birth before and after the Neolithic revolution
‘Maternal urges’ neutralized
17 Reasonable pessimism
What is in the balance?
Towards the planet of Aspies?
The future of depression
The sorcerer’s apprentice
18 The future of enthusiasm
19 Homo sapiens and the virosphere
Smashing barriers
The viral threat
20 Cultural blindness
Cul-de-sac epidemiology
Learning from biographers
The vital function of madness

Addendum – How to treat our cultural blindness

References
Index
CHAPTER ONE Ecce Homo
Our first objective is to raise a question: should we expect transformations of our species in relation to the way babies are born?
All aspects of human lifestyle have been deeply modified in recent decades. This indisputable fact has inspired both comments about recent detectable transformations of Homo sapiens, as well as questions about the future of our species. It is noticeable that neither in academic circles nor among the media is the period surrounding birth usually taken into consideration, although it is undoubtedly a phase of human life that has been radically turned upside-down. Several scientific disciplines now claim that it is a critical period in the formation of individuals.
Before considering the future, we ll take as a point of departure a presentation of Homo sapiens. How can we summarize our understanding of human nature?
The capacity to think has traditionally been considered the main characteristic of our species. It is significant that the English-Dutch word man (German: mann , mensch ; Danish: mand ) probably comes from a Sanskrit term that means thinking . According to Blaise Pascal, man is un roseau pensant (a thinking reed). In the current scientific context, a common presentation of Homo sapiens is not radically different from the traditional one, although it is expressed in different language. Today we can present ourselves as members of the chimpanzee family with a gigantic brain of enormous complexity. We have developed to an extreme degree the part of the brain called the neocortex. This is how we interpret our mental capability, which includes the capacity for abstract reasoning, language, introspection, problem-solving and use of tools.
It is the objective of a great variety of scientific disciplines to improve our understanding of human nature. The extreme degree of specialization of modern scientists is becoming an obstacle to presenting a synthetic overview of the particularities of Homo sapiens. It makes us think of the famous story of a group of blind men who were asked to determine what an elephant looked like by feeling different parts of its body. The blind man who felt a leg said the elephant is like a pillar; the one who felt the tail said the elephant is like a rope; the one who felt the trunk said the elephant is like the branch of a tree; the one who felt the ear said the elephant is like a hand-held fan; the one who felt the belly said the elephant is like a wall; and the one who felt the tusk said the elephant is like a solid pipe. This parable is more significant than ever, at a time when there is an urgent need for communication and respect for different perspectives.
Bacteriology - more precisely molecular microbiology - is a typical example of a discipline advancing at such a high speed that Homo sapiens can now be visualized in the framework of the microbiome revolution . A human being may be considered an ecosystem with a constant interaction between the hundreds of trillions of micro-organisms that colonise the body (the microbiome ) and the trillions of cells that are the products of our genes. In other words, it appears today that our health and our behaviour are highly influenced by our gut flora and our skin flora. The point is that each person has a relatively different microbiome. Our microbiome - as a part of our personality - is to a certain extent established at birth, according to the first microbes that colonize the newborn s body. Furthermore, one can claim today that it is involved in the process by which species evolve.
Advances in our understanding of the specific nutritional needs of the brain led to the concept of brain selective nutrients . This concept has important implications regarding a species characterized by an exceptionally high degree of encephalization. Iodine is a typical brain selective nutrient, since it is necessary for the production of thyroid hormones that are involved in brain energy metabolism. Iodine deficiency is associated with impaired brain development and function. Yet there is no mechanism to decrease iodine excretion in the urine and therefore to store it. 1 This physiological perspective suggests that Homo sapiens is adapted to an environment continuously providing a sufficient amount of iodine. In practice this implies access to the seafood chain. It is significant that iodine deficiency is the most common nutritional deficiency, affecting nearly two billion people globally, 2 despite the fact that iodine is the only nutrient for which many governments impose supplementation by law.
While iodine is considered the primary brain selective mineral, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is considered the brain selective fatty acid. 3 The molecule of DHA is as long as possible (twenty-two carbons) and as unsaturated as possible (six double bonds). It belongs to the omega-3 family. This fatty acid is preformed and abundant only in the seafood chain. Interestingly, humans have a low capacity to make DHA. The association of a large brain with a weak enzymatic system of desaturation-elongation suggests that human beings need to have access to the seafood chain in order to develop their full potential.
From a nutritional perspective, Homo sapiens appears to be an ape adapted to the coast. Today this idea should lead us to attach a renewed importance to what has been called in the past the aquatic ape hypothesis of the origin of man .
Apart from brain size there are dozens of other features which make us different from our very close relative, the common chimpanzee: nakedness, a layer of fat attached to the skin, the general shape of our body (with the hind limbs forming an extension of the trunk), a comparatively low basal body temperature, the development of a prominent nose, large empty sinuses on each side of the nasal cavities, a low larynx, a reduced number of red blood cells, anatomical particularities of the hands and feet, and a layer of vernix caseosa covering the skin of the newborn baby being among the main differences. All these features are shared with mammals adapted to the sea and are suggestive of adaptation to a coastal environment.
This new vision of Homo sapiens was first proposed independently by Max Westenhofer in Berlin (1942) and by Alister Hardy in Oxford (1960), but it is the British science writer Elaine Morgan who has championed the cause in her books 4 , 5 , 6 and in the seminars she has organized in order to constantly strengthen the theory. This new theoretical framework has been recently updated through a collective academic book 7 and a London conference on human evolution that I participated in. 8
After this brief twenty-first century overview of our understanding of human nature, we are in a position to phrase appropriate questions