Article: Agency and Adaptation
“That we humans should be adept at modifying our environment is neither a new nor controversial notion, even if the full scope of our impact reaching back into far antiquity was not always truly grasped. The converse notion, however—that our environments should have modified, should continue to modify, us—is far less often discussed. To study selection, adaptation, and evolutionary change in other species is one thing; observing it in our own is rather different. It makes the gap between man and beast feel troublingly slight; it is a reminder that, for all that our minds may apprehend the deeper recesses of the cosmos, our bodies are very much animal. ”
My article for the Australian magazine Quillette on continued evolution and adaptation among human populations into modern times.