Hear, hear …

… Not Merely the Finest TV Documentary Series Ever Made - Issue 7: Waste - Nautilus. (Hat tip, dave Lull.)

If you want to know how bison, chimpanzees, or birds lived 10,000 years ago you need only study how they live now (in the wild). But for humans, you would learn nothing by that method. Ten thousand years ago we lived in very different surroundings, made a living in different ways, had quite different economic and family relationships, and pursued different objectives. In all these respects, we were worse off—in some of them brutally, almost unimaginably worse2—than we are now. In another thousand years, or even a hundred, we may have changed as much again. If we then look back to try to understand the changes, we shall not find the explanation written in our genes.