The Wandering Ape

In the coming years, the planet could experience a catastrophic climate change, so abrupt that no adaptation would be possible. The rapid melting of the continental ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere is altering the system of ocean currents that regulate the global climate. This has already happened in the past, related to the disappearance of the Neanderthals about 40,000 years ago. Seen from space, Earth is nothing more than a pale blue dot, as described by the renowned scientist Carl Sagan. If we get closer, we see water everywhere. Blue and liquid in the oceans, white and solid in the polar ice caps, and white again in the vapor of the clouds. Seawater, which covers 75 percent of the planet's surface, appears placid. But up close, movement is evident, both the vapor of the atmosphere and the liquid of the oceans and continental ice sheets. It is a dance between the atmosphere and the oceans that circulates seawater around the globe, generating heat and nutrient circulation t...

The Altamira cave is a benchmark in world Paleolithic art. It was the first evidence of prehistoric art to be discovered, and having been inhabited for some 25,000 years, it covers almost all styles of cave painting, which is why it is known as the "encyclopedia of Paleolithic art". It leaves no one indifferent, not even in the past, as its discovery generated a controversy that would last for decades. A narrow crevice on the side of a small hill, 120 meters above the Saja river valley. That's what the tenant Modesto Cubillas saw in 1868 when he was following his dog during an afternoon's hunt. That crevice led to the cave that would later be called Altamira, located in Santillana del Mar, Cantabria, Spain. Sealed from the outside for who knows how long, it is believed that it was the detonations from a nearby quarry that opened the crevice through which Cubillas' dog entered. The tenant did not get to see the paintings, but he told the owner of the land, Marcelin...

If we were to travel back in time 2 million years, we would find the earliest representatives of the human genus in Africa. We could see that they had adapted to a highly mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle, walking kilometers and kilometers a day. A lifestyle that humans have maintained for 1,987,000 of the 2,000,000 years we have been on this planet. If we pay attention to these two large numbers, we will see that there is only a difference of about 13,000 years. These are the last years of human history, which have been lived in a radically different lifestyle. This radical change was brought about by the adoption of agriculture, the domestication of plants and animals, which began to appear about 13,000 years ago, independently in different parts of the world. This small modification in the way of subsistence drastically changed the history of the human genus. Mainly because of the dependence it placed on us on the foods we chose to domesticate, just a handful, compared to the high va...

The average adult spends between 50 and 70 percent of their life sitting, and few spend the rest of that time doing any physical activity. If we were to get into a time machine to observe our ancestors from about ten thousand years ago, we could see that their customs were exactly the opposite. They spent more than 70 percent of their time active.  Many of the characteristics and behaviors that made us more fit in the past now make us maladapted, because the environment in which the human genus emerged has changed so much, and so quickly that it is remarkable that we can continue to live as we do. The irony is that the greatest agent of change in our environment is ourselves. Let's get back in the time machine and go back 1.5 million years. We are in Africa, in a region of grasslands and isolated patches of trees. It is a tropical region, the climate is warm, and the sun rarely gives us a break by hiding behind a cloud. As good time travelers, we have brought sunscreen, bug spray, ...

Humans exhibit a remarkable degree of diversity. From a genetic standpoint, modern humans are a mosaic of shared traits. Each individual possesses some, but not necessarily all, of these features. This combination creates a breathtaking spectrum of human variation, as vibrant and diverse as a rainbow. Imagine sitting in a bustling square of a cosmopolitan city. As you observe the passersby, you'll be struck by the bewildering variety of facial features, hair textures and colors, and skin tones. This incredible diversity is a testament to the remarkable adaptability of our species. Evolution has sculpted our species to thrive in a constantly changing world. It has equipped us to adapt to the unique ecosystems we inhabited, both ancestral and newly encountered through migration.  This adaptability, a hallmark of Homo sapiens, proved to be a critical advantage compared to other human species that went extinct about 40,000 years ago. Neanderthals, for example, possessed only a fraction...