Post

John Hawks
@johnhawks.net

This is really the frontier of anthropology and genetics in my opinion. Culture is to humans as water is to fish; essential, in contact with our every surface, so that it becomes unnoticed until it suddenly changes. www.johnhawks.net/p/how-human-...

13 reposts37 likes

a bezoar
@a-bezoar.bsky.social

Have there been any studies of genetic adaptions to living in smoke filled environments? Not all cultures experienced cold enough that they needed to fill enclosed homes with smoke to stay warm.

John Hawks
@johnhawks.net

It's a fascinating topic that has attracted a good amount of attention both from human biologists who study the exposure to environmental smoke in developing countries and also evolutionary biologists. Here is a paper with some background: doi.org/10.1086/706768

doi.orgThe Exposome in Human Evolution: From Dust to Diesel | The Quarterly Review of Biology: Vol 94, No 4AbstractGlobal exposures to air pollution and cigarette smoke are novel in human evolutionary history and are associated with at least 12 million premature deaths per year. We investigate the history ...
a bezoar
@a-bezoar.bsky.social

free from PMC: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... it discusses all sorts of things with some coverage of genes that detoxify smoke products. I was hoping for something really pithy such as "the insides of noses of arctic dwellers are much hairier than those of the tropics" - pollution filters.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govTHE EXPOSOME IN HUMAN EVOLUTION: FROM DUST TO DIESELGlobal exposures to air pollution and cigarette smoke are novel in human evolutionary history and are associated with about 16 million premature deaths per year. We investigate the history of the huma...