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Podcast: New Books in Food
Episode: Marlene Zuk, “Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live” (Norton, 2013)
Description: The Hebrews called it “Eden.” The Greeks and Romans called it the “Golden Age.” The philosophes–or Rousseau at least–called it the “State of Nature.” Marx and Engels called it “Primitive Communism.” The underlying notion, however, is the same: there was a time, long ago, when things were much better than they are today because we were then “in tune” with God, nature, or whatever. Thereafter we “fell,” usually due to our own stupidity, and landed in our present corrupted state.
Today we are told by some that the paleolithic period (roughly 3 million to 10,000 years ago) was, similarly, a time in wh...