10 Human Zoo Characteristics

10. You are surrounded in your day-to-day life by a higher proportion of strangers than would ever have been true of our pre-agrarian hominid ancestors.

9. You run into a higher total number of people each day than our pre-agrarian hominid ancestors ever would have.

8. You have the option of spending 90 percent of your waking hours sitting at a desk—and you often exercise this option.

7. Your extended family includes people dispersed across hundreds or thousands of miles (think New York and Florida).

6. You have been exposed to more images of violence than ever would have been possible for pre-agrarian hominids.

5. You were likely educated in an age-stratified system—spending each of several years in a group comprised of about 25 others who matched you in age—being taught in a classroom environment by a few specially designated “teachers.” You likely spent a lot of time sitting behind desks in the process.

4. You are exposed regularly to politics at a global scale—often discussing or being involved in issues that potentially pertain to thousands, millions, or even billions of other humans.

3. You were raised in some variant of a nuclear family—with less assistance from aunts, uncles, older cousins, and grandparents, than would have been typical of our nomadic ancestors.

2. You spend a great deal of time interacting with “screens” and “devices”—having the evolutionarily unprecedented possibility of almost never having to be bored at all.

1. You can eat an entire diet of processed foods—and you live in a world in which processed foods are cheaper and more accessible than natural foods.

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How'd you score? From Glenn Geher, evolutionary psychologist. (Link here.)