CARTA Mismatch: Human Origins and Modern Disease

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Virtual
Date: May16,2025
<a href="https://carta.anthropogeny.org/events/mismatch-human-origins-and-modern-disease" class="btn btn-outline-primary btn-sm w-100" target="_blank">Visit event page</a>
The human body is a mosaic of features with an enormous range of evolutionary ages. This Symposium covers that range by discussing the impacts on health of vulnerabilities that originated from 1.5 billion to 2 million years ago. Multicellularity, the vertebrate immune system, lactation, menstruation, placentas, and other traits gained along the path of human evolution all have health effects. For example, when we became hairless (2 mya) and got abundant sweat glands (2 mya), we could run far and work hard in hot weather, but that made us vulnerable to skin cancers. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle (2 mya) expanded our microbiome, with new elements playing an immunoregulatory role, but it made women vulnerable to polycystic ovarian syndrome. It became the reference lifestyle for the mismatch diseases of civilization.

Participants & Organizers

Center for Academic Research & Training in Anthropogeny(Organizer)

Where did we come from? How did we get here? CARTA's primary goal is to "explore and explain the origins of the human phenomenon". In other words, seeking answers to these age-old questions.