That threw the system out of whack by 90 degrees, and the spine was forced to become a column. When our ancestors walked on all fours, their spines arched, like a bow, to withstand the weight of the organs suspended below. It’s a wonder we can even walk, says Bruce Latimer, director of the Center for Human Origins at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland. With that in mind, I surveyed anatomists and biologists to compile a punch list for the human body, just as you’d do before buying a house. “Evolution doesn’t produce perfection,” explains Alan Mann, a physical anthropologist at Princeton University. And the only way to refine the form (short of an asteroid strike or nuclear detonation to wipe clean the slate) is to jerry-rig the current model. Evolution constructed our bodies with the biological equivalent of duct tape and lumber scraps. But unfortunately for anyone chasing that ideal, we were designed not by Pygmalion, the mythical sculptor who carved a flawless woman, but by MacGyver. The Greeks were obsessed with the mathematically perfect body.
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