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Diabetologia
Published in: Diabetologia 8/2004

01-08-2004 | Editorial

The changing phenotype of the human species (affluent variety)

Author: E. A. M. Gale

Published in: Diabetologia | Issue 8/2004

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Excerpt

No-one could walk the streets of a city in India and fail to observe the contrast between the slender grace of its inhabitants and the massive clumsiness of the western tourists who wander among them. Nor can you spend a day watching the crowds at one of the Florida theme parks without realising that something awful is happening to our species. How did this come about? Homo sapiens is thought to have left Africa some 5000 generations ago—not very long in evolutionary time—and the people who colonised Europe 50,000 years ago probably looked very much like their modern descendants; their skeletons show that they were much the same height as ourselves. Comparison with modern hunter-gatherers suggests that their diet was reasonably adequate and varied; that their body mass index, blood pressure and cholesterol were considerably lower than ours, and that diabetes was unknown [1]. …
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Metadata
Title
The changing phenotype of the human species (affluent variety)
Author
E. A. M. Gale
Publication date
01-08-2004
Publisher
Springer-Verlag
Published in
Diabetologia / Issue 8/2004
Print ISSN: 0012-186X
Electronic ISSN: 1432-0428
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00125-004-1475-7

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