Rosa Rubicondior: Unintelligent design - If We Had Been Intelligently Designed, Modern Life Wouldn't Cause These Problems

A busy intersection in Zürich - where stress levels are high

Into the Woods | | UZH

If we take creationist claims about the human body at face value – that we are the special design of an omniscient, omnipotent creator god – we would have to conclude that this putative god equipped us for life in small, dispersed bands of hunter-gatherers, entirely free from the pressures of modern urban existence. That is the inescapable implication of new work by Daniel P. Longman of the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University, UK, and Colin N. Shaw of the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Zürich, Switzerland.

In their study, recently published in Biological Reviews, they argue that human evolutionary fitness has deteriorated markedly over the past 300 years, beginning with the Industrial Revolution. They attribute this to the escalating stresses of urban life, which are increasingly linked to counter-survival problems such as declining fertility rates and the rising prevalence of chronic inflammatory conditions, including autoimmune diseases. They also highlight impaired cognitive function in urban settings, with chronic stress playing a central role in many of these conditions.

As they note, our stress responses were shaped in environments where predators such as lions posed intermittent but existential threats. A sudden burst of adrenaline and cortisol – the classic fight-or-flight reaction – made the difference between survival and being eaten. Today, however, we summon exactly the same physiological response to traffic noise, difficult conversations with colleagues or family, and that irritatingly arrogant but ignorant creationist on the Internet. Where a lion encounter would once have been an occasional shock, we now experience the physiological equivalent of facing several lions a day.

For creationists, this poses an awkward problem. An omniscient designer should have foreseen humanity’s future circumstances and endowed us with a physiology robust enough to cope with them. Evolution, by contrast, cannot predict even the next generation, let alone the demands of life tens or hundreds of millennia later. It optimised our ancestors for survival on open African landscapes, not for navigating congested cities, chronic noise, 24-hour information streams, and the relentless stimuli of modern technology. This helps explain why our inherited design is increasingly mismatched to our environment, and why evolution cannot adjust us quickly enough to keep pace.

My own family history illustrates this accelerating mismatch. My grandparents grew up in rural Oxfordshire, before the arrival of the motor car, electricity, modern sanitation, or powered heating. Their lives were essentially unchanged from those of their parents and grandparents. My parents, by contrast, had electricity, piped water, proper sanitation, and radio; later a motor car, a television, and eventually a telephone. Now we have smartphones, laptops, air travel, satnavs, and city centres jammed with traffic. We spend hours each day staring at screens, communicating instantly across the world. My grandparents’ lives would have been recognisable to their great-grandparents, but mine would be unrecognisable to them – such has been the accelerating pace of technological change. No evolutionary process could possibly adapt a species to that speed of environmental transformation.

We are, in effect, experiencing stress levels akin to those of ancestors living among a pride of lions, not merely encountering one on rare occasions. And crucially, we have little or no time to recover before the next ‘lion’ appears.

What Happens in the Body During Sudden Stress?

Threat detected (milliseconds)
Sensory systems pass information to the amygdala, the brain’s rapid-response threat detector. If the situation is judged dangerous, it triggers an immediate alarm signal before the conscious mind has fully processed what’s happening.

Sympathetic nervous system activation (within 1 second)*
The amygdala signals the hypothalamus, which flips the autonomic nervous system into “fight-or-flight” mode. Nerve fibres running to the adrenal medulla are activated almost instantly.

Adrenaline surge (2–3 seconds)
The adrenal medulla releases adrenaline (epinephrine) and noradrenaline into the bloodstream. These hormones rapidly:

Increase heart rate and blood pressure
Dilate airways
Mobilise glucose from liver and muscle
Redirect blood flow to muscles and away from digestion
Sharpen attention and reaction speed

Cortisol release (peaks after 10–20 minutes)
A slightly slower system, the HPA axis (hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal), ramps up:

The hypothalamus releases CRH
The pituitary releases ACTH
The adrenal cortex releases cortisol

Cortisol sustains energy availability, suppresses non-essential processes (immunity, digestion, reproduction), and keeps the body on high alert for as long as the threat persists.

Resolution and recovery (minutes to hours)
Once the threat passes, the parasympathetic nervous system counteracts the alarm response:

Heart rate and blood pressure return to baseline
Digestion resumes
Cortisol gradually declines
Immune and reproductive functions re-activate

In a natural environment with only occasional threats, this system returns the body to baseline quickly.

When stress becomes chronic
If new stressors arrive before recovery is complete – typical of modern urban life – the system becomes locked into repeated activation. Long-term cortisol elevation contributes to:

Chronic inflammation
Cardiovascular strain
Impaired memory and concentration
Sleep disruption
Reduced fertility

The work of Colin Shaw and Daniel Longman is summarised in a news release from the University of Zürich by Barbara Simpson.

Into the Woods
Chronic stress is on the rise – the result of an evolutionary mismatch that our bodies and brains, adapted over hundreds of thousands of years to hunter-gatherer conditions, are experiencing in industrialized, urbanized environments, argues evolutionary anthropologist Colin Shaw. Is there a remedy?
It’s the end of July and, uncharacteristically, it’s pouring down in Zurich. Sitting on a foldable chair underneath the canopy of old-growth beech trees, and protected by an umbrella, however, I feel sheltered and at peace. I take deep breaths as I listen to the birdsong breaking through the steady sound of raindrops splashing on the forest floor. The water flows steadily down the wide tree trunks, having accumulated from the branches high above. A knotty maze of roots on the slope ahead seems to form a natural enclosure. “How was it?” asks a voice.

Colin Shaw walks over from where he had been standing barefoot, in his trekking sandals in the rain for the past few minutes. The evolutionary anthropologist and head of the Human Evolutionary EcoPhysiology (HEEP) research group at the University of Zurich had given me an assignment when we arrived at this clearing on the edge of Zürichberg forest: choose your favorite spot. Take in the environment. Focus on each sense, step by step. What sounds can you hear? What can you smell? What movements can you observe?

Rolling in the mud for science
With these instructions, we aim to recreate part of an experiment that Shaw and his research group – comprised of specialists from the fields of ecology, immunology, microbiology, cognitive psychology and exercise science – conducted last summer, when 160 people spent three hours walking and sitting in one of three different environments: Sihlwald, a coniferous forest just outside Zurich; Mont Tendre, a deciduous forest outside Lausanne; and Zurich’s Hardbrücke area, an urban setting.

In the forest, we got people down and dirty and hugging trees and playing with the soil microbiome and everything else.

Colin N. Shaw, co-author
Department of Evolutionary Anthropology
University of Zürich, Switzerland.

Before and after being exposed to the natural and urban environments, the researchers measured a whole range of biomarkers in the participants’ blood, saliva as well as their cognitive capacity. In the woods, people exhibited significantly lower blood pressure, a better immune response and an improved psychological state – in the urban environment, however, they presented with higher blood pressure and strong physiological and psychological stress reactions.

Although we aren’t taking any measurements in today’s torrential rain, I can feel the effect of the experiment. In the woodland environment – which, as Shaw points out, is “closer to our ancestral condition than a city environment” – I feel calm. My pulse is steady, and my stress level dissipates. Shaw jokingly adds that the rain may have even improved the dispersal of phytoncides. These volatile organic compounds, released by trees, offer immune-boosting benefits to humans – as demonstrated by the forest bathing (shinrin-yoku) movement in Japan.

Lions everywhere

The next experimental setting for today will be a busy intersection. As we walk along a small path and climb over fallen branches to rejoin the main forest road, Shaw gives me a summary of his main research hypothesis. From an evolutionary standpoint, he says, the industrialized, urbanized environments we’ve built place a chronic stress load on our bodies, taking a toll on both physical and mental health.

Comparison of two different environments.

Central Zurich

A rural woodland

Whereas physicians would talk about this as ‘ill health’, we try to determine the evolutionary context to understand whether our surroundings are making us sick – and which environment will help us recover.

Colin N. Shaw.

In a recent research paper co-authored with Daniel Longman, a longtime collaborator and fellow Cambridge alumnus from Loughborough University, Shaw argues that the extensive environmental shifts of the Anthropocene have undermined human evolutionary fitness. Evolutionary success of a species amounts to survival and reproduction, and, according to the authors, both factors have been severely compromised in the last 300 years since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. They support their theory with evidence of declining global fertility rates and increase in chronic inflammatory conditions such as autoimmune diseases. They also cite impaired cognitive function in urban environments. Chronic stress plays a key role as the cause of many of these conditions.

In our ancestral state, we were well-adapted to deal with acute stress to evade or confront predators. Fight or flight. The lion would come around occasionally, and you had to be ready to defend yourself – or run. The key is that the lion goes away again. Such an all-out effort guaranteed survival, but it was very costly and required lengthy recovery.

Colin N. Shaw.

This acute stress response was ideal for mobilizing adrenaline and cortisol while fighting for survival in our hunter-gatherer past. However, it is mismatched for today’s steady stream of challenges.
Our body reacts as though all these stressors were lions. Whether it’s a difficult discussion with your partner or your boss, or traffic noise, your stress response system is still pretty much the same as if you were facing lion after lion after lion. As a result, you have this very powerful response from your nervous system, but no comedown.

Colin N. Shaw.

The hidden costs of progress

The water gushes down the gutter as we continue our walk down Letzistrasse into the city, and the traffic noise, amplified by the rain, swells.
Essentially, there’s a paradox where, on the one hand, over the last three hundred years we’ve created this tremendous wealth and comfort and healthcare for a lot of people on the planet, but on the other hand, some of these industrial achievements are having quite detrimental effects on our immune, cognitive, physical and reproductive functions. For example, since the 1950s sperm count and motility rates have dropped dramatically in men, which is tied to pesticides and herbicides in food, but also to microplastics.

We need to get our cities right – and at the same time regenerate, value and spend more time in natural spaces.

Colin N. Shaw.

As we arrive at the intersection with Irchelstrasse, I get to choose where to set up my foldable chair again. Instinctively, I opt for a corner where I can at least feel the greenery from Irchel Campus behind me. For the next 15 minutes, I observe the heavy traffic approaching from all sides, my eyes darting around. The deafening noise – a mix of roaring engines, water spraying from the wheels plus jackhammers from roadworks – drowns out any other thought in my brain. My breathing becomes shallower, the entire body tenses up. I’m relieved when Colin Shaw tells me we can now move on to friendlier surroundings, and we head into Irchel Park.

There was no real danger, yet my jaw is clenched. It’s the constant stimulation. We didn’t evolve to be constantly stimulated.

[Of course, compared to megacities with tens of millions of inhabitants, such as Tokyo, Delhi and Shanghai] Zurich is barely a city. It’s surrounded by forests; there’s a lake and a river. It also has a comfortable public transit system.

Colin N. Shaw.

However, research by the HEEP group clearly indicates that even in a city that is frequently ranked among the most livable, urban exposure is physiologically and psychologically stressful and impairs immune function.

Today, an estimated 4.5 billion people – more than half the world’s population – live in urban agglomerations. By 2050, that figure is projected to rise to 6.5 billion, or more than two-thirds of humanity. Recognizing industrialization and urbanization as health risks will be crucial for safeguarding public health – or, in evolutionary terms: the fitness of our species.

We can’t adapt our way out of this

According to Shaw, protecting spaces that resemble those from our hunter-gatherer past is in the interest of public health.

It’s hard to believe that our brains have grown accustomed to juggling ever-new digital innovations – yet remain rooted in a prehistoric past when it comes to regulating our nervous systems. Why haven’t we adapted to the living conditions that our species has created?
You could argue that the stress responses we’re seeing today are a form of adaptation. However, biological adaptation is very slow. Longer-term genetic adaptations are multigenerational. So that’s tens to hundreds of thousands of years. From an evolutionary perspective, if people are dying from chronic stress or stress-related diseases, you could say that this is natural selection taking place. If you let that go on for hundreds of generations, people would probably become better able to deal with chronic stress.

Colin N. Shaw.

Clearly, that’s not a feasible solution to our current predicament – a physiological conundrum with no quick evolutionary fix.

So, if there’s no way our current physiology will buffer chronic stress, how can we redress this mismatch? According to Colin Shaw, one solution is to fundamentally rethink our relationship with nature – treating it as a key health factor and protecting or regenerating spaces that resemble those from our hunter-gatherer past. Another is to design healthier, more resilient cities.
I’m not an engineer or an architect, but our research can identify which stimuli most affect blood pressure or heart rate and pass that knowledge on to decisionmakers. We need to get our cities right – and at the same time regenerate, value and spend more time in natural spaces.

Colin N. Shaw.

We have returned to his office with a standing desk and no chair. It seems like a small act of defiance against today’s sedentary lifestyle, which is so distant from our ancestral condition.

As an evolutionary anthropologist, my earlier work focused on Neanderthals and bone adaptation, which was fascinating in its own right. But the challenges we face today feel more urgent. Those with the resources – financial or intellectual – have a responsibility to invest them in solving these problems. To me, it’s a moral imperative to do the right thing.

Colin N. Shaw.

Publication:
Longman, D.P. and Shaw, C.N. (2025)
Homo sapiens, industrialisation and the environmental mismatch hypothesis. Biol Rev. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.70094

ABSTRACT
For the vast majority of the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens, a range of natural environments defined the parameters within which selection shaped human biology. Although human-induced alterations to the terrestrial biosphere have been evident for over 10,000 years, the pace and scale of change has accelerated dramatically since the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century. Industrialisation has profoundly transformed our various natural habitats, driving rapid urban expansion, increasing reliance on fossil fuel energy and causing environmental contamination, ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss. Today, most of the world's population resides in highly industrialised urban areas. These new primary human habitats differ fundamentally from our ancestral natural habitats, creating novel environmental challenges while, simultaneously, lacking key natural features linked to health and function. Although the adaptive capacity of humans has enabled survival in diverse and fluctuating environmental conditions, this capacity is limited. It is possible that the rapid industrialisation of our habitat is outpacing our adaptive capacity and is imposing selective pressures that threaten our evolutionary fitness. A growing body of observational and experimental evidence suggests that industrialisation negatively impacts key biological functions essential for survival and reproduction and, therefore, evolutionary fitness. Specifically, environmental contamination arising directly from industrial activities (e.g. air, noise and light pollution, microplastic accumulation) is linked to impaired reproductive, immune, cognitive and physical function. Chronic activation of the stress response systems, which further impairs these biological functions, also appears more pronounced in industrialised areas. Here, we consider whether the rapid and extensive environmental shifts of the Anthropocene have compromised the fitness of Homo sapiens. We begin by contrasting contemporary and ancestral human habitats before assessing the effects of these changes on core biological functions that underpin evolutionary fitness. We then ask whether industrialisation has created a mismatch between our primarily nature-adapted biology and the novel challenges imposed by contemporary industrialised environments – a possibility that we frame through the lens of the Environmental Mismatch Hypothesis. Finally, we explore experimental approaches to test this hypothesis and discuss the broader implications of such a mismatch.

I. INTRODUCTION
Over the last ~6–7 million years, the hominin lineage has successfully adapted to diverse climatic and ecogeographical challenges. Throughout the last 100,000 years, the remarkable capacity of Homo sapiens to adapt, both biologically and culturally, enabled the colonisation of nearly all terrestrial environments on Earth (Wells & Stock, 2007). However, contemporary humans now face unprecedented environmental challenges resulting directly from the rapid and extensive habitat changes caused by industrialisation. While our species has demonstrated significant adaptive capacity in the past, emerging evidence suggests that these novel and accelerated challenges may surpass our ability to adapt, thereby threatening our long-term viability.

Although human-induced alteration of the terrestrial biosphere has been evident for over 10,000 years, the pace and scale of change has accelerated dramatically since the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century (Ellis, 2011) and the Great Acceleration that began in the 1950s (see Section II.4) (Steffen et al., 2011.1). While industrialisation has provided significant benefits (Glaeser, 2011.2), it has also driven a profound transformation of various natural habitats (Ellis, 2011). The global spread of industrialisation has necessitated the expansion of urban centres, croplands, pastures and plantations and the transformation of forests, waterways and air via the increased consumption of energy, water and fertilisers (Foley et al., 2005). The sheer scale of these changes is exemplified by the dramatic rise in global energy consumption, largely driven by fossil fuels, which, since 1950, has exceeded the total energy expenditure of the previous ~12,000 years (Syvitski et al., 2020). Deforestation and industrial agriculture alone have reduced the carbon storage potential of terrestrial ecosystems by over 50% (Erb et al., 2018). These land-use changes are the primary drivers of the ongoing sixth mass extinction, marked by substantial global biodiversity loss (Dirzo et al., 2014; Ceballos et al., 2015). These modifications now threaten ecosystem functions essential for human biological function and survival, including food production, freshwater regulation, climate stability and disease mitigation (Rockström et al., 2009). The 21st century is characterised by an increasingly human-dominated planet (Vitousek et al., 1997) – so much so that this has led to the recognition of a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene (Steffen et al., 2015.2).

Given the unprecedented speed, magnitude and recency of environmental change, a critical question emerges: is the ongoing industrial transformation of the various natural habitats of Homo sapiens impairing our evolutionary fitness (the ability to survive and reproduce)? We approach this question in a stepwise fashion. First, we compare 21st century human habitats with those of our ancestors over the past 5 million years (Section II). Next, we examine how these habitat changes affect core aspects of human biology that underpin evolutionary fitness (Section III). We then introduce the Environmental Mismatch Hypothesis, which posits that there may be a misalignment between the contemporary habitats of Homo sapiens and the adaptations that have primarily shaped the human phenotype (Section IV). Finally, we explore experimental approaches to test this hypothesis (Section V) and discuss its real-world implications (Section VI).

Fig. 1
Temporal change in the global distribution of urban versus rural populations, 1960–2022. Taken from Ourworldindata.org (Ritchie et al., 2024).

Longman, D.P. and Shaw, C.N. (2025)
Homo sapiens, industrialisation and the environmental mismatch hypothesis. Biol Rev. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.70094

Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

These findings leave creationists facing the same uncomfortable dilemma that recurs whenever biology reveals a mismatch between human physiology and the world we now inhabit. If an all-knowing designer consciously engineered our bodies, then the designer must have built us with full knowledge of the environment we would eventually occupy and made it either robust enough for these changes or adaptable enough to adjust to these challenges. Yet modern life exposes deep flaws in that supposed design: stress pathways fine-tuned for rare, acute dangers are now chronically over-activated; mechanisms that once promoted survival now undermine fertility, immunity, cognition, and long-term health.

The predictable creationist escape is to claim that the world has somehow changed in ways the designer did not intend, or that humans have “fallen” and therefore no longer function as designed. But this simply reasserts the very point at issue: a design unable to withstand the routine conditions of the environment into which its designer knowingly placed it is, by any meaningful engineering standard, poor design.

Evolution, however, requires no such special pleading. It explains both our strengths and our liabilities. Natural selection adapted our ancestors to the demands of a Pleistocene landscape where threats were intermittent and recovery was possible. It also explains why we carry outdated physiological settings into environments that have transformed far faster than evolution can track. What appears as “bad design” under creationism is entirely predictable under evolution.

In short, the chronic stress burden of modern urban life is not a puzzle for science but a glaring problem for creationist notions of perfect, intentional design.

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