Paleofantasies

Too early this morning, before I was properly awake, I became aware of the voice of an American lady on the radio - I now know her to be Marlene Zuk, author of a book called Paleofantasy: you can read about it here. She was discussing her ideas with the ubiquitous Steve Jones, who seemed to broadly agree with her view that we've really gone crazy on the savannah phase in our prehistory, using it to explain - or justify - everything about the way we are now (Jones called it 'the universal alibi'). Zuk spoke tellingly of our fantasy of a 'fall from grace' after the Edenic savannah times when all was well and we were healthy and happy, with none of today's ills to plague us. Yet more spilt religion masquerading as science, though she didn't use that phrase.
  I suppose it's an attractive myth, helped by the fact that the savannah habitat survives to this day and seems rather agreeable, so long as you dodge the predators (or hunt them to extinction) - and of course it was the home of that African woman, 'Eve', who was, we are told, the ancestor of us all... For myself, I've always had a soft spot for the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, with its restful imagery of families lounging around lakeside, opening the odd clam from time to time. But for those of us who were impressionable lads in 1966, no paleofantasy will ever top Raquel Welch in a fur bikini, battling with dinosaurs - though the scientific accuracy of this has, I believe, been questioned by some sticklers.