Issues of survival

Abstract

This chapter examines the evolutionary foundations of human survival, addressing how natural selection has tuned behaviour, cognition, and physiology to recurrent ancestral challenges, threats, and opportunities. It analyses food acquisition and safety, covering the pathogen risks of an omnivorous diet, the embryo protection hypothesis and pregnancy-related food aversions, spice use as antimicrobial adaptation, and the behavioural immune system including disgust’s social and political dimensions. The chapter evaluates competing accounts of ancestral subsistence, contrasting the Man the Hunter, Provisioning, and Gathering hypotheses, and draws on ethnographic evidence from hunter-gatherer societies to demonstrate dietary variability and flexible divisions of labour. It explores vigilance, fear responses, error management theory, parental investment, and life history trade-offs as interconnected adaptive strategies. Finally, the chapter considers cooperation and cumulative cultural evolution as mechanisms through which humans have extended their capacity to survive and reproduce across diverse environments.