« Half a Million | Main | Many Cultures, One Physiology »

Depth of the Energy Landscape

July 13, 2005 06:19 AM

If you think about your activities and their variation as a landscape that is very rugged, with peaks and valleys of all sizes, you have a good model of the kind of variation that I advocate. Think of a Paleo ancestor who would have had to engage in very intense activity in his/her fight or flight response, or even just in a week of treking, hunting, butchering, building shelter by hand, and so on. And, in contrast, his/her hours of leisure would have been many and the rhythm of work tied to the natural variation of the day and season. Our ancestors also would have a depth of sleep and rest quite unlike we are able to achieve.

Their low blood pressure, as shown by all primitive groups, was surely a result of the variation of active and deeply restful periods. The depth of their sleep, even though watchful and quickly alert if needed, would drop their blood pressure. Their biorhthyms are tuned to a natural world.

So, I often evaluate my day in energy terms; by how far did my hardest exertion exceed my deepest rest. This depth should vary and be all over the map, but it must have real depth. Day light is a time for peaks and evening and night are a time for valleys in the energy landscape. Without the depth there is no signal to the internal environment and we lose touch.

Our hormonal systems must have strong patterns to synchronize with one another. In many ways, the way we live puts our hormones at odds with one another and the loss of coordination begins the aging cascade.

· Uncertainty

Comments

Posted by: Flower Online [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 12, 2006 7:17 AM

To create the varied energy levels throughout the day, exercise is one part but relaxation is the other. Art, you have discussed a way to live without stress and anxiety. Do you wish to expand on HOW? Since most of us have office lives, assuming a relaxed state of mind, that could be a period of rest, but for most, its a place of chronic stress.

Why would Paleo man be able to have a depth of sleep that we do not have today?

Posted by: Woody at July 13, 2005 7:55 PM

Saw a tv program some time back about centenarians. The show was about trying to understand their good health through longevity.

The key things they had in common was regular activity, lots of love and smiles with lots of family, and a purpose in life beyond themselves.

Posted by: Kevin Bonde at July 13, 2005 6:09 PM

..suggest if you haven't any of Colin Turnbulls work with the Pygmies vis dancing;incidentally they use the same word for dancing as for love- making.
The !San in the Kalahari love to dance a 'jig' round a fire

Posted by: simon fellows at July 13, 2005 5:48 PM

As we know nothing about dancing in the Pleistocene, we have to use our knowledge of recent/contemporary hunter-gatherer dancing as a model. My own observation has been of sing-sings in New Guinea and (indirectly) of corroborees in Australia. New Guinea had a mix of H-G and settled agriculture for around 10,000 years across their 700 language groups; Australian aboriginals were almost all H-G, but with isolated pockets of fish farming and other specialized small scale farming practices. Although their dancing was more energetic than, say, ballroom dancing, it was not physically frenzied. They achieved their trances/highs (and hormonal surges) not through drugs or exhaustion, but through body decoration, movements which had deep cultural meaning (such as sanctioned crossing into taboo areas), rhythm and resonant sound generated by all the participants: stamping on the ground, thumping the ground with stones or spears, clapping in unison and a mix of bass (male) voice chants. The Maori haka is another example.

Accounts of traditional dancing practices may be a little unreliable if they are given by tribal members recalling the long-gone dances of their youth from an overweight, diabetic, debilitated dotage. It is possible that, conscious of their own contemporary physical limitations, they exaggerate the superhuman performances in the dances of long ago. 'The older I get, the better I was'.

My point is that dancing into the night certainly existed and there was frenzy, but it was not necessarily achieved through intense physical activity. Their dances, like ours, were predominantly about their cultural meaning. I'm not sure how frequent dancing was across the board. There were some dances related to the seasons and others that occurred when bands came across each other, at coming-of-age occasions or funerals, but I don't know of any group that practised anything like our regular weekly sporting contests. Dances had a number of significant opportunity costs.

In addition to dances, men (men especially) engaged in showing off to attract women and deter other males from their mate or territory. This showing off may have been within a dance performance, but could have been in wrestling (an excellent model for exercise), hunting prowess or even bodily mutilation.

I'm not dismissing dancing. And I do think it needs to be considered. But I also feel that the activities Art describes remain the core of paleolithic physical activity.

Posted by: Keith Thomas at July 13, 2005 1:44 PM

This may fit well with your thinking on variations, but I'd be interested in your take on it: One thing many, if not most, paleolithic groups have in common is dancing. Frequent, whole-bodied, frenzied dancing, often well into the night. It's hard to overstate the importance of dancing to many of these groups -- a large proportion of their leisure time is spent not in quiet, contemplative relaxation or sleep, but rather in an activity that expends enormous amounts of energy. There's a lot of interesting research on the effects on hormone balance, social cohesion, etc., while the activity itself seems to occur at both fixed and random times (i.e., fixed with the seasons or the phases of the moon, random with a successful hunt). Any thoughts?

Posted by: mark at July 13, 2005 9:56 AM

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?