Willandra Lakes is a dry sandy desert in South Western NSW that was once a system of lakes.
It is home to the oldest human footprints in the world.
They tell the story of one particular day 20,000 years ago.
A day frozen in time forever!
Aboriginal trackers can tell exactly how events this day went down.
20 000 years ago was right in the middle of the Pleistocene era - the last ice age.
The earth was much colder and life would have been very harsh compared to our cushy modern lives.
In what is rock today, there are the prints of 4 hunters chasing a kangaroo. Analysis of the size and depth of the prints show that these men were tall and fast
One of these hunters was 194cm tall and running 37km/h!
The prints show where a spear was thrown and where it landed again in the mud - a near miss.
What’s really profound is not only that these 4 men were chasing down a kangaroo on foot but that one of the hunters had only one leg!
He was hopping down a kangaroo.
Each hop was 3m long!
I’m not making this up. These are fossilised footprints that have been under the lens of archeological scrutiny since they were rediscovered in 2003.
Whenever europeans came in contact with indigenous humans the world over there are stories of what would now be considered superhuman feats.
These feats, show a level of physical development rarely, if ever, seen nowadays
I tell this story to illustrate a point.
Not many of us are living up to our human physical potential and we're suffering for it
We no longer need to be able to run down a Kangaroo on foot
But most people do need to exercise more than they do
The human body with it’s brain is arguably the most adaptable organism alive
A lot of the chronic health conditions we now face are the body’s attempt to adapt to an environment and lifestyle that has no respect for our innate genetic needs
The hunters in the story above had a very harsh world to adapt to
They had to do olympic level sprints everyday or they wouldn’t eat!
But they also had much less of the chronic stress we face nowadays
And they ate an organic and all wild caught diet
We have some problems nowadays that they don't
Most of us face a near constant low level of chronic stress that destroys our immune systems and prevents us from healing injuries, broken down tissues and new cancer cells
We have environmental toxins in our air, water and food supply
Despite having an abundance of food and calories many people show signs of malnourishment and nutrient deficiencies
People living in the western world have much less diversity in their gut microbiome due to antibiotics, chlorinated water and pesticides like glyphosate
Changes to diet and lifestyle have meant we're dying of very different things than our ancestors
1 in 3 people alive today will get cancer
1 in 4 people who die this year in Australia will die of heart disease
The most common cause of death for those aged between 14-44 is suicide
We’ve seen a 663% rise in Alzeimers disease amongst women over the last 20 years alone…
and this is the 2nd most common cause of death in Australia, right after Coronary Heart Disease!
90% of people reading this will die of some sort of chronic disease...
and this is easily preventable and largely within your control
I'll go into what you can do to improve your health in a later post.
I'm sure you know a million things you could do right now anyway.
So write out a list and go and make those things happen.
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