How humans adapt

 A second thought on yesterday’s note about how human beings would build a shelter in the absence of contemporary technology: Some cultures are more interested in the question than others.

In Japan, experimental archeologists have built more than 1,000 pit houses since World War II. They are trying to get a better understanding of how people adapted to the environment in the days before rice was grown in paddies. One scholar described the building of historically accurate pit houses as a national pastime.

I don’t see that level of interest in the question of human adaptation to the environment in this country.

I think of the question in biological terms: How would humans adapt to the Georgia Piedmont I now call home? How would they adapt to the cold — admitting that this place seems cold because we’ve come from South Texas?

Aldo Leopold sometimes complained about the education of biology students. Memorizing bumps on bones is helpful in understanding some biological questions, he said. But a more fundamental question is whether you can give the student — an ordinary citizen — a better understanding of the natural world.

Outside my window, I’m watching white-tailed deer under some blooming Bradford pears. The deer are native. The pears are from China. Both are wonderfully adapted to this environment. If you consider the adaptation of pears and deer, how could you not think about the adaptation of humans?

The experiments of the experimental archeologists seem like biological inquiries to me.