ZURICH – New research published in the journal Biological Reviews suggests something many Pagan spiritualities have long held to be true: humans must remain aligned with nature because we evolved within nature. The authors argue that the human body has not yet adapted to the industrialized, digital world we have created, a central premise they describe as the Environmental Mismatch Hypothesis.
The study, authored by evolutionary anthropologists at Loughborough University and the University of Zurich, frames our struggles through what they call the Environmental Mismatch Hypothesis. For hundreds of thousands of years, human bodies and minds evolved within forests, grasslands, rivers, and small bands of kin. Today, most people live in cities, spend over 90% of their time indoors, and navigate a digital-industrial world that our ancestors could never have imagined.
The researchers draw a direct line between this shift and an escalating spectrum of physical and psychological ailments: depression, burnout, infertility, autoimmune disorders, impaired cognition, obesity, and widespread chronic stress.
Their core argument is simple but profound: we evolved for nature, not for the Anthropocene: the current human-dominated epoch marked by rapid, planet-wide industrial and ecological transformation.
As the authors note, industrialization is astonishingly recent. The Industrial Revolution began roughly 250 years ago. “Only eight or nine generations have passed,” the researchers write, far too few for significant genetic adaptation. Over that same period, the human environment has transformed at a pace faster than anything in our evolutionary history.
The world our bodies expect has disappeared. The consequences are showing up everywhere.
African Lions in Maasai Mara Game Reserve, southwest Kenya. Photo Credit: Benh LIEU SONG CCA-SA 3.0
Chronic Stress: Lions That Never Go Away
Humans evolved stress responses built for acute danger. If a predator appeared, the body flooded with cortisol and adrenaline—priming muscles for sprinting, fighting, or climbing. Then the danger passed, and hormones returned to baseline.
That system worked beautifully when threats were rare. “In our ancestral state, we were well-adapted to deal with acute stress to evade or confront predators. Fight or flight. The lion would come around occasionally, and you had to be ready to defend yourself – or run,” explains Dr. Colin Shaw, an evolutionary anthropologist and one of the authors of the research in a statement. “The key is that the lion goes away again. Such an all-out effort guaranteed survival, but it was very costly and required lengthy recovery.”
But today, researchers argue, the body treats every challenge as though it were a lion: traffic noise, work emails, rent increases, political conflict, social media notifications, and interpersonal conflict. As Shaw notes, “Your stress response system is still pretty much the same as if you were facing lion after lion after lion… but no comedown.”
The paper cites decades of data showing that industrialized environments measurably increase physiological stress, including elevated cortisol, heart rate, blood pressure, and prefrontal activity compared to natural environments. Even 15 minutes in a city street versus a forest shows a dramatic difference.
Sunset from Lake Wales Ridge. Photo Credit: Stefano Ciotti
Stress and more
Chronic activation of the stress response harms nearly every system tied to evolutionary fitness. Research shows that prolonged stress suppresses key reproductive hormones in both sexes, reducing fertility. It also disrupts immune function by altering cytokine balance, increasing chronic inflammation and elevating the risk of autoimmune conditions. Overexposure to cortisol damages the hippocampus, impairing memory, attention, and other cognitive processes. Physically, chronic stress undermines energy balance, weakens muscle growth, and reduces endurance capacity, compromising overall performance and resilience.
And, crucially, stress is consistently higher in urban-industrial environments.
Although not discussed directly in the paper, diet offers another classic example of evolutionary mismatch: humans evolved cravings for sugar and fat when calories were scarce—an adaptation that now fuels modern epidemics of obesity and diabetes.
There is much more that misaligns our daily realities with those of our ancient ancestors. We evolved within small social groups, yet today we are exposed to the judgments of thousands through social media. Artificial lighting and digital screens overwhelm our circadian rhythms with blue light, disrupting melatonin and the sleep cycles essential for cognitive and immune health. Industrial environments expose us to chronic noise, microplastics, and light pollution, all of which impair reproductive, immune, cognitive, and physical function.
The authors argue that these pressures collectively undermine evolutionary fitness—our ability to survive and reproduce. This is reflected in declining fertility rates, especially in industrialized nations, and rising rates of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Together with widespread chronic stress, Shaw and Longman suggest these trends signal significant biological strain.
A Path Forward?
The researchers stop short of prescribing sweeping solutions. They note the limitations of their research and the limits of testing it for causality. But the evidence is compelling, and their analysis points toward an overarching theme: restoring contact with nature is not aesthetic or spiritual; it is also physiological. Exposure to green space reduces cortisol levels, improves immune function, restores attention, and moderates depression symptoms. Time outdoors is not a luxury but a fundamental human need.
As Longman and Shaw write, contemporary humans “have lost contact with essential aspects of the natural world necessary for optimal health.”
Their research implications reach far beyond medicine or anthropology. They call into question how we build cities, structure work, raise children, and understand well-being. In the simplest terms, the research suggests we are healthiest when we live closer to the environments that shaped us, a very grounded approach consistent with nature spiritualities.
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