The one who should perhaps be considered the most popular Spanish scientist today has just published his latest work. A volume that, he says, he wanted. In our body. Seven million years of evolution (Destino), the outstanding paleontologist, co-director of the Atapuerca research team, Princess of Asturias Award winner and scientific director of the Museum of Human Evolution, among many other distinctions, makes an intense, intimate and profound journey through the human body. Art and knowledge of the hand and that the author collects with a popular language in which he does not avoid proscribed words of the so-called good speech, such as ass and cock.
For his presentation, he chose the circular room of classical sculptures of the Prado Museum. A place that, he says, for him is the best in the world, because it meets the ideal of the beauty of our body. Here, under the Diadumenus, a two-meter sculpture carved by Polykleitos in the fifth century BC, which expresses what was for classical Greece the canon of beauty, the scientist declares his intentions.
What does this book tell? When I decided to write it, it seemed to me that nothing like it had ever been done. The book flees from the concept of the anatomical atlas, it wants to be literature. In fact, it could have been a novel. With characters such as Queen Cristina, the philosopher Descartes, Emperor Hadrian, the sixteenth-century Palencia doctor Juan Valverde de Amusco, the Aragonese Miguel Servet and Rick Deckard, the protagonist of Blade runner, a name that by the way is a nod from Philip K. Dick, the author of the novel, to René Descartes. All his stories intermingle with the human body in my pages. It does not seem that at this point there is much to tell about the human body. My experience as a teacher tells me that we don't know our bodies. It is true that certain sectors know it well. I'm talking about those who go to the gym or runners, they know a lot of anatomy. Also those who get sick and, of course, fans of certain sports. Today it is common for the general sports press to speak with the greatest naturalness of the hamstrings or the psoas, without further explanation, assuming that their readers know what they are talking about and, indeed, they know it. In these groups the human body is fashionable and they know about it, but beyond that we have a very little knowledge of our body. What I intend with this book is for people to explore their own bodies. It is true that throughout its pages it incites the reader to do so. It invites you to explore yourself, to recognize the parts of your anatomy, although to follow your instructions you have to be naked. And in front of a mirror. I propose to the reader a game in which the book is his own body. With your complicity I want you to read this book. To do this, the reader has to go out of his way, as I have done, to identify himself. This is how we should explore ourselves, although it is better to do it with your partner, because we can not see each other, we can not feel certain areas such as the back. His book describes our body. It also talks about the skin. I ask you the question about an issue of regrettable topicality these days in Spain: Has our species always been racist? We are not a racist species, we are exclusive. Our species has evolved to be cooperative within its group, but very exclusive with foreign groups. This is universal in the human being since prehistory. We are a territorial species. The territory is the resources and the group defends it. Skin color is not a problem for our species. We are made to accept anyone from our group, black or white, fat or skinny, ugly or beautiful, but not those from other groups. Vinicius' problem is therefore not an evolutionary one. In my opinion, this is a problem of respect and authority. We come from a dictatorship and many times it is reluctant to apply that necessary authority. We have a good authority deficit, which this case has turned into an embarrassment and is leading us to ridicule. It is the biggest problem that our country now has. But I want to be positive. This problem has a simple solution: expand the size of the tribe. He assures that we do not have a very good concept of our body. We do not love him and this is a book to reconcile with him. Very few of those you ask if our body is beautiful will tell you yes; Most think we are ugly, even deformed, as opposed to the bodies of animals like The horse or the lion, of those who will say that they are beautiful. I want to reclaim the human body and consider it beautiful. We must look at it and admit it, because it is all we have. However, here we are, before the Diadumenus, a canon of beauty that, in general, we all lack. We should not be discouraged when contemplating its perfection, because it is the representation of an ideal, it is very certain that it represented the god Apollo and in him, therefore, all his bodily features are sublimated; It is unreal, but it helps us to see how we are, how our muscles are, our anatomy. What I propose is that we look at our body in front of a mirror not like Narcissus, recreating ourselves in its beauty, but to see it as it is and to know and admit ourselves. We have to learn that we are body. Do we gain weight because we are a good invention of evolution, which makes us accumulate what we eat for possible future periods of famine? We gain weight because we spend fewer calories than we eat. In this we do not differ from other species. What happens is that they burn what they eat. Deer, for example, do not have a fat atom. We accumulate it by our way of life. We are not a species designed for a sedentary lifestyle. Evolution has designed us to walk and run, our specialty is long distance running. In this exercise we optimize our energy expenditure, we spend the minimum to be able to prolong this effort for a long time. From head to toe, his book makes a strenuous journey through our anatomy. More than 650 pages in which the most varied concepts of anatomy, paleontology, history, art, science fiction and other disciplines are collected, all related with absolute intensity. He is not afraid that people will think that this book is a billet. I don't think so. I know how to write to make reading enjoyable and that the reader does not lose interest. This is an epicurean book, in the sense that it advocates a return to nature, to nature, something that is positive, that is liked. What I tell is that we are missing many pleasures that have to do with feeling. There are few things as pleasurable as rest and sleep, after physical exercise. This is something I want to value. The knowledge of our body is the best tool to achieve that pleasure.
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