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How the Modern World Changed Your Body
Crooked teeth, bad eyes, and a broken brain — thanks, technology!
You have many advantages over your distant ancestors. You’ll almost certainly live longer, you enjoy heating and air conditioning, you’ve got access to a world of information on your phone, and you can fly from one part of the world to another. You’d be a fool to envy the people who lived a couple of hundred years ago.
But there is one thing that your great-great-great-grandparents had that you probably don’t: a strong, healthy jaw. Your jaw is weak compared to the people of the past, and your teeth are probably more crooked than theirs were, as well.
When I was in 8th grade, wearing my headgear to bed and picking food out of my braces, I often wondered why my mouth had been so poorly designed. Why did I get cavities in my teeth? Why did I need my wisdom teeth removed? Why did I have to endure a mouth full of metal for two years? And why did my dog — who literally chewed on sticks and ate poop — have such a maintenance-free mouth? Her teeth weren’t crooked, and, though her breath left something to be desired, she never had a cavity in her life.
It turns out that the human mouth isn’t designed poorly. Instead, modern living has warped our mouths. A 2020 study published in BioScience argued that…
