(Inside Science) — Millions of years ago, after the ancestors of humans diverged from the last link they shared with chimpanzees, they began developing the numerous adaptations that made endurance one of the defining traits of our species. By about 2 million years ago, the genus Homo had emerged and the process really took off. Today, humans can run for miles or walk all day thanks to those changes. In new research, scientists have shown just how substantially evolution has changed one crucial organ: the heart.
“We now understand the evolutionary trajectory of the heart,” said Aaron Baggish, who leads the Cardiovascular Performance Program at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “And we now understand how that helps us to place common contemporary diseases into perspective.”
