The Voice

In the preceding essays in this series, I looked at how conquest, capture, and trauma have shaped our modern predicament. In this essay I consider what we can learn from the people who preserve what existed before.

The road to Yapa weaves through clumped grasses in red sand woodland to the foot of a low, rocky ridge. Where the road ends, a path climbs out of mulga and eucalypt onto sandstone outcrops dotted with white cypress pine.

You can camp by the river an hour away and swap your gaslighting phone for the tranquil indifference of red gums, kangaroos, and emus. In the winter months, the night will likely be cold and clear, as you rest your eyes in the ad free fire, like numberless generations before you. Above, if the moon has risen, you may recognise a beloved celestial companion; no lump of lifeless rock to plant some empire signage on, but the mover of the tides in our oceans and our bodies. If not, the galaxy which hosts our little world will slowly wheel like a cosmic screensaver, its sparkling brilliance, having journeyed through aeons to reach you, still bright enough to walk by. And in the morning, after a bumpy ride, bathed in warm breezes from the plains, you may be alive again to the magic of the living world.

In my experience, this is how you meet a place. Country can speak to you if you make room for it. But it won’t usually happen just because you show up. First you need to shake off the tailgating road train of modernity.

The effect can be profound; like waking from a dream; the tacit recognition that our lives are intertwined with others all around us – people, certainly, but also microbes, insects, reptiles, marsupials, rivers, forests, mountains, and every fellow traveller in time and space on the continent we share. Our oversize personal baggage can afford to shrink a bit. There is so much more which is worthy of care.

William Shatner felt it looking down from orbit[1], the hero of space-themed TV adventurism finally leaving Earth momentarily in order to return to us beatified. But the same revelation is available at zero altitude with humility and sensitivity. And perhaps this recalls the conditions in which we evolved, before we were seduced by technological agency into utopian quests: a world neither comfortable nor hostile; but possible to love deeply and disrespected at our peril.

As if to encourage such introspection, our arrival is greeted by a dirge of melancholy wailing. It can’t be human surely; we are alone out here; only an occasional fly or foraging bird otherwise interrupts the stillness. Yet it sounds disturbingly like a person in torment nearby.

It brings to mind the people who came before us: defeated settlers watching herds die off during the great droughts; the hard-travelling surveyors who preceded them, like nearly everyone since Cook and Banks interpreting a flourishing native ecosystem as an invitation to commodity production, not recognising its fertility as delicate, cyclical and human protected; but most of all the protectors whose decimation the explorers’ arrival portended, ‘treacherous savages’ in their estimation[2], whose intimacy with the land, stretching back beyond imagining, was unintelligible to them. And for me, it awakens memories of my own people, mourned as age and infirmity have whittled away my family tree.

These ghosts follow us into the hills. It’s as if we’re climbing onto the body of a sleeping animal, outstretched between undulating lowlands and the Barka’s baked floodplain. And it’s here on the spine of Gundabooka that we discover the source of the forlorn voice.

An old windmill bore on an adjacent sheep station broadcasts tortured metal howls. It would be tempting to explain away the sound like that; to relegate a lament for those swallowed by time to mechanical coincidence; to rob the world of its potency. But we can’t quite bring ourselves to do that. To subordinate significance to the singer is characteristically modern; when the land is wholly alive what matters is the song.

About half a kilometre further in the track descends onto a wide, sandy creek bed strewn with boulders and debris, the signature of rains whose sudden violence ends protracted absence. Across the creek, a rocky overhang shelters what we have come to see.

A metal fence marks the intersection of two worlds. On the far side is a gallery of Aboriginal rock paintings. On our side, although we are its only representatives today, is a world now teeming with tourists; aimless wanderers and casual observers; consumers of experience; the inheritors of conquest, capitalism, and carbon-power; some of us no doubt ready to register our eminence with some fresh graffiti were the fence not there. What are we to make of these ancient images?

I don’t know any Ngemba people; I have no interpreter to guide my understanding; and in any case this isn’t my business. To be here at all was once a weighty cultural matter. There were no tourists when these marks were made.

I’m looking through a keyhole in time at an unfamiliar way of being. But there’s also a resonance I cannot deny with something in my own ancestry, in another land across the sea, like a presence just beyond the firelight, where star time prevails, and the forebears in my blood still dance and sing.

Our footsteps on the return trail seem lighter, as if a burden has been lifted, replaced by a feeling of consonance and resolve. And it occurs to me there is knowledge which grants power; but knowledge which grants freedom is better; the source of such knowledge is mysterious; and it enters through the body.

Meet the Ancestors

Experiences of this kind feel a bit like a journey back in time. But if we could actually make such a journey, perhaps far back, before even the great diaspora which brought this land its Aboriginal custodians, to our shared origins in Africa; if we could find a member of our species, retrieve her to the present, and modernise her grooming and dress, she might appear somewhat incongruous in a corporate conference room, but no more than any other dark-skinned woman. In almost all superficial attributes she and her modern counterparts would be alike. Human evolution is mostly a very gradual process. But one possibly surprising difference would be her larger brain.

There’s been much speculation about why the human brain shrank relative to body size during the Holocene. Agriculture has been blamed for the nutritional deficiencies it imposed[3]. Another theory[4] is that this was the period when our ability to outsource personal cognitive load accelerated, first with specialisation, then writing, printing, electronic media and now with so-called Artificial Intelligence. When a young journalist tried to trap Adam Bandt with a gotcha question during the 2022 election, the Greens leader replied: “Google it mate”[5].

Contemplating the advent of AI, Simon Winchester wonders if depending on machines to ‘know’ for us[6] threatens the very capabilities which made our species so successful. And how does this align with our ideas about ‘progress’?

What Makes Us Superior?

Armchair philosophers still like to conduct an imaginary debate between Hobbes and Rousseau about our ancestors. In Hobbes’ corner are the ugly troglodytes whose lives are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. And in Rousseau’s corner are the “noble savages”[7].

Neither of these campaigners had much knowledge of actual ancestors, nor any real interest in them. Their origin stories were intended, then as now, to advance political objectives. And in the absence of actual ancestors, stunt doubles were pressganged from extant Indigenous cultures, rallying popular ignorance and prejudice and reinforcing them forever after.

So what were our ancestors really like? We know they were capable because they populated a planet. They traversed deserts, mountains, and oceans, and in challenging, unfamiliar climes developed rich cultures, shaped biodiversity for liveability, and left behind ingenious structures, tools, and artefacts of great beauty.

We have been taught to think of ourselves as very advanced by comparison. Modern technology has transformed our lives after all. But are our lives unambiguously better for it? And has it made us better people?

What’s Really Going On?

Richness, ingenuity, and beauty are much less obvious in the everyday modern world than homogenous, mechanized utility. Millions of us inhabit sprawling warrens of concrete and bitumen. And we depend on elaborate global supply chains to feed, equip, and entertain us in exchange for the magic substance we call money. Like our knowledge, our agency has been outsourced.

Those who contribute to this system earn our share of the magic substance mostly by operating machines we can’t repair within systems we don’t comprehend. The machines are gradually taking over more of the operations, diverting the magic substance from human contributors to the tax havens of the machine owners and their financiers. And the energy which powers this system is becoming ever more expensive, despite massive subsidies, even as it makes the biosphere less habitable, increasing the cost of nearly everything. Cheap, abundant, alternative energy is largely in the realm of wishful thinking.

What is to become of us then? Millions already subsist in a kind of half-world, dependent on this behemoth for their needs, but superfluous to its operations. Some live off rents, inheritances, or ‘investor returns’, others find niches serving them, and a few obtain funding from philanthropists, governments, and brand-laundering corporations to plug some gaps or remediate some damage, while those who fall out altogether stave off hunger and homelessness on grudging ‘welfare’ payments. People and even whole countries who lack the magic substance, whose own ancestors provided for themselves, now go without necessities.

Distress signals from Earth’s biosphere and our troubled communities tell us something is terribly wrong. But we seem to have become helpless in a way our ancestors would find shocking. To say we think differently is an understatement. This pattern seems to be embedded in the organ we think with.

The Usurper Within

One of the most striking features of the human brain is how divided it is. Two hemispheres, with only a relatively small connection between them, are responsible for two different kinds of awareness, both conferring advantages. The left hemisphere, which typically controls the right hand, has a narrow beam of attention for ‘grabbing and getting’, while the right remains alert to the environment and any threats or opportunities.

According to Ian McGilchrist, who has studied it for many years, this design works best when the right hemisphere is in charge. We need ‘big picture’ awareness to guide our focused activities. But this time-honoured and field-tested arrangement has been usurped[8].

The modern world has been reorganised around the left brain. No potential environmental disaster or human tragedy is allowed to interfere with that epitome of left brain preoccupations we refer to as ‘the economy’. Yet terrifying events once merely postulated in scientific papers are now apparent to anyone with a phone or a TV. For some, they’re already on the doorstep.

The right brain is trying to warn us about an approaching leopard, but instead of acting swiftly to protect ourselves and our loved ones we are mysteriously compelled to gather more provisions.

I used to think this is ‘human nature’; that homo sapiens is innately ill-equipped to deal with future risk. Professor Albert Allen Bartlett proposed that we simply don’t understand exponential change[9]; hence the ambush of our gradualist expectations in 2023 by long-predicted weather events and corresponding alarm in media coverage.

But why then? Did the media finally wake up? Or did this signal another kind of shift?

The Usurper’s Boss

On the drive back from Gundabooka, as we crest a ridge on the far western slopes of the Great Dividing Range, we come upon a strange, new harvest taking place. An entire farm has been covered with solar panels. We try to spot a logo. And sure enough it belongs to a fossil fuel giant.

Renewables are a drop in the ocean of this company’s investments[10]. They supplement rather than reduce fossil fuel production. But they also take some tarnish off a brand otherwise known for toxic spills and seismic blasting. And they offer a promising additional line of business.

Like the ‘climate debate’ which obstructed adaptation for half a century, it’s likely the ‘climate emergency’ has less to do with our survival than that of the powerful networks which sit behind the talking heads. Does anyone really believe they had no intelligence of climate risk before? This reversal tells us only that their strategy has changed.

Suppression of healthy right brain function doesn’t help ordinary humans. But it does support the hierarchies of dominance we live within.

People at the apex of power want us working, borrowing and spending. Our alertness to any existential menace posed by this arrangement is no advantage to them. So they have redirected it to other survival pressures they control. With enough anxiety about employment, housing, and retirement we have been willing to overlook even the sixth mass extinction.

But this is pure illusion. We are entirely dependent on Earth’s continuing hospitality. And conditions are deteriorating rapidly. The recent shift from ‘climate debate’ to ‘climate emergency’ simply indicates the illusion has outlived its usefulness, and more blatant measures to control us are on the way.

The fact that humans flourished through ice ages, volcanic winters, and continent-wide transformations, while numerous other species disappeared, tells us our ancestors were masters of risk response. To evolutionary biology, the more recent reconfiguration of our brains for compulsive grabbing and getting is clearly maladaptive. But this is not self-evident to those afflicted.

If we measure success by how long a culture thrives, rather than by how much of the Earth it consumes, then our champions are the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. But through the warped lens of left brain bias, unparalleled resilience may look ‘primitive’.

Not only is the modern brain smaller; it doesn’t work very well either. So much for ‘progress’.

The Art of Living

As you travel from the outback towards the more densely populated east coast, modernity begins to crowd the senses again.

Silos, quarries, rubbish tips and wreckers yards announce small settlements which recede after a few houses and the occasional community hall or pub. The density of signage increases, advertising motels, eateries, and local fun spots. The outback salute which conjures camaraderie from the steering wheels of passing vehicles is retired as traffic thickens until you’re stopped at lights surrounded by a thicket of logos and lurid gimmickry vying for your business.

In the sanctuary of the Orange Regional Art Gallery our attention is captured by an untitled painting by Emily Kngwarreye. And for a moment it’s as if we’re back at Yapa, feeling the outback sun, the warm, dry air, and the red dirt beneath our feet.

Many Australians are probably unaware that works by Aboriginal masters hang in collections worldwide. Their appeal transcends the specificities of local culture. And the impulse to make them was more than aesthetic. Elders picked up brushes to preserve and disseminate a precious cultural heritage. Noel Sheridan said of Emily’s work that it reveals what is radical in great art.

What is radical in great art is the truth. The modern world is saturated with imagery, but little of it is of any value. Like the cacophony of cheap verbiage in our public spaces, most is designed to manipulate for commercial or political advantage. It is in fact a species of lie, sometimes wicked, sometimes merely frivolous, but always leading us away from our deepest needs and noblest impulses toward some alternative which profits someone else. Our culture has been filling up with lies for generations until we are swimming in them. And this makes art more important than ever.

The ancient art sites are in jeopardy, blown up by foreign miners, or degraded by interference and neglect. Art is no longer communal practice in the West. It’s now another commodity, marketed by an industry, valuable insofar as it can be traded and hoarded, and often coopted by brand-launderers. For most of us, direct exposure is confined to a museum of cultural fossils.

Gradually, surreptitiously, this process erodes a culture. Whatever isn’t natively a marketplace withers when made into one. Much of what we once protected, including our sciences, is compromised. Practice is redefined as production, participation as purchase, purpose as profit. It’s inherently alienating. We become tourists to our own civilization. And this marks its end point.

Only roughly a quarter of Australian adults is likely to visit an art gallery[11]. A much higher percentage is likely to visit a supermarket. And there we can see what the modern world offers in return for our surrender of knowledge, agency and culture.

Lost in the Supermarket

With the breezy tone of a telemarketer, the checkout machine endlessly repeats instructions, then polices your actions, detecting deviance in a slight pause or an extra shopping bag, demanding you give account of yourself, and raising an alarm if not entirely satisfied. It’s almost the perfect simulacrum of an officious bureaucrat. Apparently we’ll accept from machines what we find insufferable in humans.

Waiting in frustration for custodial intervention, I recall another purchase years ago from a proud Spanish fruiterer in Malaga who intercepted us disturbing his immaculate displays, saying to my partner: “Senora, por favor!”; then, deftly fluffing open a paper bag, held up each selection for our admiration till the bag was full, farewelling us with smiles as well as fruit, which tasted all the better for it. Personally, I preferred that system.

On a more level playing field, when capital needed labour, its principal enticement was upward mobility. An expanding middle class formed a bulwark against socialism. But since it captured our institutions, cornered our markets, and found machines less costly and more tractable than humans, capital sees less need for enticement. The middle class is now just another raw material to be mined.

Those with income, mortgages or savings are excavated using mock inflation and rising interest rates. Those with less – the low grade ore – are conveyed to operators in ‘education’, ‘vocational guidance’, and ‘care’, cynical euphemisms which attract what remains of government and charitable largesse. In the US, portentously, they are fed into the prison and military industrial complexes.

Clear-felling the growth of the boom years is obviously not a sustainable enterprise. But I doubt it’s intended to be. Its practitioners are hardly wise stewards. It isn’t even capitalism really. It’s more like a raid by pirates.

My fellow shoppers don’t look well. Most are overweight[12], many will be diabetic[13], the older ones also shaky and arthritic[14]. They don’t look happy either[15], despite consuming a greater portion of Earth’s resources than kings and queens of old; some appear anxious or irritated, others confused or dejected.

And their trollies also tell a story: brimming with the products of Food Inc., a few potatoes or bananas buried among processed foodstuffs, frozen meals, soft drinks, snacks and sweets; produced and delivered using fuels, fertilisers, pesticides and infrastructure made of mined materials, they are in fact fossil carbon confections; palliative rather than nutritive; and with them a portion of the disposable plastic which is replacing Earth’s marine life[16].

And when you scan the supermarket you realise this is no accident. A soundtrack of cheesy jingles and unctuous voiceovers guides shoppers past a very limited selection of the fresh produce the world grows, but one which remains reliably profitable as local producers are straightjacketed and items not in season cross carbon miles from exploited labour markets, to extensive ‘food’ aisles where scant nutritional value[17] and links to degenerative illness[18] are disguised by addictiveness and marketing acumen.

Is this how we justify the sacrifice of a liveable planet? I can’t wait to get back to camp.

What We Lost

Life around the campsite requires a lot of movement. Your musculoskeletal[19], cardiovascular[20], and lymphatic[21] systems may complain but they will thank you later. They prefer walking, climbing, bending, and stretching to office work and binge TV. And over time you’ll find yourself resynchronising activity, rest and sleep to circadian rhythms[22] in tune with planetary cycles.

Now imagine you belong to a culture which lives this way permanently. In the trusted company of intimates, within a larger cooperative group, your nervous system can maintain a ventral vagal state, optimising body chemistry, minimising stress and improving cognitive function[23].

You have been trained from infancy to breathe from your diaphragm through your nose which filters and humidifies inhaled air and infuses nitric oxide to widen blood vessels and improve circulation[24]. Your seasonal diet of local foods maintains a healthy biome in your gut[25]. The likely presence of some gut parasites reduces adverse autoimmune responses[26]. You squat to rest, defecate and give birth, which supports organ function and helps maintain core strength and flexibility[27].

There’s no denying your life is challenging. Infant mortality and risk of injury are high. Comforts and conveniences are rare. But this is the life evolution equipped you for. You are hardy, alert and resourceful. You take pleasure in your survival skills. And you have a special advantage.

You are not alone. A solitary human is a weakling in the wild, but the human collective is a kind of prodigy. Outside the few hours you spend hunting and foraging in small groups you dance, sing, paint, make, feast, gift and celebrate in larger gatherings. These are forms of what Robin Dunbar calls ‘synchrony’[28], behaviours which strengthen social bonds, build cooperation and prepare your people for whatever lies ahead. In the Twenty-first Century, research will show this is also best for personal health, happiness and longevity[29].

Because Hobbes proved a better friend than Rousseau to aristocrats and capitalists alike, his hideous caricature of unmodernised people endured, lending gratuitous endorsement to the savage rapine of European colonisers. Favourable descriptions of vanquished cultures were less helpful. But the evidence is on their side.

It was easy to look down on other cultures when European guns, germs and steel had arrived first, reducing native populations to miserable, scattered relics. But where this hadn’t occurred, in the remote Hunza and Zanskar valleys of the Himalayas, for example, or among the Abkhazians of the Caucasus and the Okinawans of Japan, early visitors were struck by how fit, healthy and happy people were[30].

Conversely, the observations unmodernised people made of visiting Europeans were seldom complementary, often characterising them as sickly, unclean, and untrustworthy, which is hard with objective hindsight to refute. Cultural defections mostly went the other way, from infamous cases like the Bounty mutiny, to obscure colonists ‘going native’[31]. Indigenous people like Eora man Bennelong who sampled what the west had to offer usually declined to stay before their own cultures were decimated.

I have no doubt such people still exist because I’ve met them. They live away from modernity where more of the ancient ways persist. And one feature not usually evident in them is trauma. Not because they evade misadventure, an endeavour only we modern humans seem to think is feasible. But rather, like other healthy mammals, they know how to release the effects of traumatic experience before these become ossified as nervous system dysregulation.

Hardship doesn’t make us miserable. Unhealed trauma does that.

Why We Need To Listen

There are Australians who reject any responsibility for Aboriginal dispossession, because it happened long ago, and it wasn’t they who caused it. But appalling statistics for Aboriginal incarceration, youth suicide and low life expectancy are present realities. And those same Australians turn a blind eye to that.

Others protest that special consideration for Aboriginal Australians divides the country. This overlooks the fact that the country is already divided, and has been since Europeans deemed it terra nullius, condemning the original inhabitants to loss of personhood. Aboriginal people don’t want more division. But there are others who do.

The announcement of the 2023 voice referendum opened a floodgate of propaganda. Many supporters were scared off. There were some legitimate concerns, one of them being that Aboriginal people have never ceded sovereignty and the voice therefore imputes to parliament and the Constitution an authority these institutions don't have. But the delirious fear-mongering was reminiscent of a previous campaign which killed a mining tax, ousted a Prime Minister, and left Australia poorer than it might have been.

The mostly foreign-owned corporations which dominate our economy, fund our major political parties and control our media want nothing standing in the way of plunder. They don’t want an Aboriginal voice to parliament. They don’t want non-Aboriginal Australians to have a voice either. The voice they care about is theirs, and its purpose is to stuff their shareholders' pockets. Australians of any kind are relevant only as impediments to be removed.

When you read the paper, watch TV or scroll on social media, that voice predominates, leaving room for only a pretense of inclusion. Many of the prominent figures, presenters and supposedly concerned citizens you'll hear from are actually paid mouthpieces. And if you have an office in Parliament House, you’ll hear barely anything else. But what’s at stake transcends even the attrition of our national sovereignty.

European settlement is quite recent in Australia. And because Aboriginal cultures are ancient, resilient and never fully assimilated, they preserve knowledge of the time before conquest and capture supplanted many other ancestral cultures with hierarchies of domination.

European settlement was facilitated by murder and theft. It’s foolish to believe otherwise. The people who did this were not superior beings, but nor were they stereotypically evil. They were exiles from calamitous cycles of conquest and capture over millennia on their own ancestral lands. They were survivors doing an empire’s dirty work.

Until we come to terms with our history, we are condemned to suffer a perennial anxiety: that what was acquired through violence may be similarly lost. Australia’s catalogue of irrational fears, from the ‘yellow peril’ to ‘boat people’, is our shadow talking. And this leaves us weak and exposed to exploitation by today’s dominant powers.

Across the world, Indigenous voices urge humankind to turn back from the abyss that centuries of reverberating trauma have opened. The Indigenous voice is the closest we have to the voice of all ancestors, the guardians of deep time, who nurtured the human world into being before ravening warlords began putting it to the sword. To disregard that voice is a terrible mistake.

Because now it is Earth’s turn to speak. To disrespect the hostess of our garden refuge is to invoke the goddess of our nightmares, with a trillion Hiroshimas in her belly, whirling through the cosmic wind in a necklace of skulls. There will be no doubt whose voice is loudest; and no blustering hero to defy the law of consequences; only ordinary mortals, struggling to survive through the dreadful and inevitable culmination of our folly. We need now, urgently, and forever the ancient wisdom we have shunned.

Sitting at my writing desk, in the quiet of a lingering twilight, I hear in mind the lonesome voice of Gundabooka, exhorting through its weird mechanical interface; and I have no need to ascertain for whom that bell tolls[32].

[1] Lanier, J (2021), “Why William Shatner Felt ‘Overwhelmed’ Looking Down on Earth From Space”, Outsider, Oct 15.

[2] Mitchell, Thomas (1839), Journal of an Expedition sent to explore the course of the River Darling in 1835 in Three Expeditions into the interior of Eastern Australia, London, T.& W. Boone.

[3] Hawks, J. (2013) “How Has the Human Brain Evolved?”, Scientific American, Jul 1.

[4] DeSilva JM, Traniello JFA, Claxton AG and Fannin LD (2021), “When and Why Did Human Brains Decrease in Size? A New Change-Point Analysis and Insights From Brain Evolution in Ants”. Front. Ecol. Evol. 9:742639. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2021.742639.

[5] Wright, T. (2022), “‘Google it, mate’: The postmodern answer to a politician’s nightmare”, The Sydney Morning Herald, Apr 13.

[6] Winchester, S. (2023), Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic, UK, William Collins.

[7] Evrigenis, Ioannis D., 'Hobbes and Rousseau on Human Nature and the State of Nature', in Karolina Hubner (ed.), Human: A History (New York, 2022; online edn, Oxford Academic, 21 Apr. 2022).

[8] McGilchrist, I (2019), The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, Second Edition, New Expanded, US, Yale University Press,.

[9] Cobb, K (2013), “Albert Bartlett: On message about exponential growth to the end”, resilience, Sept 15.

[10] Pearce, F (2008), “Greenwash: BP and the myth of a world 'Beyond Petroleum'”, The Guardian, Nov 20.

[11] Australian Bureau of Statistics 4172.0 - Arts and Culture in Australia: A Statistical Overview, 2008 (First Edition).

[12] Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2017-18). Overweight and obesity. ABS. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/health-conditions-and-risks/overweight-and-obesity/latest-release.

[13] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2023). Diabetes: Australian facts. Retrieved from https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/diabetes/diabetes

[14] Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2022). Long-term health conditions. ABS. https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/long-term-health-conditions.

[15] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2022). Mental health: prevalence and impact. Retrieved from https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/mental-health/mental-health

[16] Robertson, D., (2020), “Plastic bags and food packages killing Australia's marine animals”, abc.net.au, Dec 14.

[17] Hoffman, R., (2022), “Ultra-processed foods: it’s not just their low nutritional value that’s a concern”, Mindfood, Sep 13.

[18] Solan, M., (2022), “Cutting back on ultra-processed foods linked with lower dementia risk”, Harvard Medical School, Nov 1.

[19] Kell, R. T., Bell, G., and Quinney, A. (2001), Musculoskeletal Fitness, Health Outcomes and Quality of Life, Sports Med 2001; 31 (12): 863-873.

[20] Nystoriak MA, Bhatnagar A. Cardiovascular Effects and Benefits of Exercise. Front Cardiovasc Med. 2018 Sep 28;5:135. doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2018.00135. PMID: 30324108; PMCID: PMC6172294.

[21]Alexander, H., (2019), “Exercise and The Lymphatic System”, University of Texas, MD Anderson Centre, Nov.

[22] Acosta-Rodríguez, V.A., Rijo-Ferreira, F., Green, C.B. et al. Importance of circadian timing for aging and longevity. Nat Commun 12, 2862 (2021).

[23] Porges, S. W. (2017), The pocket guide to the polyvagal theory: The transformative power of feeling safe, W W Norton & Co.

[24]Nestor, J (2020), Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, UK, Riverhead Books.

[25] Alt KW, Al-Ahmad A, Woelber JP. Nutrition and Health in Human Evolution-Past to Present. Nutrients. 2022 Aug 31;14(17):3594. doi: 10.3390/nu14173594. PMID: 36079850; PMCID: PMC9460423.

[26] Zaccone P, Fehervari Z, Phillips JM, Dunne DW, Cooke A. Parasitic worms and inflammatory diseases. Parasite Immunol. 2006 Oct;28(10):515-23. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-3024.2006.00879.x. PMID: 16965287; PMCID: PMC1618732.

[27] Gersema, E., (2020), “Squatting and kneeling may be better for your health than sitting”, USC News, Mar 9.

[28] Dunbar, R. (2021), Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships, Little, Brown; 1st edition.

[29] Gordon, I., (2020), ‘What is Synchrony and Why is it Important? The coordination between individuals that helps us understand social bonds”, Psychology Today, Jun 12.

[30] Goss, R. (2020), “This island unlocked the secret to long life—and knows how to get through tough times”, National Geographic, Oct 12.

[31] Graeber, D., and Wengrow, D. (2021), The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, US, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

[32] John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and severall steps in my Sicknes,Meditation XVII:

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.