We are, so says the current argument, tribal hunter-gatherers decked out in modern clothes. However a strong case can be made for the possibility that human biology has continued to evolve during the ten thousand years since Jericho's builders erected the first city walls.
Genes change far more speedily than most evolutionary psychologists realize.
Natural selection has had 400 generations to rework our bodies and our brains since the days when Catal Huyuk, Suberde, and Tepe Yahya joined Jericho's mesh of intercity trade. Four thousand years before the rise of the Sumerian cities of Ur, Uruk, and Kish, Stone Age metropolises from Anatolia to the edges of India were already rich in challenges and opportunities. These urban traps and niches may well have been selectors forming much of what we are today. Homo urbanis has not only arrived, he has long since elbowed Homo tribalis far off to the side. All rights reserved.