The Future of Sapiens and Verticality

The Future of Sapiens and Verticality is the result of an encounter, more than twenty years ago, between human paleontology and osteopathy. It is part of a radical paradigm shift in our understanding of the origins of our anatomy. This book presents a profound challenge to the dominant evolutionary narrative since Lamarck (1802), abandoning the scenario of the quadrupedal tree-dwelling ape forced to stand upright, following the disappearance of trees. The discovery of the embryonic origin of the central nervous system (CNS), which began around forty million years ago and continued to grow in complexity, has profoundly changed this interpretation. This discovery has led us to recognize "Sapiens" as the final threshold of an evolutionary process that confronts us with a real problem: while verticality has been achieved, the progression of CNS complexity continues unabated. This book seeks to anticipate the consequences of this dynamic on psychomotor, psychoaffective and cognitive development, as well as on occlusal and postural balance.