THE NAUTICAL ORIGINS OF HUMAN BIOLOGY
We humans are veritable landlubbers nowadays, going about our lives in offices, homes, and cities that are distinctly un-oceanic. Yet our bodies carry countless remnants of our maritime evolutionary origins - a soggy inheritance from the primordial waters that gave rise to life itself billions of years ago.
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One such nautical nod? The salt water that springs forth from our eyes when we cry. That’s right, those salty tears aren’t just memorable from swallowing too much seawater at the beach as a kid. The chemical composition of our tears is strikingly similar to ocean seawater, containing many of the same mineral salts like sodium chloride.
t’s an aquatic quirk that stems from our transition from oceanic creatures to terrestrial ones over the unfathomable depths of evolutionary time. Eons ago, our very ancient ancestors were marine organisms whose teary “perspiration” was simply the surrounding saltwater environment. As animal life gradually emerged from the oceans to inhabit land, this saltwater essence was retained in our tear ducts as a biochemical relic.
Bizarre as it sounds, your tears are the ocean’s bittersweet watermark, an echo of the vast seas from whence we came. It’s one of the many insights into our ancient biological ties to the natural world that I explore in my new book, “The Light Within Us: Biophilic Design for Connection and Wellbeing.”
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In the book, I delve into the latest neuroscience research revealing why spaces imbued with natural patterns, materials, and sensory experiences inherited from our evolutionary journey so profoundly impact our physical and mental health. Our hunter-gatherer forebears evolved into the creatures we are today by intimately inhabiting the landscapes of lakes, savannas, forests, and seashores. Those environments quite literally shaped us from the inside-out through millions of years of genetic adaptation.
In the modern world, we’ve become disconnected from those roots, spending 90% of our lives indoors amidst artificial environments of steel, plastic, and concrete. Biophilic design is all about strategically reintegrating those organic, primal qualities we all subconsciously resonate with in order to feel restored, focused, and sustained.
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The book offers a practical, science-backed, and easy-to-follow roadmap for using biophilic elements like living walls, natural lighting, wooden interiors, and fractal patterns to create more nurturing and humanistic interior spaces for homes, workplaces, schools, and beyond. It’s an entertaining and enriching read for designers and non-designers alike that examines our species’ profound connection to nature.
So while the seawater that pools in our eyes is a bit of an evolutionary oddity, it embodies the ethos that reconnecting with nature’s embrace is key to our collective flourishing. After all, we’re only renting this planetary home. The oceans have been here for far longer and our roots ultimately go back to the briny blue depths
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