Ancient Brains in a Modern World
“The brain did not evolve in order to understand itself.” David Abrams
Before there were trees, before there were fish, before even eyes existed, there were sponges.
They sat on the ocean floor, quietly filtering water, cleaning ancient seas, and setting the stage for oxygen to rise.
And from that quiet rhythm of filtration came the first domino in a 600 million year sequence that would lead, eventually, to us: creatures capable of thought, emotion, reflection, and, oddly enough, anxiety about emails.
The Long Dawn: Four Billion Years of Becoming
Okay, let’s slow down and rewind.
Life on Earth began around 3.8 to 4 billion years ago, when chemical reactions in warm, mineral-rich waters formed self-replicating molecules. The earliest cells were simple, anaerobic bacteria that didn’t need oxygen, feeding on chemical energy from the Earth itself.
For nearly two billion years, that was it. Microbes ruled the planet. They covered rocks, floated in the seas, and quietly changed the atmosphere molecule by molecule.
Then, about 2.4 billion years ago, a group of cyanobacteria evolved a new trick: photosynthesis. They began releasing oxygen as a waste product, triggering the Great Oxidation Event.
It was both a catastrophe and a miracle.
Oxygen poisoned most early life, but for those that adapted, it unlocked a far more efficient way to use energy. And the stage was now set for complexity.
Sponges, Symbiosis, and the Rise of Animals
Fast forward to around 800-600 million years ago. The oceans were still murky, low in oxygen, and dominated by single-celled organisms.
Then came sponges, Earth’s first true multicellular animals.
By pumping water through their porous bodies, they filtered out bacteria and organic debris, clarifying the oceans and allowing oxygen to penetrate deeper into the seas. That seemingly small act - filtration - stabilized ecosystems and helped maintain oxygen levels high enough for other complex organisms to evolve.
This period was followed by the Cambrian Explosion, an evolutionary Big Bang that produced the ancestors of almost every major animal group alive today.
Nervous systems appeared. Eyes evolved.
Movement and predation transformed life into a dynamic, interconnected web.
For the first time, animals had to sense, decide, and act.
The first psychology - if we can call it that - was born.
The Human Line: From Survival to Self-Awareness
Around six million years ago, our ancestors split from the lineage we share with chimpanzees.
For most of the time since, we lived as hunter-gatherers, small bands moving through shifting landscapes, shaped by an ecology of scarcity, threat, and deep interdependence.
By two million years ago, Homo erectus had mastered fire, communal living, and long-distance cooperation. marking the dawn of social intelligence.
And by around 250–300 thousand years ago, Homo sapiens appeared with brains, hormones, and nervous systems almost identical to our own.
That’s worth pausing on.
Every fear, craving, and emotional reflex you experience today was forged in that world, not in offices, cities, or Slack channels.
Our prefrontal cortex evolved to predict and plan for survival, not to juggle ten browser tabs.
Our amygdala evolved to detect predators, not ambiguous emojis.
Our dopamine system evolved to reward foraging, exploration, and social approval within a tribe of 150 people. not infinite scrolling through curated lives of millions.
For roughly 99.9 % of our species’ history, these systems worked beautifully.
They helped us read faces, sense danger, find belonging, and cooperate under stress.
They made us adaptable, resilient, and remarkably successful animals.
The Great Acceleration
Then - almost overnight in evolutionary time - everything changed.
10,000 years ago: Agriculture anchored us to the soil. Surplus created hierarchy and property.
5,000 years ago: Writing, trade, and empire rewired social complexity.
250 years ago: The Industrial Revolution compressed human energy into machines and clocks.
70 years ago: The Information Age digitised knowledge and collapsed distance.
30 years ago: The Digital Age placed a super-stimulating world inside our pockets.
In evolutionary terms, this acceleration is faster than the blink of a synapse.
Our nervous systems - tuned for rhythmic cycles of hunt, gather, rest, connect - are now bathed in constant novelty, speed, and noise.
The brain that once scanned the savanna for lions now scans for the next notification.
The same surge of cortisol that once fuelled the chase now fires while you sit still, reading urgent emails under fluorescent light.
The Mismatch: Ancient Wiring, Modern Distress
This is what I would describe as the evolutionary mismatch - the gap between what our bodies expect and what our world delivers.
And that gap explains much of modern psychological struggle:
Anxiety: our ancient threat system, always on guard for predators, now detects danger in messages, meetings, and imagined judgments.
Burnout: the drive system that once surged briefly for survival now runs constantly in a world that never lets us switch off.
Depression: a loss of meaning and belonging; our motivational circuits go quiet when life feels disconnected from purpose or tribe.
Loneliness: our social brain, once surrounded by kin, now substitutes screens for faces and wonders why the ache doesn’t fade.
Shame and fear of rejection: once, exile from the group meant death; today, even mild disapproval can trigger the same neural alarm.
We were designed for survival and we’re superb at it.
But for many of us, survival is no longer the daily battle.
The modern challenge is the battle for meaning: to use ancient machinery built for staying alive in the service of living well.
That’s a harder task.
There’s no evolutionary blueprint for purpose, creativity, or fulfilment.
Our biology is exquisitely tuned to avoid what’s wrong; it’s less practiced at building what’s right.
The Long View And the Work Ahead
When you understand this long arc of evolution - from the first spark of life, to sponges cleaning the ancient seas, to early humans navigating firelight and predators - modern psychology begins to make sense in a completely different way.
Your stress is not a personal failing.
Your anxiety is not a character flaw.
Your burnout is not a lack of resilience or willpower.
Your loneliness is not evidence that you’re unlovable.
These are biological echoes, ancient patterns trying (and often struggling) to interpret a world they were never designed for.
We inherited a brain optimised for:
danger that was real
rest that was guaranteed
tribes that were small
pace that was slow
purpose that was shared
But today’s world asks that same brain to face:
symbolic risks (emails, uncertainty, reputation, “what people think of me”)
uninterrupted stimulation
social comparison with millions
zero natural downtime
a constant pressure to “achieve” without ever defining why
For our ancestors, the daily struggle was survival.
For us - the privileged for whom survival isn’t a daily fight - the struggle has shifted.
We’re no longer fighting to stay alive; we’re fighting to feel alive.
And that is a far harder battle, because there is no sabre-toothed tiger to outrun, no tribe elder to guide the way, no instinctive path to meaning.
Modern purpose is something we must build, shape, choose.
This is why the work I do exists.
Not to make people superhuman but to help people understand the humans they already are.
To help ambitious, intelligent, overwhelmed people make peace with the biology they carry.
To give teams the psychological footing their ancestors once found around fires.
To teach leaders how to work with their ancient wiring, rather than constantly fighting against it.
To replace shame with understanding, exhaustion with clarity, disconnection with belonging.
Ultimately, everything I teach - whether in therapy, coaching, workshops, or this newsletter - comes back to one foundational truth:
