Homo schlubicus : the end product of 6 million years of useless parts tagging along

Over the last 6 million years our hominid lineage has morphed into our supposedly majestic species, Homo sapiens. A fine‐tuned brain, carefully honed vocal tract, and distinctive musculoskeletal frame have positioned us as the lord of our planet. Yet our regal corpus has brought with it a host of odd, often useless, sometimes dangerous, baggage. These include reductions (vestiges, such as the coccyx), useless leftovers (atavisms, such as supernumery teeth) and odd byproducts (spandrels, such as the cavities of paranasal sinuses). Less often considered are longitudinal hangers‐on (which could be termed "longitudinal vestiges") that remain as we age, living, as it were, past the original "warranty" of our species. Indeed, the nexus of longevity and lifestyle yields an array of parts that marginally work: ears that can not hear, eyes that fail to see, knees that do not bend, taste‐buds that can not taste, and parts that leak, squirt and swell when we least want (can anyone say "prostate"?). The end product is a species whose sapient nature may be within, but whose corporeal being has become ungainly, un‐functional and overall unattractive, or to borrow the more descriptive term from informal Yiddish, we've become an unfortunate "new" species of the 21 st century: Homo schlubicus