Ape Evolution Did Not Cause Back Pain in Humans
More evidence shows that
back pain is not due to poor
design resulting from
human evolution from apes
Destroying another Darwinian claim
by Jerry Bergman, PhD
Up to 90% of all Americans suffer at least one debilitating episode of back pain during their lives.[1] A new study reviewed in this paper looked into the causes of low back pain (LBP), a malady that
affects people of all ages and is the leading cause of functional health loss, estimated to account for 7.7% of all years lived with disability. In the US, back pain is the most common type of chronic pain, and LBP accounts for the highest health care spending, along with neck pain. The burden of LBP is projected to increase in the coming decades, posing a substantial challenge to the sustainability of health care systems. To reduce this burden, it is essential to identify modifiable factors that can be targeted through policy and preventive actions.[2]
The cause of back pain is, for these reasons, a central issue in healthcare.
Blame the problem on evolution
Secular scientists have long excused the epidemic of low back pain in Western society on evolution. One evolutionist, Michael Sims, made it a centerpiece of his discussion. In a chapter of his 2003 book Adams Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form, subtitled, “Two Legs Good and Bad, ” he discussed the advantages of bipedal walking, but asserted that one major problem resulting from the transition from quadrupedal to bipedal locomotion in humans was pain, especially back pain. Sims assumed that this transition actually occurred, and then made it central to his postulate about disadvantages in walking upright on two legs:
Unfortunately, our ancestors’ quadrupedal bodies seem to have been poorly prepared for the daily stress of being upstanding citizens. Bipedality caused an array of ills, from back and neck trouble to the unusual amount of pain human mothers experience… Backaches support countless practitioners of medicine and pseudomedicine… sciatica is epidemic with discectomies common—because we are walking bipedally with a skeleton designed for quadrupeds.”[3]
Other Darwinians, like Sims, have also assumed that humans inherited a defective back design as a result of evolution from some theoretical quadrupedal primate ancestor.
It all started with Huxley & Haeckel
Doctors Infected by Darwinian Fallacies
The spread of this belief affected doctors’ thinking, too. Because medical professionals were taught that evolution gave us a poor skeletal design, they would prescribe ineffective treatments, such as bed rest and powerful pain relievers. An internet search confirms this: “The reasoning behind bed rest as a treatment was that, if the back was injured, rest would allow it to heal, similar to how other injuries are treated. Consequently, bed rest became a standard treatment for most of the 20th century.”[4]
Unfortunately, the evolutionary explanation tended to close the door to searching for other treatments. It eventually became obvious, though, that bed rest and pain relievers did not help certain patients, whereas regular daily walking did. Due to feedback from their patients, some medical practitioners eventually began looking at the walking solution as a viable treatment. The result was publication of several small, focused studies that supported this solution.[5],[6],[7]
A new 2025 study buries the evolutionary myth
The newest well-conceived study (and by far the largest) involved over 11,000 participants.[8] Lead author Rayane Haddadj et al., publishing in the Journal American Medical Association (JAMA), wanted to evaluate the beneficial effects of walking as a means of reducing back pain.
Walk to reduce back pain; don’t rely on Darwinian advice.
It is true that walking can pose challenges in certain situations, such as for individuals with deformed spines or other abnormalities. Even in those cases, however, therapeutic interventions by qualified professionals, such as physical therapists, can effectively mitigate these issues through tailored walking programs. The walking therapy discussed here refers primarily to healthy persons prone to non-pathogenic back problems. Poor posture is clearly implicated in back pain issues, yet in these cases walking frequently emerges as a significant contributing factor in managing and alleviating the discomfort.
The team’s results provided further support of my conclusions in my previous writings on this topic. My first article, showing that back pain was not due to our evolution from knuckle walking apes to upright walking humans, was written 24 years ago.[9] It was the cover story of the Journal of Creation in 2001, advertised with the following words: “Darwin’s Harmful Back Therapies: Wrong Assumptions for Back Pain.”
The forbidden cure goes mainstream! Click to watch the Short Reel about this article.
Although many sources now validate my view view of back pain,[10] the new large peer-reviewed JAMA study helps ensure that the “poor design caused by evolution” claim will vanish into the growing pile of forgotten evolutionary myths.
Details on the JAMA findings
This latest study used a population-based cohort of 11,194 participants. It was directed by Professor Rayane Haddadj of the Department of Public Health, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. The results found an inverse association between walking volume and the risk of chronic low back pain. In other words, generally speaking, the more one walked each day, the lower the back-pain risk! This is the opposite of the evolutionary position that viewed walking as the cause of low back pain. The authors state,
Walking for more than 100 minutes per day was associated with a 23% lower risk of chronic low back pain compared with walking less than 78 minutes per day. Walking intensity, meaning fast walking just short of running, was also associated with lowering the risk of chronic low back pain, but to a lesser degree than walking volume, meaning how far or long one walked. The findings support the idea that walking volume may have a more pronounced benefit than walking intensity.[11]
In other words, what matters most is not how fast you walk but how long you walk. Those who suffer from LBP now have something they can do about it.
Our bodies are well designed, including our upright posture, spine, and muscles.
Summary
The widespread belief that back pain was largely—or at least significantly—due to poor design resulting from our evolution from apes led doctors and scientists to overlook other possible causes and treatments. The study reviewed in this paper is the first comprehensive examination involving over 11,000 subjects. The scientists used proper controls to determine the benefits of walking in reducing back pain in healthy adults. The findings strongly support the increased activity of walking as a therapeutic approach to back pain. There’s no more reason to blame it on evolution. Go take a walk—for health.
References
[1] Goldmann, David, and David Horowitz, American College of Physicians Guide to Back Pain, Dorling Kindersley, New York, NY, p. 200, 2000.
[2] Haddadj, Rayane, et al., “Volume and intensity of walking and risk of chronic low back pain,” https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2835297, 13 June 2025.
[3] Sims, Michael, Adams Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form, Viking Press, New York, NY, p. 275, 2003.
[4] https://www.google.com/search?q=one+reason+doctors+concluded+that+the+back+pain+problem+was+poor+ design+of+out+back+and+the+treatment+was+bedrest+and+use+of+powerful+pain+relievers.
[5] Pocovi, N.C., et al., “Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an individualized, progressive walking and education intervention for the prevention of low back pain recurrence in Australia (WalkBack): a randomized controlled trial,” The Lancet 404(10448):134-144, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(24)00755-4, 13 July 2024.
[6] Haddadj, et al, “Volume and intensity of walking and risk of chronic low back pain,” JAMA Network, 13 June 2025.
[7] Hanson, S., and A. Jones, “Is there evidence that walking groups have health benefits? A systematic review and meta-analysis,” British Journal of Sports Medicine 49(11):710-715, doi:10.1136/bjsports-2014-094157, June 2015.
[8] Haddadj, et al., 2025.
[9] Bergman, Jerry, “Back problems: How Darwinism misled researchers,” Journal of Creation 15(3):79–84, December 2001.
[10] Bergman, Jerry, “Evolution did not cause back pain. Darwin proved wrong again!,” https://crev.info/2019/09/evolution-did-not-cause-back-pain/, 6 September 2019.
[11] Haddadj, et al., 2025.
Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,900 publications in 14 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.