Читать книгу Super Human: The Bulletproof Plan to Age Backward and Maybe Even Live Forever онлайн

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Fast-forward from our caveman ancestor to the beginnings of recorded history, and we find proof that humans have been seeking immortality since we started writing things down. About 2,400 years ago, the pharaohs of Egypt in Alexandria devoted an enormous amount of their wealth and power to a quest for “eternal life.” In China, Taoist philosophers placed a tremendous amount of value on longevity. To achieve it, they focused on internal alchemy (visualizations, nutrition, meditation, self-control, and even sexual exercises) and external alchemy (breathing techniques, physical exercises, yoga, medical skills, and producing an “elixir of immortality” using various purified metals and complex compounds). In India, the theme of prolonged life emerged in Ayurvedic texts as rasayana, the science of lengthening life-span.

You could say to yourself, “Great, a couple thousand years ago, some crazy people wanted to live a long time. They’re dead now.” Except … these life-extending self-proclaimed alchemists are part of a lineage of biohackers that includes some of the most influential forefathers of modern science and medicine, such as Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Paracelsus, Tycho Brahe, and Robert Boyle. (Unfortunately, most female alchemists are not well known because they were accused of practicing witchcraft and killed.) The quest to live longer drove the scientific revolution, and it’s reasonable to say that the technology you rely on today would not exist without our core drive to live longer.