The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by

Brock Armstrong.

Our primal fear of dying.

Many, if not most of us, have experienced at least one moment when we truly thought we were going to die.

Maybe it was a plane ride from hell, or a seemingly final diagnosis, a grim combat situation, or many,

a frightening near miss on the highway, a serious assault, even a childbirth gone suddenly and inexplicably

awry. Whatever the event, the experience can set off everything from tearful surrender to abject

terror. It begs the question, is there anything quite so primal as the fear of death? I occasionally get mail about the fear of death.

I believe we all think about it. Probably much more than we let on, and it doesn't surprise me

at all when people write about it. When you open up the door to discussion of innate instinct,

I think it's a logical thought that comes up.

From an evolutionary perspective, of course, we're wired for survival.

It's the name of the evolutionary game itself,

surviving and making sure our kin do as well in order to procreate and protect the genetic line.

We're built to fear death because how else were we to live?

We fear ostracization because in primordial times, we weren't likely to survive on our own.

We fear conflict because in some deep primeval chamber, we associate it with death or disorder that can put the entire group at risk.

Our ancestral memory can likewise flinch at the suggestion of want, neglect, or even change.

Tens of thousands of years ago, there wasn't much room for error.

Likewise, the visibility of death was much greater in the primeval world.

Risk was rampant, and Grock, in all likelihood, saw many of his clan succumb to everything

from animal attacks, to accidental injury, to childbirth, to inter-clan skirmishes. Animals died around them every day, the work of other animals, the ravages of age and starvation,

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