Stress has long been a trendy buzzword, yet humanity has been grappling with stress since time immemorial. For prehistoric humans, an encounter with a giant mammoth could have been just as stressful as our encounter with an angry boss. However, the basic mechanisms by which we cope with stress have roots closer to mammoths than to bosses. It always comes down to a choice between fight and flight. When confronting a proboscidean, it was clear what constituted an attack and what didn't, and what flight looked like. Today, we only laboriously (and often unsuccessfully) attempt to transform these mechanisms into a socially acceptable form. More here.