Kill the Economy

[NoOneMan]

74. Head back to the "hahahaha"

More....

The importance of stature for birth complications was
well recognized by early 20th century obstetricians, who
noted high rates of perinatal mortality in the main urban
centers of 19th century industrialization (Baird, 1949; Illsley, 1966).
Illsley identified strong north-south gradients in
both perinatal mortality, and in maternal height. Within
each geographical region, and within social classes, perinatal mortality
and maternal height remained correlated. A
large proportion of this association (e.g. 1,058 of 1,282 caesarean
sections performed in 1911) could be attributed to
rickets, which involved significant flattening of the pelvis in
response to nutritional deficiencies during early maternal
development (Dick, 1922).

Amongst the forager populations, all have low
frequencies of perinatal and infant skeletons, ranging from 0 to
6.5% of the skeletal assemblage, and combined perinatal
and infant mortality does not exceed 6.5%. In contrast,
perinatal and infant mortality among the three agricultural
groups ranges from 31.3% (Arikara) to 35.5% (Teotihuacan).
High levels of infant mortality amongst agricultural
populations are not unexpected, and may be
related to higher levels of infectious disease. The proportions
of perinatal skeletons in the Teotihuacan (31.3%)
and Dakhleh Oasis (18.2%, minimal estimate, based on
estimates provided in the text of the article) are of particular
interest, in that they might suggest high levels of
obstetric mortality.

With regard to contemporary Homo sapiens, we
suggest that the magnitude of the dilemma is sensitive to
several ecological pressures including the thermal environment,
dietary energy availability and glycemic load,
and infectious disease burden. In turn, we suggest that
these ecological stresses may each have become exacerbated
during the transition to agriculture, acting on both
maternal and fetal phenotype, such that the obstetric dilemma
may have been worse in the last few thousand
years than was the case for Pleistocene Homo.

Think about that. The studied forager populations didn't have a combined perinatal and infant mortality rate over 6.5% (not the nightmare you probably envisioned from hearing about how bad pre-modern medicine civilized society was).

On this, I think we can safely agree to disagree