Environment & Energy
In reply to the discussion: Kill the Economy [View all]NoOneMan
(4,795 posts)Foragers still exist that have not yet been over-run by civilization, which has been discussed in this thread already. Where they were replaced it isn't actually a mechanism of "natural selection" but complex social interaction and ecology; since the advent of agriculture, which genes are propagated are not really a representation of that which nature judges as "fitter".
There probably was not a lot of significant genetic variations between the two groups in general (or all humans for that matter), but rather, their health was more dependent upon ecological conditions instead of genetics. So when I'm talking about health degradations from agriculture, I'm not talking about genetic "fitness", but rather nutritional consequences from changes in diet. The evoking of "natural selection" as an explanation for the dominance of agriculturalists was based on a misunderstanding of the situation in my opinion.