Kill the Economy

[OKIsItJustMe]

164. My key point is this

• The earliest European farmers appear to be genetically different from the hunter-gatherers.
• Height should not be used to judge the relative health of different populations.

I know it’s popular to dream of some idyllic time, “before the fall.” (People have been doing that for millennia.)

I think the living was hard for the farmers and the hunter-gatherers. However, a decision was made (over the course of millennia) that, on the balance, farming was the better path. It seems quite odd to me to suggest that over the course of millennia, humans blindly wandered down a dramatically worse path.


http://dx.doi.orgi/10.1002/ajpa.21301

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Paleopathology and the origin of agriculture in the Levant[/font]

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Article first published online: 27 MAY 2010

DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.21301

[font size=4]Abstract[/font]

[font size=3]This study addresses changes in health which were consequential to the Neolithic transition in the southern Levant, judged on the basis of the study of specific and nonspecific stress indicators, trauma, and degenerative joint disease in 200 Natufian (hunter-gatherer) skeletons (10,500–8300 BC) and 205 Neolithic (agricultural) skeletons (8300–5500 BC) from the southern Levant. The comparison of the health profiles of pre-Neolithic (Natufian) and Neolithic populations reveals a higher prevalence of lesions indicative of infectious diseases among the Neolithic population, and an overall reduction in the prevalence of skull trauma among males. No change over time was observed in the prevalence of degenerative joint disease. These results indicate that in the southern Levant the Neolithic transition did not simply lead to an overall deterioration in health but rather resulted in a complex health profile which was shaped by 1) an increase exposure to disease agents, 2) changes in diet, 3) population aggregation in larger and denser settlements, 4) changes in activity patterns and the division of labor, and possibly 5) a higher resistant immunological system and response capacity to environmental aggressions (mainly infections). Am J Phys Anthropol 143:121–133, 2010. © 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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