Posted on 06/15/2011 7:13:01 AM PDT by decimon
When populations around the globe started turning to agriculture around 10,000 years ago, regardless of their locations and type of crops, a similar trend occurred: The height and health of the people declined.
“This broad and consistent pattern holds up when you look at standardized studies of whole skeletons in populations,” says Amanda Mummert, an Emory graduate student in anthropology.
Mummert (in photo at right) led the first comprehensive, global review of the literature regarding stature and health during the agriculture transition, to be published by the journal Economics and Human Biology.
“Many people have this image of the rise of agriculture and the dawn of modern civilization, and they just assume that a more stable food source makes you healthier,” Mummert says. “But early agriculturalists experienced nutritional deficiencies and had a harder time adapting to stress, probably because they became dependent on particular food crops, rather than having a more significantly diverse diet.”
She adds that growth in population density spurred by agriculture settlements led to an increase in infectious diseases, likely exacerbated by problems of sanitation and the proximity to domesticated animals and other novel disease vectors.
Eventually, the trend toward shorter stature reversed, and average heights for most populations began increasing. The trend is especially notable in the developed world during the past 75 years, following the industrialization of food systems.
(Excerpt) Read more at esciencecommons.blogspot.com ...
Cultivated ping.
White men can’t jump.
Or maybe the weak and infirm stopped STARVING?
Domestication of animals certainly did result in new diseases. We started catching diseases that the animals had, like TB and anthrax.
Quite possibly.
However, if you keep the weak and infirm alive, the average health of the population goes down.
The most important effect of agriculture was that it supported much denser populations, 10x to 50x per square mile.
This meant that a food-growing tribe would defeat a hunting and gathering tribe just about every time, even if the individual hunters were on average bigger, stronger and probably better with their weapons.
Should we whack the weak and infirm?
Nope, but if we did the average health of the group would increase.
That’s just a fact, the same as if we shoot all short people the average height of the survivors would go up, and if we kill everybody over 40 the average age of the population will drop considerably.
Doesn’t mean those who recognize these facts are proposing them as policies we should implement.
Similarly, a side effect of keeping alive those who would otherwise die is that the average health of the group drops.
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*nully ducking and running for cover*
Keeping them in the living quarters didn't help, either...
No, but it’s silly to pretend that keeping people alive, perhaps to reproduce, who would die in a “state of nature” doesn’t have effects on society and the human organism.
For one thing, it is very obvious that in advanced societies, particularly in Europe, the people we normally consider “successful” are far less likely to reproduce than the “unsuccessful.”
Without getting too far into eugenics mode, it’s pretty obvious that we’ve set up an anti-Darwinian “survival of the least fit” scenario. A recent book postulated that the dominance of England over the last 300 years was directly related to their middle and upper classes having a considerably higher rate of reproduction than the lower classes, unlike any other European society. As a result, middle and upper class attitudes and genes were pushed “down” into society, which made it more dynamic than the competition. Looking around our society, it appears we’re doing the reverse.
If one believes in Darwinism, or even in the laws of genetics, there is no way this will not have some impact on the average level of human intelligence, at least in those societies practicing it.
Successful people are a good deal more reproductive in this country than in Europe, but one need only drop by Walmart as opposed to an upscale mall to notice the rather dramatic disparity in number of children around. Over time, these disparities are IMPORTANT, but we aren’t even allowed to discuss them.
Sometimes nully is incapable of not being a shit disturber...
In my own defense, I suspect FR is screwing up, or possibly under some kind of hack attack.
In my own defense, I suspect FR is screwing up, or possibly under some kind of hack attack.
In my own defense, I suspect FR is screwing up, or possibly under some kind of hack attack.
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