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As opposed to other externally-caused problems like natural disasters, beating eaten by lions, etc. I would guess that a large chunk of human history was domin
by airza 6y ago
As opposed to other externally-caused problems like natural disasters, beating eaten by lions, etc. I would guess that a large chunk of human history was dominated by these problems.
- xkjkls 6y agoOr just hunger in general. Before the agriculture revolution starvation was the primary cause of human death.
- fjeoyk 6y agoI would have thought the opposite would be true, hunter gatherers are generally well fed from a variety of food sources, would have lived in low densities and would have been highly mobile, so in the event one food source become scarce they could move elsewhere, or switch foods. Early agriculturalists would have been stuck in once place reliant on a single, or few, food source/s and therefore vulnerable to failed harvests for a variety of reasons, droughts, natural disasters, theft (of stores, if they are lucky enough to farm food that can be stored) etc.
- soledades 6y agoYou would be correct. Preagricultural peoples exerted reproductive control so they were not vulnerable kind of population crunches that affect other species. Diverse food webs were also more reliable and nutritious than what was available to the early agriculturalists, as you say.
- jacobr1 6y agoAre there good studies that show this? Like a big survey of recovered bone/dental evidence over centuries? It certainly seems plausible to me, but I'd be fascinated to review the data and how it correlates to time and geography.
- ckosidows 6y agoWas it? I know a couple books[1] that suggest life prior to the agricultural revolution wasn't nearly as famine-stricken as we tend to think it was. These books claim hunter gatherers were quite proficient at finding enough sustenance. Obviously starvation was still possible and likely, but was it the primary cause of death? Is there some more evidence that humans were suffering from starvation before agriculture? Wouldn't populations thin out and stabilize accordingly if starvation was such a problem? [1] - _Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind_ and _Sex at Dawn_
- nmz 6y ago"Thin out" is this another word for dying?
- colejohnson66 6y agoIt could also mean just spreading out. So less dense civilizations, but the same amount of people.
- kbenson 6y agoIn could, but that's generally not what it means when applied in this way. You don't thin out a a herd (which is where I think that phrase is most often used in English) by spreading it over a larger area, but by removing a percentage of the individuals that make up the herd.
- adolph 6y agoIf you have lived a good life, is dying a problem?
- runarberg 6y agoWas it? I wasn’t aware of that? Is this also the case of non-human omnivores? If not, at which point in our evolution did this start to be the case, e.g. during Australopithecus or Homo Erectus? And is it also the case for humans that don’t live in agricultural or industrial societies today (such as tribes deep in the jungles of Papua New Guinea)?
- soledades 6y agoThis is incorrect: > "The bones of 'domiciled' Homo sapiens compared with those of hunter-gatherers are also distinctive: they are smaller; the bones and teeth often bear the signature of nutritional distress, in particular, an iron-deficiency anemia marked above all in women of reproductive age whose diets consist increasingly of grains" from Against the Grain see also: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917328/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917328/
- Godel_unicode 6y agoMineral deficiency is a chronic lack of a particular nutrient, starvation is an acute lack.
- soledades 6y agoThere is such a thing as chronic starvation, and the smaller bones reflect that, not mineral deficiency. The linked article addresses famine more specifically.
- Godel_unicode 6y agoIt does not.
- asdff 6y agoI don't think having the poor in cities like SF root in trash for nutrients counts as solving starvation