4 ms·

And yet, where are the hunter gatherers? Seems the agriculture people won, for the most part. Also, how long exactly does it take human digestion to adapt? Are

by Tichy 14y ago

And yet, where are the hunter gatherers? Seems the agriculture people won, for the most part. Also, how long exactly does it take human digestion to adapt? Are there any studies about that? Bear in mind that not only the human genome is involved, but also bacteria and so on in the gut. Who knows, perhaps part of the human success story is that they can adapt to lots of different diets quickly (humans living in the weirdest places with constrained food sources). I've read that for example lactose tolerance (the ability to digest dairy products as an adult) spread relatively quickly through the population (can't find exact quotation right now, unfortunately :-( ).

alecdibble 14y ago
"And yet, where are the hunter gatherers? Seems the agriculture people won, for the most part." There are no hunter gatherers because agriculture will guarantee a more prosperous and growing population. There is absolutely no doubt about that. However, just because hunter-gatherers died off doesn't mean their average health was less than the average health of the agricultural population. In fact, the hunter gatherers that were proficient enough to survive were probably much, much healthier than agriculture population. (This is assuming both populations are getting enough nutrients that malnutrition is not a factor.) Even though the average health of the agricultural population may have been lower, the methods allowed more in the population to survive. In a food constrained world, this is the optimal solution for health. We don't have the problems of food constraint (at least in the first world provided you have an income). That is why now we can look back out or diets and selectively pick and choose the most optimal combinations because there is no longer a problem of food scarcity.

4 ms·

And yet, where are the hunter gatherers? Seems the agriculture people won, for the most part. Also, how long exactly does it take human digestion to adapt? Are

by Tichy 14y ago

alecdibble 14y ago
"And yet, where are the hunter gatherers? Seems the agriculture people won, for the most part." There are no hunter gatherers because agriculture will guarantee a more prosperous and growing population. There is absolutely no doubt about that. However, just because hunter-gatherers died off doesn't mean their average health was less than the average health of the agricultural population. In fact, the hunter gatherers that were proficient enough to survive were probably much, much healthier than agriculture population. (This is assuming both populations are getting enough nutrients that malnutrition is not a factor.) Even though the average health of the agricultural population may have been lower, the methods allowed more in the population to survive. In a food constrained world, this is the optimal solution for health. We don't have the problems of food constraint (at least in the first world provided you have an income). That is why now we can look back out or diets and selectively pick and choose the most optimal combinations because there is no longer a problem of food scarcity.