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>Hard to catch a disease when it’s always the same 15 people around you, with no communication to the outside world. There’s plenty of bacteria hanging out in
by sarchertech 11mo ago
>Hard to catch a disease when it’s always the same 15 people around you, with no communication to the outside world.
There’s plenty of bacteria hanging out in the dirt, water, the animals you eat, and on your own skin. Add in the parasites, and zoonotic viruses and it’s not very hard at all to catch a disease even as a solitary hermit in the wild.
>factory farms
Didn’t need factory farms for smallpox. Many animals live in large herds, which were larger in the past. If you read accounts from the 18th and early 19th century there are many reports of squirrel migrations involving hundreds of millions of squirrels in relatively small areas.
- manmal 11mo agoSmall pox was way after hunter gatherer times, so I‘m not sure what point you are making. Huge farms were a thing even in medieval times, with hundreds of animals.
- 9rx 11mo ago"Way after" is quite an overstatement. Smallpox is as old as agriculture. Most seem to agree that it was the transition into agrarian life that provided the necessary conditions for it to emerge, but it did so right as that transition took place.
- sarchertech 11mo agoMy point is that factory farms aren’t a requirement for zoonotic viruses. Smallpox also predates the medieval period by thousands of years. We also know that there are viral epidemics in animals that live in solitary animals and animals that live in groups smaller than the size of hunter gatherer tribes.
- palmotea 11mo ago> There’s plenty of bacteria hanging out in the dirt, water, the animals you eat, and on your own skin. Add in the parasites, and zoonotic viruses and it’s not very hard at all to catch a disease even as a solitary hermit in the wild. An hunter-gathers were probably a lot more robust to that than modern people. Think about it: if what you say were that big of an issue, hunter-gathers would have been sickly and died out before getting to us.
- Qwertious 11mo agoHunter-gatherers didn't have birth control; if you have 5 kids and half of them die, you've still maintained your population.
- 9rx 11mo agoBut as the parent comment suggests, if the adults were getting sick it is unlikely that they would be able to: * Produce 5 kids in the first place. * Take care of the kids that they were able to produce, making survival of even half them much less likely. But in actuality, best we are able to determine hunter-gathers who made it into adulthood lived longer, healthier lives than those in agrarian lifestyles.
- integralid 11mo agoThey were getting sick and died more often than us, but still enough survived to keep the population alive. There's no contradiction. I admit they probably had a stronger immunologic system on average, by virtue of relying on it and "exercising" more often. Alternatively, people prone to getting sick just died early.
- 9rx 11mo ago> They were getting sick and died more often than us The comparison was with agrarian societies that were found in parallel, not "us", which presumably implies something about modern medicine. Have I misinterpreted you? > There's no contradiction. Was there reason to think that there was...? It is not clear what you are trying to add here.
- throwup238 11mo agoThe adults getting sick and being undernourished was one of the leading causes of infant mortality.
- throw0101a 11mo ago> Take care of the kids that they were able to produce, making survival of even half them much less likely. H-G societies tend to be smaller groups where everyone in the village helps with childcare, so if a parent was out of action for a while the children could still be gathered. This is covered in the book Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff, specifically with the Hadzabe people (Tanzania).