5 ms·
That sounds interesting! Do you have any proof for this statement: >there was a clear dip in human health once we entered the neolithic era This statement se
by a_bonobo 14y ago
That sounds interesting!
Do you have any proof for this statement:
>there was a clear dip in human health once we entered the neolithic era
This statement seems hard to prove seeing as we didn't keep any health-records between 10,000 BC and 2,000 BC (I can see, however, that we currently live quite unhealthy).
- kiba 14y agoUsually, they used the height of specimen. Heights are good proxy for health. I am not an anthropologist.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- graeme 14y agoI do not know the literature well enough to cite anthropological studies. But as far as I understand it, this is a relatively uncontroversial claim within the field. Jared Diamond's article is a good introduction: http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html Edit: As others have mentioned below, the main evidence is a decline in the height, bone density and tooth health of skeletons of pre and post neolitic humans. Average lifespan also declined, from 33 --> 20 according to Wikipedia. (I don't know if the studies cited are good sources) Keep in mind that these lifespan figures include infant mortality. This explains why they remain so low up until very modern times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy...
- a_bonobo 14y agoThank you for these numbers! It seems that some of the cited stuff is still too inconclusive to fully draw the conclusion farming -> decreased "body fitness", but there definitely seems to be some tendency there.
- sid6376 14y agoPrevious discussion on hn regarding the link in the post. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2446752 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2446752
- praccu 14y agoIf you're seriously interested in the anthropology, this is your guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Nathan_Cohen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Nathan_Cohen EDIT: He's quoted in the article you linked, actually.
- tomrod 14y agoHow are confounding factors such as more children + crowd diseases accounted or?
- stcredzero 14y ago> This statement seems hard to prove seeing as we didn't keep any health-records between 10,000 BC and 2,000 BC (I can see, however, that we currently live quite unhealthy). Much can be done with forensic anthropology. There is one North American area in present day Mississippi that was inhabited across the adoption of agriculture, and the decline in health is documented in the teeth and bones.
- michaelkeenan 14y agoThe Wikipedia article on the Neolithic Revolution[1] says: "nutritional standards of Neolithic populations were generally inferior to that of hunter-gatherers, and life expectancy may in fact have been shorter, in part due to diseases. Average height, for example, went down from 5' 10" (178 cm) for men and 5' 6" (168 cm) for women to 5' 3" (165 cm) and 5' 1" (155 cm), respectively, and it took until the twentieth century for average human height to come back to the pre-Neolithic Revolution levels." The citation is to a Michael Shermer book. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution#Consequences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution#Consequenc...