Dawn of agriculture took toll on health

Emory University ^ | June 7, 2011 | Carol Clark

[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.

[Sherman Logan]

In my own defense, I suspect FR is screwing up, or possibly under some kind of hack attack.

[null and void]

You can say that again!

It took a dozen tries to post my last comment.

[ZULU]

Moral: Eat more meat - humans need meat, it made us the creatures we are.

[stefanbatory]

kinda like the movie Idiocracy?

[PapaBear3625]

Or maybe the weak and infirm stopped STARVING?

That too. In a hunter/gatherer culture, you have to be fit enough to move with the tribe as it follows the herds.

One advantage with agriculture is it allows a square mile of land to support more people than hunting does. Having more men makes it easier to defend your territory, even if the average farmer is less physically fit than a hunter.

[Sherman Logan]

Haven’t seen it, so can’t say.

I am, however, continually amazed anew by those who claim they are believers in evolution but assume that humans are for some obscure reason not subject to survival of the fittest or the laws of genetics.

It is pretty comprehensively proven that raw intelligence is heritable in the range of 40% to 80%. Yet somehow we are supposed to believe that reproduction disproportionately by the less intelligent will have no effect on society.