Lower jaw and teeth of a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer. Credit: Olivia Cheronet
Lower jaw and teeth of a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer. Credit: Olivia Cheronet
Weston A Price says I told you so.
Judging from the stand, he must have been one of the Beaker people...
It’s really funny as my dentist is the great Irish dentist Dr. Mel O’Clusion
Celery raw,
Develops the jaw;
But celery stewed,
Is more quietly chewed.
-Ogden Nash
Tooth size has been shrinking, as well, but I guess that the rates of shrinkage of jaws and teeth are not matched up very well.
No doubt due to GMO corn products.
You read the same thing about some breeds of dogs like the bouvier dog which were bred to large size without a corresponding growth in it heart. So its a large dog with a small heart. As a result heart attacks are common with this breed.
The unexpected results of civilization.
So, hunter-gatherers (supposedly) didn’t cook their foods, but agriculturalists did; but the agriculturalists were domesticating and eating the wild foods their ancestors had gathered. Sounds like cooking, not growing, is the culprit.
Also, smacks of Lysenkoism to reduce jaw size by easier chewing, yet teeth remain unchanged in size, type, and quantity; seems, if anything, the jaw musculature is what would be affected.
<300 skeletons from 3 separate areas, and covering a time span of 22,000 years also seems like a pretty small sample to make sweeping conclusions.
Lots of articles and “studies” cropping up that seem to attempt discrediting agriculture as a positive human achievement. That makes me very skeptical and wary of (Agenda 21 type) motives.
"Grave findings have shown that late Palaeolithic settlers in central Europe and their Mesolithic descendants in the Scandinavian Peninsula were Europoids, who had compartively large teeth - a seemingly comical detail, but nevertheless an important factor in identifying these populations. Although it is very unlikely that the language of these settlers will ever be identified, I cannot see any grounds for the theory that either of these groups spoke Proto-Uralic.
"East Europeans have small teeth compared with the relatively large teeth of the Scandinavian, a peculiarity deriving from an age-old genetic distinction. Ancient skulls tell us that the early settlers of east Europe were mostly descendants of an ancient east European population which lived in prolonged isolation from the Scandinavians. Perhaps the "Siberian" element in Finnish genes is, in fact, east European in origin? "
