Note: this topic is from 11/02/2002. Thanks jimtorr.
Posted on 11/02/2002 2:46:41 PM PST by jimtorr
The health of indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere was on a downward trajectory long before Columbus set foot in the Americas, researchers say.
The rise of agriculture is partly to blame, said Richard Steckel, a professor of economics and anthropology at Ohio State University. The demands of tending domestic crops encouraged people to settle in larger communities, where disease was more easily spread.
The rise of towns and cities during industrialization took a serious toll on health, but new evidence establishes a very long trail of poor health that followed the collective pre-Columbian efforts in creating modern civilization, Steckel said. He co-edited a book that looks at health trends in the Western Hemisphere throughout the last seven millennia.
According to some archeologists, the urban revolution began long before Europeans settled the Americas. Sophisticated cities flourished and expanded throughout North and South America once people mastered agriculture. Researchers believe that indigenous people began domesticating crops more than 5,000 years ago.
The current research suggests that the overall health of the average person declined with the development of agriculture, government and urbanization.
We know that certain health problems increased thousands of years before Columbus set foot in the New World, Steckel said. We also know that complex indigenous cities were thriving by then, particularly in Central America.
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(Excerpt) Read more at osu.edu ...
... The current research suggests that the overall health of the average person declined with the development of agriculture, government and urbanization ...Yeah. That's why cities are everywhere on this small, troubled planet. Empty cities. Because they have no survival value. Modern necropolises. Like huge, mass graves, only above ground and verticle. Yuh-huh. A more likely hypothesis? Our Meso-American city-builders instituted a publicly-funded and managed, single-payer health-care system.
Note: this topic is from 11/02/2002. Thanks jimtorr.
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