Re: Early farmers malnourished?


<johnwl4@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1133372263.354475.41940@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Some time back a reference was given here to an excavation done in
> Spain which contradicted the usual claim of farmers being malnourished
> compared to HG's.
> I wonder if there isn't a bias in the studies which show the
> farmers malnourished. At times of overpopulation, certainly one would
> expect to see people starving. In sedentary people, at such times,
> there would be more graves to start with, maybe, because there are many
> more people, with more chance of later discovery. In HG, survivors
> might be too weak to cover the bodies even, at times of over
> population. In the _Mountain People_, Turnbull describes the Ik as
> having a crisis. Also, HG's might not have so much overshoot, so there
> would be a smaller percentage starving.
> Regards
> John GW
>

I wonder if the question of who went hungry and who didn't would require a
wishy-washy answer like, "It depends."

See: http://www.spelt.com/origins.html

With the end of the ice age 14,000 to 12,000 years ago, retreating glaciers
left the world warmer and wetter than before. Greater rainfall in many
temperate zones nourished a spread of vegetation, including many grasses
like wild wheat and barley.

This attracted concentrations of grazing animals. Hunter-gatherers converged
on the grasses and animals, in many cases abandoning their nomadic ways and
settling down to village life. Such conditions were particularly favorable
in the Middle East.

Then followed a brief return of colder, drier weather more than 11,000 years
ago and lasting a few centuries. Dr. Ofer Bar-Yosef, an archaeologist at
Harvard University, thinks the stresses of coping with the Younger Dryas, as
the dry spell is called, contributed to the beginning of plant
domestication.

With the sudden dearth of wild food sources, hunter-gatherers began storing
grain for the lean times and learning to cultivate the fields for better
yields. In any case, the earliest evidence for agriculture so far comes from
the period immediately after the Younger Dryas.

In his book on early agriculture, Smith of the Smithsonian wrote, "Even in
the absence of such an external pressure, gradual growth in their
populations and expansion of their villages may have encouraged or
necessitated a variety of economic changes, including experimenting with the
cultivation of wild grasses."

Whatever the factors behind its origins, Diamond said, agriculture took a
firm hold in the ancient Middle East because of the diversity of plants and
animals suitable for domestication. The first farmers, he said in the
journal article, quickly assembled "a balanced package of domesticates
meeting all of humanity's basic needs: carbohydrate, protein, oil, milk,
animal transport and traction, and vegetable and animal fiber for rope and
clothing."
---------------------
IIRC Pauline sometimes argues for the benefits of the hunter-gatherer
lifestyle with a good supply of food and so on but the teeth of Neanderthals
showed rings in the enamel (a bit like tree rings) when food was less than
adequate. These markings were laid down when teeth were developing and were
more likely seasonal in nature rather than a sign of chronic food
deprivation.

Aren't most references to malnutrition and farming related to historical
times in Europe? People were not meeting their growth potential (height) due
to poor nutrition, and the food supply was inadequate to support the
population farming produced?

Jois




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