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Date: | Tue, 13 Apr 2004 07:47:26 +0100 |
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tried to google this subject... one source which came up was -- PALEOPATHOLOGY/DISEASE IN THE PAST with an interesting paragraph --
<<Health changes with the onset of the Mesolithic -- This change marked the extinction of large game animals and the subsequent adoption of foraging patterns aimed at a wider array of small animals, seeds, and aquatic foods. Adult stature for both sexes seemed to have declined during the Mesolithic by about two inches. Hypoplasia rates of teeth were higher, suggesting more biological stress.
B. The health of foragers compared to subsequent farmers. Most of the comparisons are based on natural cemetery populations of 50 to 200 individuals. The conclusions about trauma are interesting: the food foraging life isn't particularly violent in the Hobbesian model--nor is it as serene as portrayed currently in college cultural anthropology textbooks.
Signs of infection seem to increase as settlements increase in size and permanence. In Illinois at Dickson Mounds, the signs of infection doubled with adoption to maize agriculture. Farmers appear to have been less well nourished than the earlier foragers. The size, stature, and robustness of adult individuals declined with the adoption of farming. In some regions, domestication of animals reversed the long term decline in nutrition. Enamel hypoplasia suggests that nutritional stresses became more frequent and more severe as farming replaced foraging in different parts of the world. Data also suggests that the adult ages at death amongst foragers were greater (older) than those of the subsequent early farmers.>>
http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/6_1Paleopathology%20Disease%20in%20the%20Past.htm
Dedy
From: Theola Walden Baker
I watched a program tonight on the Science channel in which Italian
scientists were necropsying mummies from Umbria. One, a woman, had a gnarled spine and hands, evidence of rheumatoid arthritis. But the finding that overawed the scientists was the 7+cm bladderstone found on x-ray and removed intact, its claim to fame being it's the largest ever known/found.
The narrator said bladder stones were very common in Umbrians. While I was pondering the "why" of this statement, the narrator said the stone indicated the woman's poverty and poor nutrition--*too little protein and too much starch!* Dang, I wish he had elaborated on the sources of the starch or what the common diet of the Umbrian poor was. Anybody know?
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