On Wednesday, December 3, 2003, at 06:15  PM, Keith Thomas wrote:

> Without resorting to notions of 'romantic primitivism', we should bear
> in
> mind the SARS model which, like many influenza viruses, have
> proliferated
> when humans have forced domesticated animals to live in unnaturally
> close
> proximity to each other.  The viruses jump between species with a
> slight
> DNA mutation.  Before the Neolithic, the risk of cross-species
> infection
> would have been comparitively negligible.  Tony McMichael's book Human
> Frontiers goes into this in some detail.
>
>
Returning this somewhat to paleo-food. The recent ebola outbreak was
traced to a wild pig that hunters took in the jungle. So cross species
infection is perfectly possible even for wild meat eaters. SARS
supposedly comes not from domesticated animals, but wild animals like
civet cats caught and sold for food. There are many illnesses that
transfer from wild game to humans who kill and eat it. Tulerimia is
transmitted from infected rabbits to humans, for example. I see no
reason to imagine that paleo peoples were free of disease.

I imagine however that many current diseases were quite rare in paleo
peoples, such as influenza, because the specific animal vectors did not
live in proximity to humans. Influenza requires ducks and pigs and
humans to become dangerously infectious. This is why it usually
originates in southeast Asia, where the traditional farming practices
encourage close living of all three species.