> Amadeus Schmidt wrote:
> > I wonder how  so much stable and healthy societies could be see
> > n in history...
> >
> Ray wrote:
> See: "Health and the Rise of Civilization" by Mark Nathan Cohen (1989
> Yale University Press).

 For those who want to explore the topic of "why Eurasians conquered, displaced, or
decimated Native Americans, Australians and Africans, instead of the reverse...,"
see Guns, Germs and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond,  also
author of the Third Chimpanzee. Most of you are probably already familiar with
Daniel Quinn's more lyric Ishmael and My Ishmael.  Diamond's book  starts with the
period beginning 13,000 years ago.  It raises some interesting philosophical issues
by inference.  It describes precisely how particular societies can be prolific and
advance  technology and consequently population growth and territorial acquisition
but at the cost of obliterating H/G cultures and by agricultural methods that value
gross production over quality and environmental health.  Of course,  the diseases
associated with the consequent diet are well discussed on these pages.  Diamond's
book focuses on how it happened that populations in certain areas began to
domesticate plants and animals and why others did/could not.   Rick