William:
> Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2007 5:35 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: No Neolithic Mortality Increase After All?
> 
> On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 12:25:52 -0500, Paleo Phil <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
> 
>   While I was disappointed to learn
> > recently that the decrease in lifespan with the dawn of the Neolithic
> was
> > rather small
> 
> I disagree with the postulated germ theory as a cause of population
> control...

I agree with you that disease does not seem like a strong explanation for
the lack of major population growth during the Paleolithic era, though I was
unaware that STI's had been discovered as being prevalent among !Kung, which
challenges the diet, breastfeeding and exercise reasons posed by Paleo diet
advocates for 4-year spacing between hunter-gatherer births. However, my
guess is that other HG groups also have 4-year birth spacing despite lack of
STI's, but I don't have data on that at hand.

> Cannot agree that there was only a small decrease in lifespan with the
> invention of farming.

The data I had seen on this a few months ago was from a post in this forum
that cited Lawrence Angel's data:
http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/angel-1984/angel-1984-1a.shtml. While
the decrease in lifespan was significant, it was not as dramatic as I had
expected, based on what had been written about it. Instead of a decrease of
2.3 years in men and 0.8 in women, I guess I was expecting something more
like 5 years or so in both sexes.