| Abstract: |
The "orgins of agriculture" model proposes that with increased sedentism and a narrowing of the resource base, comes an increase in dental infectious lesions, and a decline in nutrition reflected in an increase in enamel hypoplasias (other than LHPC). If the LHPC defects are related to maternal calcium levels, then these defects would increase as well, reflecting movement away from a broadly balanced diet and toward high carbohydrates. pg 587 It was noted that most of the chapters in the bo conclude that lesions appear or increase with farming, suggesting that anemia is primarily a disease of agricultural groups. pg 592 mean age at death (and/or life expectancy at various ages) declined with the adoption of farming pg 594 As a whole, indicators of health among h-g and farmers fairly clearly suggest an overall decline in the quality - and probably in the length - of human life associated with the adoption of agriculture It should be stressed that the h-g/farmer comparison lumps together a number of separate adaptive shifts whoe importance in accounting for the changes in health is not always clear. The effects of population growth, or new foods, of farming as an activity, or sedentism, of the dispersal or nucleation of settlements, and of changing politics allneed to be evaluated separately. pg 595 Although the data points fairly clearly to the decline in health associated with the origin of agriculture, it is not yet clear whether they confirm the particulars of the Boserupian populations pressure model of agricultural origins. Generally negative slope of health and nutrition confirm the model. Moreover, population growth is identified as a concomitant of changes in health and economy in most of the sequences (although not an all portions of all sequences) of preagricultural economic changes in most regions discussed is consistent with predictions about economic changes associated with increasing population density and/or resources. On the other hand, the data, the mix, suggest that an overall decline in workload and physical stress may have helped to motivate the economic transition, reducing the necessity to costly declining resources and/or growing populations as in a series stimulus to economic change. pg 596 A population pressure model would predict increasing or least steady rates of such indicators among h-g associated with growing populations and changing economic strategies, since it would suggest that new food economies wrought no net improvement in economic homeostasis. Taken together, Harris lines and LEH suggest no net improvement over time in health or economic homeostasis.
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