Interesting stuff from the AAPA

[Hercules Rockefeller]

Recently there was a meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Here are some fascinating research areas that were reported during the conference....

Civilization's Cost: The Decline and Fall of Human Health

Agriculture and cities made human life better, right? Wrong, say archaeologists who presented stunning new evidence at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting. They pooled data on standardized indicators of health from skeletal remains, including stature, dental health, degenerative joint disease, anemia, trauma, and the isotopic signatures of what they ate, and gathered data on settlement size, latitude, and socioeconomic and subsistence patterns. They found that the health of many Europeans began to worsen markedly about 3000 years ago, after agriculture became widely adopted in Europe and during the rise of the Greek and Roman civilizations.

Of Tools and Tubers

According to a new analysis of stone tools and bones left behind near Lake Victoria in Kenya presented at the Paleoanthropology Society gathering, which met concurrently with the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting, as early as 2 million years ago, humans purposely selected the highest-quality stone and transported it more than 13 kilometers to an animal butchery site. A collaborating team also reported that these early humans, presumably Homo habilis or early H. erectus, used tools not only to deflesh carcasses but also to slice tuberous roots, possibly a key part of their diet.

Reproductive Fate Versus Environment

Women's fertility is determined in large part at birth. They are born with their total number of ovarian follicles, for example, which normally influences the age at which menopause begins. But in the 1990s, researchers proposed that if a child's energy is depleted by malnutrition, disease, or other factors, he or she would be less fertile as an adult. By using the natural experiment of migration, researchers demonstrated in a talk at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting how differences during childhood do indeed alter the course of reproduction in adult women. They found that Bangladeshi women who live in London are more fertile than those in Bangladesh but less fertile than Bangladeshi women born in London.

[wise acre]

Civilization's Cost: The Decline and Fall of Human Health

Agriculture and cities made human life better, right? Wrong, say archaeologists who presented stunning new evidence at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting. They pooled data on standardized indicators of health from skeletal remains, including stature, dental health, degenerative joint disease, anemia, trauma, and the isotopic signatures of what they ate, and gathered data on settlement size, latitude, and socioeconomic and subsistence patterns. They found that the health of many Europeans began to worsen markedly about 3000 years ago, after agriculture became widely adopted in Europe and during the rise of the Greek and Roman civilizations.

When Europeans began to arrive in what became the Eastern US the Natives thought they were dirty and unhealthy looking. Which was true. Their hygiene was worse than the natives and their diets were much poorer.

They were also used to being peasants and servants, many of them, with all the connotations especially of that first word.

[Girr]

Well of course, generally speaking, dental health will decline when you are consuming sugars (or compounds broken down to sugars in the mouth) - that's what causes tooth decay in the first place. Not to mention the aggregation of humans and livestock promotes disease.

If you find this interesting at all, you should really read Guns, Germs, and Steel; this is, to a large extent, the things talked about in the book (it is less about 'history' as it is about some of those things you mentioned)