Hunter-gatherers
Eric Franz Leher <fr102anz at netvigator.com> Subject:
^^^^^^^^
CB: I don't think paleoanthropologists have a very high percentage of the bodies of all the hunters and gatherers of all times from the last 200,000 years. Most of the life expectancy evidence on hunters and gatherers that modern demographers have is from populations that have had extensive contact with capitalism, and were thereby physically decimated. So, I don't think it is proven that the whole class of hunters and gatherers had unhealthy lives.
"dlawbailey" <dlawbailey at netzero.net> wrote:
> you have to lower
> average life expectancy to 35 or 40 and yes, you do. The idea that
> hunter-gatherers are healthy people is silly.
Question: aren't average life expectancy figures affected heavily by high infant mortality rates? That is, an average life expectancy of 35 could indicate (in rough terms) that half the population dies before age five and the rest live to sixty-plus. It doesn't mean adults that survive beyond childhood get to 35 and all croak it.
As for hunter-gatherers being 'healthy', healthy is clearly a relative term here. In my own post it should have been clear I was arguing hunter-gatherers were healthy compared to peasant farmers. This assertion is far from 'silly', in fact. I recall reading about research done on Neolithic skeletons of both hunter-gatherers and farmers - the hunter-gatherers showed significant indicators of superior health, e.g. they were several inches taller (indicative of better nutrition), had much fewer cavities, and a lesser incidence of bone lesions indicative of serious disease. Such research poses a serious problem for the traditional view of agriculture as a blessed Garden-of-Eden release from a Hobbesian hunter-gatherer existence - if anything it posits the opposite view.