Tue, Mar-03-15, 10:19
|
 |
Senior Member
Posts: 15,075
|
|
Plan: mostly milkfat
Stats: 190/152.4/154
BF:
Progress: 104%
Location: Ontario
|
|
Hunter-gatherers have less famine than agriculturalists.
Quote:
Hunter-gatherers have less famine than agriculturalists.
Berbesque JC1, Marlowe FW, Shaw P, Thompson P.
Author information
Abstract
The idea that hunter-gatherer societies experience more frequent famine than societies with other modes of subsistence is pervasive in the literature on human evolution. This idea underpins, for example, the 'thrifty genotype hypothesis'. This hypothesis proposes that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were adapted to frequent famines, and that these once adaptive 'thrifty genotypes' are now responsible for the current obesity epidemic. The suggestion that hunter-gatherers are more prone to famine also underlies the widespread assumption that these societies live in marginal habitats. Despite the ubiquity of references to 'feast and famine' in the literature describing our hunter-gatherer ancestors, it has rarely been tested whether hunter-gatherers suffer from more famine than other societies. Here, we analyse famine frequency and severity in a large cross-cultural database, in order to explore relationships between subsistence and famine risk. This is the first study to report that, if we control for habitat quality, hunter-gatherers actually had significantly less--not more--famine than other subsistence modes. This finding challenges some of the assumptions underlying for models of the evolution of the human diet, as well as our understanding of the recent epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus.
|
I haven't read this yet, but I thought this seemed like a good place to post it.
It's free full text. It sort of makes sense, when mono-crops fail, they fail big.
Before reading it, I think some kinds of fasting may have happened on a seasonal basis. Something approaching a mono-diet when a certain type of nut or fruit is in season, a meat fast in winter, stuff like that. And there are traditions of ritual fasting on record as well.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24402714 |
Linear Mode
