If only they had stuck to the milk and ditched the grains... le sigh...


"New research has revealed that agriculture came to Europe amid a wave of immigration from the Middle East during the Neolithic period. The newcomers won out over the locals because of their sophisticated culture, mastery of agriculture -- and their miracle food, milk."
http://www.spiegel.de/international...,723310,00.html

Neoliths beat-up H&G's due to being able to sustain higher populations of sendentary (i.e. non-nomadic) people who could specialize. Read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel if you really want to understand why Hunter & Gatherers have gone nearly extinct.

Although, I suppose one way dairy products did defeat H&G's is because the humans that lived in proximity to cows developed immunity to diseases that originated in cows. Then when the Neos met the H&G's the H&G populations were ravaged by diseases Neos were already pretty resistant to.

Seems to me when the hunter/gathering sorts traveled, it wasn't all that far, was gradually, was only alongside their prey. It wasn't about being social and joining a city, it was about eating.

When agrarian sorts traveled, it seems like it was to find new places to settle, new social enclaves, forming cities, etc. And they could take their food with them, in the sense that they could plant anywhere with workable soil.

You don't hear much about H/G spreading disease but you certainly everywhere see that agrarians spread disease as they traveled to new places (eg smallpox to natives in America) or just flat out developed disease due greatly to crowded conditions (black plague surely wouldn't have been the issue it was if the people were in density/distance of farmers or small tribes rather than old crowded cities. On the bright side, you can certainly say that the plague "reduced the crowding").

(I was once in college when the BP came up and I said, "Do you have ANY idea how many people Europe would have right now if that hadn't happened?!" My professor told me I was a ghoul. ;-) )

So it doesn't seem surprising that H/G were not the larger numbers and usually die off when running into the others. If you can eat grass, no matter how poorly it serves your health, you're likely to do better than if you actually depend on roving meat with legs, which can be decimated by many factors in particular by other men... and I think it's possible low-level chronic exposure to poisons (which grains and dairy might actually be, albeit I sure do love dairy, and I loved grains until I realized my gluten issue...) might actually serve as a sort of vaccination or gradual tolerance effect, compared to people with almost no exposure to those things, suddenly running into them.

PJ

Oh, Wifezilla, you can sigh in French! I've always wanted to know a foreign language.

Also increasing agrarian numbers would have forced them to travel to find new land to settle and cultivate, as any cultivated land would only support a certain number of people, forcing expansion.

Lee

I ran across a book from 1664 with this lovely title in our library catalog last week:

Englands happiness increased, or A sure and easie remedy against all succeeding dear years : by a plantation of the roots called potatoes, whereof (with the addition of wheat flower) excellent, good, and wholesome bread may be made, every year, eight or nine months together, for half the charge as formerly : also by the planting of these roots, ten thousand men in England and Wales, who know not how to live or what to do to get maintenance for their families, may of one acre of ground, make thirty pounds per annum.

Seemed like a good idea at the time.

That's a nice line Rightnow "just flat out developed disease"-- I'll use it next time I'm arguing the benefits of low carb/high fat. I'll let you know if it's effective, but don't hold your breath.

I'll have to find it, there's a long list of of zoonotic diseases have ravaged humanity since we domesticated animals. Even now the new strains of flu are being incubated in domestic animals. The vector is usually birds -> pigs -> humans, or some combination of the 3.

As a person who raises birds, disease is MUCH more of an issue in overcrowded conditions and in flocks that do not get enough sun exposure.

Here's a few of the most famous ones:


But lots more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis