Health: there is a well-documented decline in certain aspects of health as shown in skeletal evidence when humans invent agriculture.
Agriculture can support a higher population density, but people get shorter, their teeth get worse, and there's more infectious disease (probably from increased population density and maybe living in closer quarters with farmed animal populations -- this stuff is not necessarily due to diet). This does eventually reverse, but not until relatively recently in human history:
Hunter-gatherer populations typically have excellent metabolic and cardiovascular health (lower life expectancy at birth is largely due to infant mortality):
no subject
Date: 2019-04-25 10:01 am (UTC)Agriculture can support a higher population density, but people get shorter, their teeth get worse, and there's more infectious disease (probably from increased population density and maybe living in closer quarters with farmed animal populations -- this stuff is not necessarily due to diet). This does eventually reverse, but not until relatively recently in human history:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110615094514.htm
Hunter-gatherer populations typically have excellent metabolic and cardiovascular health (lower life expectancy at birth is largely due to infant mortality):
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/obr.12785 (completely fascinating in multiple respects)