Hacker News Reader

Comment by xkjkls | Hacker News Reader

Or just hunger in general. Before the agriculture revolution starvation was the primary cause of human death.

I would have thought the opposite would be true, hunter gatherers are generally well fed from a variety of food sources, would have lived in low densities and would have been highly mobile, so in the event one food source become scarce they could move elsewhere, or switch foods. Early agriculturalists would have been stuck in once place reliant on a single, or few, food source/s and therefore vulnerable to failed harvests for a variety of reasons, droughts, natural disasters, theft (of stores, if they are lucky enough to farm food that can be stored) etc.

You would be correct.

Preagricultural peoples exerted reproductive control so they were not vulnerable kind of population crunches that affect other species.

Diverse food webs were also more reliable and nutritious than what was available to the early agriculturalists, as you say.

This is incorrect:

> "The bones of 'domiciled' Homo sapiens compared with those of hunter-gatherers are also distinctive: they are smaller; the bones and teeth often bear the signature of nutritional distress, in particular, an iron-deficiency anemia marked above all in women of reproductive age whose diets consist increasingly of grains"

from Against the Grain

Mineral deficiency is a chronic lack of a particular nutrient, starvation is an acute lack.

There is such a thing as chronic starvation, and the smaller bones reflect that, not mineral deficiency.

The linked article addresses famine more specifically.

It does not.

Was it?

I know a couple books[1] that suggest life prior to the agricultural revolution wasn't nearly as famine-stricken as we tend to think it was. These books claim hunter gatherers were quite proficient at finding enough sustenance.

Obviously starvation was still possible and likely, but was it the primary cause of death? Is there some more evidence that humans were suffering from starvation before agriculture? Wouldn't populations thin out and stabilize accordingly if starvation was such a problem?

[1] - _Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind_ and _Sex at Dawn_

"Thin out" is this another word for dying?

It could also mean just spreading out. So less dense civilizations, but the same amount of people.

In could, but that's generally not what it means when applied in this way. You don't thin out a a herd (which is where I think that phrase is most often used in English) by spreading it over a larger area, but by removing a percentage of the individuals that make up the herd.

If you have lived a good life, is dying a problem?

Dying from starvation (and watching the people you love also suffer and some die from it)? Yes, I'd say it's a problem.

Starving to death together with the rest of your tribe - your parents, your siblings, your friends, your kids - must be mentally excruciating. Famine has been considered one of the worst curses of humanity since the dawn of written records at least.

How happy are we who have never experienced that! How would our ancestors envy us!

Truly if one was to know the excruciating pain of those who have gone before these things of today thought of as worthy of attention would fade to nothingness.

Would our ancestors envy us or be happy for the fruit of their effort? There are setbacks and frustrations about the slow state of progress sometimes for certain. Maybe they would also be sad for the material orientation of many people and the loss of spirituality that gave them much hope and fortitude.

Or, If you like something, would you want less of it?

I for one think, this is a subjective question.

That same book claims that the agricultural revolution was responsible for human specialization. We were able to feed larger families/tribes and develop non-food related skills. Without agriculture, those extra people would've died aka "thin out" as you mentioned.

The two are not mutually exclusive. Are you going to boom and bust in both scenarios

Agriculture encourages large families since children can help out in the field. Meanwhile with a hunter gatherer lifestyle the amount of food that can be acquired is not limited by labor but rather by the local environment. The effect is that you have lots of people doing backbreaking work every day.

Was it? I wasn’t aware of that? Is this also the case of non-human omnivores? If not, at which point in our evolution did this start to be the case, e.g. during Australopithecus or Homo Erectus? And is it also the case for humans that don’t live in agricultural or industrial societies today (such as tribes deep in the jungles of Papua New Guinea)?

Are there good studies that show this? Like a big survey of recovered bone/dental evidence over centuries?

It certainly seems plausible to me, but I'd be fascinated to review the data and how it correlates to time and geography.

I don't think having the poor in cities like SF root in trash for nutrients counts as solving starvation

Reply on news.ycombinator.com