Comments | anthropologist: So Big and Healthy Grandpa Wouldn’t Even Know You

katexedge in anthropologist

So Big and Healthy Grandpa Wouldn’t Even Know You - humans getting bigger and healthier

Jul 30, 2006 08:47

Valentin Keller enlisted in an all-German unit of the Union Army in Hamilton, Ohio, in 1862. He was 26, a small, slender man, 5 feet 4 inches tall, who had just become a naturalized citizen. He listed his occupation as tailor ( Read more... )

Comments 8

sollersuk July 30 2006, 13:30:24 UTC

It's not a straightforward progression. Stature, robustness and longevity have gone up and down. Famously, my Human Skeletal Remains in Archaeology lecturer briefly mistook a female Saxon skeleton for a male one because she had recently been looking at the smaller, frailer medieval population (incidentally, from the same genetic stock - basically Saxon plus Viking). She was also very shaken to find how old a lot of the Spitalfields bodies were, and in how good shape - no osteoporesis, for example, in women of 60, 70 or even 80. We also had to reconsider a lot of earlier assumptions: skull suture closures and obliterations that had been thought to indicate an age of about 40 turned ot to be in fact associated with 60=.

There are bad periods in European history: the bulk of the Middle Ages was one, and to a large extent the 18th century and much of the 19th century, but outside those periods we got a lot of healthy, long lived tall people.

amhranaiochta July 30 2006, 14:39:36 UTC

That's fascinating-are there any books on the subject you'd recommend?

sollersuk July 30 2006, 17:11:35 UTC

The Spitalfields Project: Volume 2 - the anthropology Theya Molleson and Margaret Cox with A H Waldron and D F Whittaker published by the Council for British Archaeology.

An archaeology report, hence very heavy going. Much of the rest was personal communication.

katexedge July 30 2006, 15:11:41 UTC

that's awesome
you should send that to the new york times and let them know what's up

Thread 5

deleonjh July 31 2006, 00:28:08 UTC

Funny it doesn't mention the Neolithic transition. Hunter-gatherers in general were healthier and bigger than the farmers descended from them. Jared Diamond refers to the changeover to agriculture as "humanity's greatest mistake." This isn't really obscure information either, it was in Guns, Germs, and Steel. So if anything, humans today are only now returning to their pre-agricultural health. And not all humans, just middle class humans and above (in other words, a minority of humans).

chiaroscuroman July 31 2006, 16:27:09 UTC

I'll agree with that. There's evidence from human skeletal finds that there was a huge mortality spike around the age of 1 or so (not surprisingly) when the infant is very vulnerable to injury or malnutrition. In the hunter-gatherer society, this seems to be the only major mortality spike. After sedentary agriculture was introduced, the spike at age 1 remains, but another spike emerges at around the age of 3-4. The professor that was lecturing at the time attributed this to the fact that this was when children stopped breastfeeding and were being weaned onto an adult diet. In the hunter-gatherer tradition, this would involve protein and fat rich roots and tubers, as well as meats. In contrast, the child of an agriculturist, especially if it was a specialized agriculturist, would be weaned on cereals, grains, corn, or gruel all of which are comparitively nonnutritious ( ... )

deleonjh August 1 2006, 17:39:02 UTC

As a popular science book it achieves its purpose: putting scientific discussion into the public sphere. But as a scientific book, well, let's just say it's been torn apart for sloppiness six ways from Sunday by all manner of experts -- anthropologists, archaeologists, geographers, historians . . .

It is very readable, though, which is why Diamond is famous and the people he synthesized his information from aren't.