Hunter-Gatherer Population Effects

At some point in time, human populations decided to settle down and harvest their own food instead of searching for it in the woods. In modern times, people tend to view this as a great advancement or revolution. Why would people want to search for food daily and forage for tubers or berries when they could just head to the supermarket or their own backyard? Scientist have determined, however, that this development brought many negative effects to the human population. The societies who adopted agriculture were malnourished and unhealthy, but they gained enough of an advantage over hunter/gatherer populations that the benefits outweighed the cost – at least in their eyes. Our society today has been shaped by this “revolution” and its effects,

Densely packed people only made the spread of disease easier for those pesky little parasites and microbes (“Ancient Culture”). The spread of these diseases were made even more dangerous when combined with the general malnutrition of agricultural societies because malnourished bodies have a weaker defense (Diamond, “Worst Mistake”). Disease is one of the main killers of humans since the start of agriculture and most of them would not exist in a hunter/gatherer society (Diamond, “Evolution”). Populations that survived disease epidemics would develop immunities and pass those immunities onto their offspring. Later, these diseases and immunities served as powerful methods of conquest. This is especially true for Eurasia whose oversea expansion lead to the deaths of indigenous people in Australia, the Pacific Islands, Africa, and the

The rest of their diet is meat. This is an incredibly odd because if human bodies get more than forty percent of their energy from protein, it will suffer from protein poisoning. The Inuit are able to survive on this diet due to the high amounts of fat they consume (enough to account for the other sixty percent of their energy). Most people get vitamins A, D, and C from fruits and vegetables. The Inuit get vitamins A and D from eating animal skin and liver and Vitamin C from raw animal organs. Studying this diet has shown that it’s not what types of foods you eat, but what types of nutrients you get that matters (Gadsby, 48-54). Hunter /gatherer diets typically have less saturated fats, no trans fats, and more omega three and omega six fatty acids. They also consume more red meat and dietary fiber along with less salt, sugar, and flour (Eaton et al,