| | Michael F. Dickey in 10; Jim Henshaw in 11; Peter Reidy in 12
If you actually read the book and took issue with the facts cited, demonstrating error, that would be fine. Right now, we are arguing my book review which states the premise and offers repreesentative support. I found the thesis compelling and the citations of fact credible. I posted the review in specifically in support of Robrt Malcom's post, "Egg on Their Faces" and the discussions here, generally, on nutrition and health. I also cited independent thinking along the same lines from Jane Jacobs's The Economy of Cities.
It is simply not true that our hunting and gathering ancestors lived on the edge of starvation. The fossil record does not support it. It is true that changing climates changed the locations of the human ranges. The discussion here is about the last 12,000 years. Today, hunter gatherers are marginalized to the worst places. Our ancestors hunted and gathered in relative abundance, which is what made cities possible.
Trade and commerce generally and capitalism in particular were urban phenomena. Successful communities did, indeed, have farming and gardening. Hunting and gathering were not carried out within the city walls. The city was a nexus of trade, wherein the surpluses could be exchanged.
The material success of agriculture in our time was a consequence of the industrial revolution which included the human rights revolution. Agricultural societies had slavery. In cities like Athens, slavery was the mode of the surrounding agriculture. And in the cities, the slaves themselves had more opportunity. Pasion, the richest banker in classical Athens began life as a slave, but was wealthy in that status before buying his freedom and citizenship. That was impossible on a farm.
But the reality of famine is known. Manning cites it, largely from England. I know it from a survey course in History of China. The people were not slaves (generally), but were, indeed, tied to the land by custom. In times of famine in England -- the population being smaller and wealth being accumulated -- food could be bought from outside. In China, that was not always possible. Famines were so widespread in geography and demography that you could not get outside the problem. Moreover, excess food was not available for import because there was no excess money with which to buy it. Agriculture is truly subsistance living.
As noted, starvation is not the only health problem.
Obesity is the other side of the coin. Pelegra comes from a diet of boiled corn -- abundant food: everyone eats all the time: corn pone, corn fritters, corn bread... John Adams was wealthy and well-to-do and had no teeth. Teeth, in particular, were one of the first things that Europeans found startling among aborigines during the age of exploration. Agriculture delivers a monotonous diet low in nutrition, high in calories.
Our mythical ideal of the Jeffesonian yeoman farmer -- 16 famers on four roads of a section with chickens, pigs, cows, grain, vegetable and fruits, hunting deer in the fall and gathering berries in the spring -- is an artifact of the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution. -- and of midwest/central states America in that time, largely a hunting society with immature agriculture Again, in the agricultural South, were hunting and urbanism is not dominant, life was different. Once agriculture became dominant in the midwest, the attendant problems arose. .
(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 8/07, 3:45am)
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