From: Damien Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Thu Apr 17 2003 - 13:41:51 MDT
On Thu, Apr 17, 2003 at 02:42:53PM -0400, gts wrote:
> I think both these points you make above are valid, but keep in mind that as
> hunters, and as scavengers of the killed prey of other predators, we must
> have already been pretty well-exposed to animal diseases prior to the
Keep in mind that keeping animals would have changed their own disease
profile. And I think there's a difference between sometimes eating them and
stepping around in their shit. There's just so much more opportunity when
you're living with lots of chickens, as opposed to going out and hunting them.
> Neolithic. Also, perhaps more importantly, the advent of agriculture and
> everyone was so heavily exposed to animal excrement and animal germs. We
Most of the population were farmers. This was true even in the West into the
last two centures, after all.
And, after all, the re-contacted H-G societies in modern times were much more
vulnerable to Eurasian diseases than vice versa.
I've been seeing this "we scavenged a lot" claim a lot. What's the evidence
for it? You'd think if we made a living at scavenging kills that we'd be
better at eating meat which has started to go bad. We don't seem adapted to
eating meat with a lot of bacteria on it. Unless 'scavenge' means "chase
lions away from fresh kills".
-xx- Damien X-)
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