Page 191 - Encyclopedia Of World History

disease and nutrition 541

Enforced sedentism and farming may have increased Fecal-oral diseases (such as diarrheas) are facilitated by
the risk of starvation because stored foods may be lost to group size and sedentism. Hookworm, which relies both
vermin and rot and are vulnerable to expropriation by on sedentism and on large group size (because the
other people. A relatively narrow range of cultivated worms pass from person to person via feces and must
crops in a simplified ecosystem would have been more mature for a period on the ground), exacerbates anemia
vulnerable to crop failure than a natural diversified sys- because the worms consume red blood cells.Tapeworms,
tem. Moreover, newly domesticated plants and animals living in the human gut and consuming a portion of all
were commonly less hardy than their wild ancestors. nutrients ingested, result from eating the meat of domes-
Concentrated crops exhaust soil and are subject to their tic animals continuously exposed to human feces. Both
own diseases. Finally, sedentism prevents communities modern subsistence farmers and the skeletons of those in
from moving easily in the face of harvest shortfalls or prehistory commonly suffer from more malnutrition and
complete crop failure. infection than foragers. For example, signs of anemia are
Sedentism and farming almost certainly increased relatively rare in the skeletons of prehistoric foragers but
problems of poor nutrition. Crops such as cereals and they increase in frequency almost everywhere with the
tubers, chosen for their high calorie production and their adoption of sedentary farming.
ability to tolerate storage, are not particularly nutritious
and make poor weaning foods. Dry storage results in the Cities
loss of vitamins, and excessive reliance on particular About five thousand years ago, the rise of population cen-
crops results in a variety of forms of malnutrition. Low ters in which class privilege was defended by force pro-
levels of iron in cereals combined with iron-chelating vided an additional set of reasons for poor nutrition and
compounds and a relative lack of meat in the diet disease. Cities, essentially dense concentrations of spe-
increase the risk of iron-deficiency anemia. Each major cialists who do not produce food, make it necessary to
crop lacks some nutrients and contains only incomplete transport food, often over long distances and packaged
protein (that is, a poor balance of essential amino acids). and processed accordingly, which results in a loss of
An over-reliance on specific cereals, particularly when nutrients. In the modern world system, transportation
eaten alone or in highly refined states, can produce has enabled foods to be moved from locations of plenty
dietary deficiencies such as pellagra and beriberi. (Some to areas of need. But transportation often moves nutrients
prehistoric farmers, however, developed food combina- away from areas of need, and unhealthy foods (too rich
tions that created a balanced protein and vitamin mix— in sugars and fats or technologically altered) are dissem-
for instance, the Mesoamerican diet of corn consumed inated instead; in fact, cash crops have been substituted
with beans.) for nutritious ones in many parts of the world.The long-
Features associated with group size and sedentism, distance transportation of food also spreads diseases
such as garbage accumulation and food storage (and in from one region to another.
some cases close and continuous interaction with domes- Civilizations have the power to withhold food from
ticated animals), would have made many of the infectious lower classes and in that sense are almost certainly
diseases carried by foragers more common or more responsible for more hunger and malnutrition than
severe.They would also have added new diseases, many existed at any prior time in human prehistory or history.
of which would in turn have aggravated nutritional prob- This condition has not changed even in the twenty-first
lems. Many zoonotic diseases, such as rabies, tapeworms, century. Pellagra is primarily a disease of sharecroppers,
trichinosis, and malaria, were introduced into sedentary slaves, or very poorly paid laborers forced to eat only
human communities by domestic animals and pets or maize without the benefit of bean or meat supplements.
changes in the natural environment. Cities also produce very large concentrations of