Ancient Man and Degenerative disease

[SpiderDan]

Hi guys

I know everyone says cancer, CHD and other degenerative diseases are the curse of modern man but how do we know the hunter-gatherer didnt suffer from them?

Do we just look at analogs from current tribal communities or are there actually health markers we can look at in the fossil record to determine this?

Ive been doing some basic searches but cant really find much, any help greatly appreciated.

Dan

[sendos]

Things like osteoporosis and probably some cancers can be identified with just bones, but I'd imagine most of it is just extrapolation from modern analogues as you say.

[NU_nutrition_TS]

The term you need to google is 'palaeopathology'. Of the scant bit of reading I did from what came up, it seems most of the work done in this field has concentrated on remains from well within the neolithic period. Since most 'paleo' buffs contend that modern disease is a consequence of neolithic food introduction (particularly grains) it doesn't really help that much.

However, this site says:

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In studies of thousands of bones that represent the fossil record of Neanderthal man in Europe, the Stetten II skull bone from Stetten, Germany, (c.35,000 years bp) provides the only example of a lesion (new bone form) that might be related to a neoplasm. …

Tens of thousands of [ancient] skeletons have been examined but only a few diagnoses of possible and/or probable malignancies — based on gross appearance and occasional X-ray scans showing defects in or masses on bones — have been made. Gray specifically noted the total absence of any radiological evidence of malignancy in his survey of 133 mummies. …

The average lifespan of the wealthier classes was between 40 and 50 years, and a lower age-at-death of between 25 and 30 years is shown in palaeopathological studies of non-elite groups. … Many individuals did live to a sufficiently advanced age to develop other degenerative diseases, such as atherosclerosis, Paget’s disease of bone and arthritis.

(Read the comments!)

[SpiderDan]

so the assertion that ancient man did not suffer from degenerative diesease is not really based on much and could be wrong.

So the point of eating better quality food to avoid things like heart disease and cancer is because of our increased life spans, therefore there is a greater chance of developing one of these conditions?

[NU_nutrition_TS]

The popular position is that palaeolithic man did not live much beyond his thirties so, never reaching advanced age, he did not have the opportunity to suffer the diseases of 'old age' such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis!

While we can never know for sure, it seems that statistical averages crop up again. The average life span was reckoned to be around 30 but there are examples of individuals who lived significantly beyond this. As in modern day life-expectancy statistics, you have to factor in infant mortality. Clearly, in the harsh environmental conditions of that time, infant mortality would have been high but I doubt that everyone who survived into adulthood popped their clogs (Logan's Run style) by the age of thirty!

People are longer lived today largely due to medical intervention, though many are not always in the best of health throughout their final years.

The archaeological/fossil record clearly shows a trend toward lower life expectancy and greater disease states during the neolithic period, when compared to earlier periods, and we have only picked up relatively recently - due mainly to modern plumbing and hygiene and then through drugs and surgical procedures.

Mark, over at the Daily Apple blog, has posted on this topic recently:
Just How Long Did Grok Live, Really? | Mark's Daily Apple

[NU_nutrition_TS]

If you have an hour to spare this video of a lecture by Teresa E Steele, assistant professor in the department of anthropology at the University of California, may answer some questions regarding the evolution of human diet. The short question and answer session at the end touches on how palaeolithic diet (hunting/gathering) impacted on certain health-related parameters such as height/body size, skeletal robustness and brain size, etc. and contrasts that with changes that occurred with the adoption of a more agriculturally based diet around 10,000 years ago and especially the 'industrialised diets' of the last 100 years.
http://fora.tv/2010/11/06/Teresa_E_S..._of_Human_Diet

[SpiderDan]

Cheers Nu

When I get a chance I will definitely have a look.

The original stuff was useful for my final essay on my course (along with alot of other stuff posted here) and I did pretty well off of it.

[NU_nutrition_TS]

Observations: Mummy Says John Horgan Is Wrong about Fat and Carbs in Food

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I was struck today by the juxtaposition of two recent articles here at ScientificAmerican.com. In “Thin Body of Evidence,” John Horgan expresses his skepticism about journalist Gary Taubes’s claims that carbohydrates, not fat, are the cause of obesity, heart disease and other health problems faced by many Americans. In “Mummy Says Princess Had Coronary Disease,” scientists who performed a CT scan on a 3,500-year-old Egyptian mummy express their puzzlement that this ancient princess had advanced atherosclerosis (hardened arteries) despite her civilization’s “healthy” diet that included wheat, barley, bread and beer—and only small amounts of meat.

Atherosclerosis is linked to high blood levels of triglycerides (a type of fat molecule) and low levels of HDL cholesterol, the “good” cholesterol. Eating a lot of carbohydrates (such as wheat, barley, bread and beer) is well known to raise triglycerides and lower HDL. Eating fat (such as found in meat) counteracts these effects, raising HDL and lowering triglyceride levels. The Egyptian princess’s diet, therefore, is the perfect recipe for high triglycerides and low HDL—and for atherosclerosis.

These facts about diet and blood lipid levels are not controversial—they have been known for decades and verified repeatedly by scores of studies. So why were the anthropologists surprised by the mummy’s atherosclerosis? And why is Horgan resistant to the idea that carbohydrates cause obesity and desease? The answer lies in two all-too-human tendencies: over-reliance on personal experience and resistance to information that contradicts our beliefs.

[Wotan]

Personally I have always thought that the "average life-span of thirty" hung around the neck of early man was a crock of the proverbial.

It is a statistic ... arrived at by taking death at all ages and then dividing by the population total. Let me show you some figures that illustrate the fallacious logic involved.

The population is 1000. Of every birth half result in a death before the age of two days. Sad, but entirely feasible if you were born in a cave I would say. Past the age of two days, though, everyone dies at the age of 100. Average age of death therefore is fifty. Now imagine the same scenario but now imagine instead of dying at two days you die at ten years. Hey presto the average of death is now 55. The population growth is the same in both cases, as is the number of old people, indeed as is the number of people aged 11 or over.

How many starlings die before they leave the nest? I don't know but I imagine the figure is quite gruesome. Does this mean that no starling ever reaches its potential full life span? Statistically yes it does ... in real, squawking, messy, feather-flying life of course not. Birds quite often manage to fall out of trees having died of old-age as opposed to a having short, one-sided conversation with next door's cat.

Don't forget that the measurements involved in dating bones are taken from modern populations with modern diets, and this extrapolation might be quite erroneous. If you look at "forgotten tribes" living in the Brazillian rain forests or those of New Guinea there seem to be an awful lot of old people around for a population with an average life span (not age, notice) of thirty. Their example would give a much better idea of stone-age population dynamics than a classroom model I would say.

Just my tuppence.

[indie]

Quote

Don't forget that the measurements involved in dating bones are taken from modern populations with modern diets, and this extrapolation might be quite erroneous. If you look at "forgotten tribes" living in the Brazillian rain forests or those of New Guinea there seem to be an awful lot of old people around for a population with an average life span (not age, notice) of thirty. Their example would give a much better idea of stone-age population dynamics than a classroom model I would say.Just my tuppence.

Whenever a natural history documentary shows a ancient looking tribal elder, the shot often is coupled with a voiceover "bongo, the tribal chief has lived all his life in the forest, at 36 he...etc etc", they can age badly.