It is also true that the onset of the Neolithic was associated with negative health trends, exhibited e.g., in skeletal pathologies, and probably the result of a greater disease load due to higher population densities and a shift in diet.
Nonetheless, we should keep in mind that ten thousand years have passed since the onset of agriculture. People have had time to adapt, both in terms of their genetic endowment, and their culture, which mitigates the potential negative effects of the new mode of living. Primitivism in the sense of either fads like the "Paleolithic diet", or in glorifying living hunter-gatherers as some sort of ideal is a rejection of the progress our species has made.
Anthropol Anz. 2011;68(4):349-66.
!Kung nutritional status and the original "affluent society"--a new analysis.
Bogin B.
Bogin B.
Abstract
The theme of the 2011 meetings of the German Anthropological Society, "Biological and Cultural Markers of Environmental Pressure", provides the entree to revisit one of Anthropology's most enduring canons - hunters and gathers are well-nourished and healthy. The Dobe !Kung foragers of the Kalahari Desert often serve as a model of hunter-gatherer adaptation for both extant and Paleolithic humans. A re-analysis of food intake, energy expenditure, and demographic data collected in the 1960s for the Dobe !Kung finds that their biocultural indicators of nutritional status and health were, at best, precarious and, at worst, indicative of a society in danger of extinction. Hunting and gathering is the lifestyle to which the human species was most persistently adapted, in terms of the biological, cultural, and emotional meanings of the word 'adapted.' However, the few remaining foraging groups studied in the 20th Century are unlikely to serve as the ideal models of that ancient way of life.
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The theme of the 2011 meetings of the German Anthropological Society, "Biological and Cultural Markers of Environmental Pressure", provides the entree to revisit one of Anthropology's most enduring canons - hunters and gathers are well-nourished and healthy. The Dobe !Kung foragers of the Kalahari Desert often serve as a model of hunter-gatherer adaptation for both extant and Paleolithic humans. A re-analysis of food intake, energy expenditure, and demographic data collected in the 1960s for the Dobe !Kung finds that their biocultural indicators of nutritional status and health were, at best, precarious and, at worst, indicative of a society in danger of extinction. Hunting and gathering is the lifestyle to which the human species was most persistently adapted, in terms of the biological, cultural, and emotional meanings of the word 'adapted.' However, the few remaining foraging groups studied in the 20th Century are unlikely to serve as the ideal models of that ancient way of life.
Link