‘Many people have this image of the rise of agriculture and the dawn of modern civilisation, and they just assume that a more stable food source makes you healthier,’ said the study’s lead author, Amanda Mummert of Emory University in Atlanta. ‘But early agriculturalists experienced nutritional deficiencies and had a harder time adapting to stress, probably because they became dependent on particular food crops, rather than having a more significantly diverse diet.’

When Mummert and her team compared data from standardised studies of whole skeletons across a range of locations, including China, North and South America and Europe, they found the same trend: a decline in height and health as agriculture took over from hunting and gathering, independent of the crops being cultivated. In addition to nutritional deficiencies, Mummert suggests that the decline in health may have been related to a growth in population density as people formed agricultural settlements. This would likely have led to an increase in infectious diseases, exacerbated by problems of sanitation and the proximity to domesticated animals and other novel disease vectors.

August 2011