= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Unknowns comments on Stupid Questions June 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (195)
A bad and unfounded theory: if they had plentiful food they would have had more time to develop more complicated culture and a structured society and develop colonial society of their own. So probably yes.
One of the foundations of modern life is domestication of animals and farming. because it allowed for easy access to food even during harsh natural environment changes. With more food availability the population could grow to meet the available supply.
It is of course possible and likely that they were both well fed and malnourished at the same time. Across different people, across different times of the year where food supplies would naturally vary, and across different nutrients.
Ian Morris argues in Why the West Rules that people all over the world had the tendency to develop agriculture and the like, and started to do so with the start of the present interglacial period, but that people in the Middle East succeeded first simply because there were more plant and animal species there that could be usefully domesticated. According to him, people elsewhere would have done the same thing in the long run, perhaps in another one or two thousand years, but in many places this was prevented by the societies meeting before this had a chance to happen. I found his account pretty plausible.
equally a speculative as my theory and equally plausible. We should probably get back to the question asked.
Yes they were probably malnourished because of the availability of food to a pre-colonial and pre-agricultural civilisation.