Beskrivelse
Today I will be talking about Class Division and Health in early agricultural communities. I will be going into how agriculture is the very thing that is responsible for class division and poorer health. At the same time agriculture is also a blessing to human life. Before agricultural communities there were communities of Hunter-Gatherers. Hunter Gatherers had no such thing as class. They would hunt all together with the exception of infants, sick one, and the old ones. There were no kings or other people atop the social pyramid (Diamond, 181). Farming opened up many new opportunities for the Human race. Like many things some were good and some were simply not. One of the opportunities brought on by farming and new found currency was for some to be rich and for some to be poor. An example brought to attention was given by greek skeletons. Those who were buried in royal tombs had better diets and were two or three inches taller than the common class in that time. The royal’s teeth only had one cavities opposed to the commoners six (Diamond, 181). There was also something similar found in South America. Those who were of the upper class were buried with gold accessories. The skeletons also showed much lower rates of bone damage and signs of disease than those of the common class. (181-182). One might think that the Hunter-Gatherer population had worse health than the agriculture population but one should think again. In Greece and Turkey Hunter-Gatherers average height was five feet ten for men and five six women, after agriculture was adopted it plummeted to the ground, and still people of those countries still haven’t reached that average height (Diamond, 176). The Native Americans had impeccably healthy skeletons until they farmed corn. The average amount of cavities jumped from fewer than one to 7. Cases of several deadly diseases like tuberculosis increased dramatically (Diamond, 179). The only explanations for these; one, agriculture was mainly starch whilst hunting provided meat. The starch didn’t have as many beneficial vitamins as meat. Two, if you relied on crops for food there was a possibility that all food could be deemed useless by famine. Third, many infections and parasites would not be around without agriculture, animals and close proximity to people living in their own filth was the cause of many ailments (Diamond, 178). Thank you for listening. I hope you now know: though there are blessings from agriculture there are also curses.