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Indlæser... Health and the Rise of Civilizationaf Mark Nathan Cohen
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Civilized nations popularly assume that "primitive" societies are poor, ill, and malnourished and that progress through civilization automatically implies improved health. In this provocative book, Mark Nathan Cohen challenges this belief. Using findings from epidemiology, anthropology, and archaeology, Cohen provides fascinating evidence about the actual effects of civilization on health, suggesting that some aspects of "progress" create as many health problems as they prevent or cure. "[This book] is certain to become a classic--a prominent and respected source on this subject for years into the future.... If you want to read something that will make you think, reflect, and reconsider, Cohen's Health and the Rise of Civilization is for you."--S. Boyd Eaton, Los Angeles Times Book Review "A major accomplishment. Cohen is a broad and original thinker who states his views in direct and accessible prose.... This is a book that should be read by everyone interested in disease, civilization, and the human condition."--David Courtwright, Journal of the History of Medicine "Cohen has done his homework extraordinarily well, and the coverage of the biomedical, nutritional, demographic, and ethnographic literature about foragers and low energy agriculturalists is excellent.... The book deserves a wide readership and a central place in our professional libraries. As a scholarly summary it is without parallel."--Henry Harpending, American Ethnologist "Deserves to be read by anthropologists concerned with health, medical personnel responsible for communities, and any medical anthropologists.... Indeed, it could provide great profit and entertainment to the general reader."--George T. Nurse, Current Anthropology No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)614.4Technology Medicine and health Public Health Contagious and infectious diseasesLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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Cohen is basically positing -- based on studies of contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes (such as the San in Africa) as well as archaeological/paleological records of bones at ancient hunter-gatherer sites -- that "primitive" hunter-gatherer life was neither as impoverished as many pro-civilization advocates would like to believe nor as peaceful and bucolic as many late 20th-century anthropologists would like to fantasize. The majority of the information that Cohen presents (mainly by citing dozens or hundreds of archaeological and anthropological studies) focuses more on the former claim than the latter.
Anyone short on time can read the great final chapter which sums up the conclusions of the entire book: Hunter-gatherers were generally more nourished, less sick, and living longer than any of their agricultural descendants. They endured periods of "stress" related to diminished food supply but due to their mobility very seldom experienced any famines as severe as those that would come in more "civilized" times. They suffered from parasitic infections due to contaminated water and food, but almost never anything as significant or crippling as the nutritive deficiencies and epidemic viruses that would come later. It would take civilization until the 19th or 20th century to produce a citizenry as healthy as the "primitives" they replaced thousands of years before. Indeed, the idea that hunter-gatherers were impoverished is an opinion that can only be validated by comparing them to modern-day humans, because they were actually more affluent than any humans in history prior to the 19th century.
Cohen's main point seems to be that the idea that we "progressed" and evolved out of hunter-gathering due to technological breakthrough gets the cause and effect mixed up. Really, because hunter-gathering was producing diminished returns after populations began to grow and food sources became scarce, agriculture was something they turned to out of necessity, even though it meant a less nutritious diet overall. It may be a subtle difference, but it's significant. Technology is not the cause of our evolutionary progress, but rather the result of very trying circumstances. And it did not improve our lives as much as we often like to think, since it brought with us food instability and epidemic disease. Only since the breakthrough of modern medicine (itself a response to horrible living conditions in the 14th-18th centuries) have we improved our lifestyle in relation to our ancient ancestors. ( )