Demographic and health changes during the transition to agriculture in North America

Abstract

What were the consequences of Neolithic demographic transition on population's health? The paradigmatic question asked by Mark Cohen 30 years ago is revisited: did biological stresses, which are indicators of a population's well being, increase with the transition to agriculture? Data on four North American skeletal biological markers; dental caries (31 archeological sites), porotic hyperostosis (33 sites), cribra orbitalia (22 sites) and femur length sexual dimorphism (22 sites), used as proxy for stature; are set in the same chronological framework and related to the two-stage Neolithic demographic transition? How did they co-vary? Caries frequency increase one thousand years before the transition to agriculture. This pattern probably indicates the broadening of the diet range during the time before agriculture takes place as well as the addition of sugar in the diet. As soon as the transition to agriculture takes place, and fertility increases, the prevalence of anemia markers increases and stature sexual dimorphism decreases. Overall, the picture confirms the hypothesis of biological stresses, during the transition © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.