ABSTRACT
R. B. Mazess shows that their high bone densities may be influenced in part by their specialized animal food diet. Similarly, there is growing information on the thickness variation in compact bone of some modern groups, where again age, sex and race, as well as diet, are clearly important factors. Dietary specialization may result in shortages of vital food constituents as exemplified by vitamin deficiencies, but brief mention might also be made of a condition resulting directly from the over-consumption of one particular foodstuff. The more direct relationships between diet and disease have already been mentioned, but cultivation and stock rearing resulted in other human health problems. The relationship between dietary change, following the neolithic revolution, and human microevolution is both a new and dangerous field. In populations which expanded too much and too fast there is the possibility that some groups may have started to become "famine adapted" for smaller body size and smaller calorie needs.
