ABSTRACT

This selection concerns the direction of health impacts of agricultural transformations and ties in with the previous selections on the prehistory and history of human health. It also connects to the following selection on ecology and environment by describing human modifications of the landscape that affect animal and microbe habitats as well as the availability and variety of foodstuffs. The authors suggest that whereas the initial transformation from foraging to agriculture probably brought mostly negative health impacts most of the time, subsequent agricultural transformations have led to both positive and negative health impacts. Moreover, the impacts may be different over the short and long term and may not be spread evenly across social groups. Even in the first transition from relatively egalitarian foraging societies to increasingly stratified agrarian societies, the differential health effects on various social classes were soon evident (see selections 19, 20).