ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a temporal dimension to the study of malnutrition in one region of Africa. It suggests that the data presented support nutritional stress effects for Nubian children and women living in Northeastern Africa more than a thousand years ago and possibly even for 5000 years ago. The chapter describes the occurrence and persistence of nutritional stress for a number of prehistoric Northeastern African populations found in Egypt and the Sudan. Data from experimentally-induced malnourished animals and clinical data from humans experiencing nutritional deprivation and protein-energy malnutrition are available for this purpose. The combined effects of high infant mortality, reduced birth spacing, and chronic nutritional shortages on the health of both mother and child is deleterious and has implications for understanding the health of successive generations. The subsistence shift to food production in the Neolithic period has long been thought to herald an era of improved nutrition and health.
