BBC Focus Magazine

[Healerman]

Humans may have undergone a gradual rather than an abrupt transition from fishing, hunting and gathering to farming, according to a new study of ancient pottery.
Researchers at the University of York and the University of Bradford analysed cooking residues preserved in 133 ceramic vessels from the Western Baltic regions of Northern Europe to establish whether these residues were from terrestrial, marine or freshwater organisms.
The research led by Oliver Craig (York) and Carl Heron (Bradford) included an international team of archaeologists from The Heritage Agency of Denmark, The National Museum of Denmark, Moesgård Museum (Denmark), Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel (Germany) and the Archäologisches Landesmuseum, Schleswig (Germany).

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 153407.htm

There was some speculation that early agriculturalists were actually less well nourished than their hunter-gatherer neighbours. These new findings fit in better with the general profile of "primitive" societies. Unlike ourselves, they tended not to put all their eggs in one basket, making diversity a survival strategy.

[Liam Sheppard]

cool.

The natives to an area of Peru, plant dozens of different varieties of potato incase one crop fails.

Also, the Asian people started to domesticate rice so that they had a consistent staple crop, and could live in large sedentary communities. But the nutritional value of rice is quite low, as we see Asians are generally of smaller build.

When we look at Cro Magnon and and other people who live on a high protein diet, they were/are much more robust.

In turn, it is seen how this effect can be reversed, that in some eastern countries. Within 2 generations
children can regularly be seen to grow to 6 foot. Due to a more protien rich diet due to economic boom.