BBC Focus Magazine

[Shadowwolf]

Modern lifestyles are generally quite different from those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, a fact that some claim as the cause of the current rise in global obesity, but new results published July 25 in the open access journal PLoS ONE find that there is no difference between the energy expenditure of modern hunter-gatherers and Westerners, casting doubt on this theory.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120725200304.htm

[M Paul Lloyd]

Could help explain things like the Willendorf Venus? Perhaps our ancestors were not so very different after all. ??
http://andyz.me/2011/the-pre-1400-world-of-art-part-1/

[Lateralman]

Not sure, I agree with this. Foraging for food when you have no fridge is dangerous and expends a lot of energy. It would be more difficult to accomplish if you are overweight. At a guess, hunter-gatherers probably spent a large portion of their time with empty stomachs. Only when hungry would they go off hunting and gathering and after finding food would eat to excess. Like most animals.

[M Paul Lloyd]

I suppose a study of bone morphology would help clarify this as they tend to give us a reliable record of such things?

[Lateralman]

The Willendorf Venus may be a misrepresentation of the average human form. I had in mind some the early African tribes and their big chiefs and bigger wives. In other words, the leader of the tribe may be the exception as for the rest they were probably lean and mean with only aspirations of being big.

At a guess, the big people may have been idols and turned into statuettes. Like the large paintings of women of the renaissance, big is beautiful.

The scientists who put this theory forward must have looked at bone morphology before doing so, for as you have indicated that information is essential to give credence to the theory.

[M Paul Lloyd]

that information is essential to give credence to the theory.

Ergo we can presume that the evidence as presented has some credibility?

I am inclined to agree with your analysis with regard to the chief and said token wife being big, a sort of Kate Moss/Beckinsale in reverse is you like?

I think we tend to assume that our ancestors had similar ideals to our own but the idea that being a bit overweight was a sign of success is not really all that old as I recall many an image of rather rotund 18th century gentlefolk. So i'm going with the idea that a succesful tribe would be better fed and a little less lean than a less sucessful group, not just the big boss and his misses?

[Lateralman]

I have no knowledge of any of this Mr Lloyd but it does appear to me to be logical.

When you think about it no one from that period is going to idolise someone who looks like a twig, could do with a good meal and possibly unable to contribute to the tribe by bearing children.

At that time, hunter-gatherers would have had a rudimentary idea of disease, certainly been aware of starvation, and presumably tried to avoid them at all costs. Like today’s fat cats.

[Lateralman]

For example, the big chief may have been no good at hunting or gathering fruit climbing trees but if he sat on you, you are gone.

[Lateralman]

Then again, there may very little evidence of bone morphology for any of this, for if the hunter-gatherers were starving who would they eat first?

[katesisco]

The dvd on the Wolves of Chernobyl says that the wolves in similar conditions outside are the same population density as wolves inside. So the optimal conditions are arrived at either way. Tho i see the radioactive Eden as so low stress that the animals inside are able to cope with a certain level of radiaton. Science says plants are producing 5% more protein that is dedicated to radiation defense.
Now theorizing, once this excess dedicated to radiation protection is no longer necessary perhaps the protein goes to making a bigger brain?

As for the Venus of Willendorf and the like, going back to the start of our recent warming, 25,000 y ago, it is possible that a global event ( BC current strike, energy discharge, etc.) left our oceans surface depths depleted due to low O2. If there were an extremely limited sea food, air-breathing whales and dolphins, land and sea capable eels, air-breathing mollusks, then a shore population would be extremely limited and be forced to manipulate grazing animals into a controlled area? This is husbandry. Science is also aware that a meat diet is deficient and once our former sea food eating population saw that the meat protein did not provide health for a pregnant woman, merely obesity, the populations who discovered the milk protein would survive. This explains why the Venus figures are from early on.