How Farming Reshaped Our Genomes 144
sciencehabit writes "The earliest farmers may not have been built for the profession. They may have been unable to digest starch and milk, according to a new ancient DNA study of a nearly 8000-year-old human skeleton from Spain (a hunter-gatherer who had dark skin and blue eyes). But these pioneers did already possess immune defenses against some of the diseases that would later become the scourge of civilization. The findings are helping researchers understand what genetic and biological changes humans went through as they made the transition from hunting and gathering to farming."
Why is he unkempt? (Score:5, Insightful)
http://news.sciencemag.org/sit... [sciencemag.org]
Who says he let his hair and beard grow long? What evidence from the skeleton would have led to this conclusion?
Re: (Score:3)
http://news.sciencemag.org/sit... [sciencemag.org]
Who says he let his hair and beard grow long? What evidence from the skeleton would have led to this conclusion?
Good ol' science, the kind where we immediately imagine things in our own image (he types as he strokes his luxuriant beard.)
Re:Why is he unkempt? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You don't seem to realize a flint edge is actually much sharper than any metal blade -- that's why they use silica tips in atomic force microscopes; the tip is only a few atoms wide.
People used to be very, very good at chipping flint blades.
You may think a piece of plastic with one or metal blades will shave better, but you'd be wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
If you can demonstrate your assertion I would like to purchase one of your flint edged shaving razers. My face tears up metal blades in no time.
Re: (Score:1)
That's because you have farmer skin.
Re: (Score:2)
I am a farmer you insensitive clod.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You could do this.
Or you could grow a beard and a mustache and never have to worry again.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Why is he unkempt? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are actually a handful of tribes that had that custom, the Yahi in california come to mind immediately. Plucking is also useful. But as a couple of other posters pointed out, the point about no shaving was specious to begin with. A high quality flint scraper is actually sharper than the best metal razor and yes they work just fine for shaving, if you are inclined to that activity.
We really have zero evidence as to what the custom was in the time/space coordinates where the skeleton originates, so his personal grooming style and habits are entirely conjectural. Someone just thought he would look good as a hairy wildman so that is how he was painted.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why is he unkempt? (Score:5, Informative)
Flynt is sharper than any copper knife.
Obsidian is sharper than any copper knife.
Tribal people shave with flint to this day.
There is archaeological evidence of shaving going back 20,000 years.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Tribal people shave with flint to this day.
Very impressive. But can they shave with six blades at the same time?...
Re: (Score:2)
obsidian and flint both are sharp enough to cut hair
Re: (Score:2)
Even if this were true, and I rather doubt it is, I didn't ask why he wasn't bald.
We're assuming he was primitive and savage. Do we have science behind that or no?
Re:Why is he unkempt? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Because he had shaggy hair and a beard before it was cool.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
http://news.sciencemag.org/sit... [sciencemag.org]
Who says he let his hair and beard grow long? What evidence from the skeleton would have led to this conclusion?
Look, they found him with a "Cobal Programming in UNIX for Dummies" book. What more evidence do you need?
Re:Why is he unkempt? (Score:5, Insightful)
Beards were rather popular in Ancient culture. A sign of manhood and variability. It took Alexander the Great to change that trend, pointing out that a beard could be grabbed in battle, so he ordered his troops to shave them off.
However, it is a good way to protect your face, while hiding in bushes, and keeps your face warmer in the winter. It makes sense to assume that Hunters (Males) would have beards.
Re: (Score:3)
I still think he may have fashioned/cut his hair and or beard in some way, rather that just letting it go wild.
Re: (Score:2)
Why is he unkempt?
No more unkempt than a Unix programmer of yore. I wonder if he wore sandals with socks?
Re: (Score:3)
http://news.sciencemag.org/sit... [sciencemag.org]
Who says he let his hair and beard grow long? What evidence from the skeleton would have led to this conclusion?
They found a selfie on a nearby fossilized cellphone.
Being Hunter Gatherer... (Score:5, Interesting)
It means not being too choosy what you om-nom-nom on when the going is lean. Which likely means eating things which may have various parasites, mold spore, other fungi, even partially decomposed. "What luck! A partially decomposed squirrel with red rashes all over its body! Num!" That which didn't kill them, indeed make them stronger (those which survived, that is.)
In today's scrubby, scrub scrubbed world of clean, inspected and otherwise near perfect world of meat, dairy and produce, we're not challenging our bodies very much. Further, we appear to be adapting to eating sugary, fried or other highly processed food, which means we say "Ewww!" when presented with ethnic foods we haven't seen before, which include the globby or wiggly bits of animals we don't see in the meat case at the market (which traditionally were the best parts, unlike the muscle which was often left behind.)
Somewhat disconcerting how we haven't turned into beings which are entirely fed by capsule, a la the Jetsons "Oh, dear, I've overcooked the steak and potatoes pill."
Fortunately, infants keep picking up dead bugs off the carpet and chewing on them, which gives them some bit of a test in developing their immune systems.
Re: (Score:2)
And for people like you there's the Road Kill Grill http://johnmullsmeats.com/road... [johnmullsmeats.com]
I, on the other hand, am ok with taking antihistamines (and the advances of science generally) instead of intestinal parasites to keep my allergies under control.
Re: (Score:2)
It means not being too choosy what you om-nom-nom on when the going is lean. Which likely means eating things which may have various parasites, mold spore, other fungi, even partially decomposed. "What luck! A partially decomposed squirrel with red rashes all over its body! Num!" That which didn't kill them, indeed make them stronger (those which survived, that is.)
In today's scrubby, scrub scrubbed world of clean, inspected and otherwise near perfect world of meat, dairy and produce, we're not challenging our bodies very much. Further, we appear to be adapting to eating sugary, fried or other highly processed food, which means we say "Ewww!" when presented with ethnic foods we haven't seen before, which include the globby or wiggly bits of animals we don't see in the meat case at the market (which traditionally were the best parts, unlike the muscle which was often left behind.)
Somewhat disconcerting how we haven't turned into beings which are entirely fed by capsule, a la the Jetsons "Oh, dear, I've overcooked the steak and potatoes pill."
Fortunately, infants keep picking up dead bugs off the carpet and chewing on them, which gives them some bit of a test in developing their immune systems.
Nobody knows what was going on then. Everyone (the Paleo community included) stop saying how you know humans lived so and so many years ago.
For all we know, they had an organic food paradise. Fresh fruits and vegetables right off the plants and fresh just-slaughtered grass fed meat to eat.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Being Hunter Gatherer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody knows what was going on then. Everyone (the Paleo community included) stop saying how you know humans lived so and so many years ago.
For all we know, they had an organic food paradise. Fresh fruits and vegetables right off the plants and fresh just-slaughtered grass fed meat to eat.
Rather like you can read the life of a tree by its rings, you can tell a lot about the diets of people by the condition of their teeth at death, build of their bones and some of the elemental composition. Science is more scientific than ever, which is cursed on a regular basis by those who won't credit it.
Re: (Score:3)
Nobody knows what was going on then.
We know exactly what they ate and how it was prepared. We have their copralites, their fossilized crap. We have their homes. We have their garbage dumps. We have their skeletons. It's not deep dark mystery, basic scientific analysis of human remains can let us know how far they traveled from their birthplace (isotopic analysis of bone growth), how often they experienced food shortages (bone density), what type of diet they had (trash midden excavation), what intesti
Re: (Score:2)
actually, we know man and his ancestors were cooking for 250,000 at least
Re: (Score:2)
...we appear to be adapting to eating sugary, fried or other highly processed food...
I wouldn't consider epidemic rates of diabetes, cancer, heart disease and obesity "adaptation".
Re: (Score:3)
It's not epidemic, it's disclosure.
Re: (Score:2)
...we appear to be adapting to eating sugary, fried or other highly processed food...
I wouldn't consider epidemic rates of diabetes, cancer, heart disease and obesity "adaptation".
Yet some people eat horribly unhealthy and live to their 80s or 90s, while others religiously dine on healthy foods and die of cancer, contract diabetes or other such maladies. Don't imagine there isn't some evolution at work here. Those who can adapt, will and when their food of choice vanishes they suffer terribly.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Who is this "we" you are talking about?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think this is entirely right. You'd see this scavenging behavior in modern hunter gatherer societies.
I think we tend to conflate a lot of things that nature of course does not, e.g. health and longevity with local carrying capacity. Paleolithic humans were evidently a very healthy bunch, judging from the skeletons they left behind. They were slightly taller than humans are today, and had a life expectancy that was unequalled until the 20th Century. This is indicative of a very high quality diet
Handful of genome samples does not a species make. (Score:5, Interesting)
What is this silliness, that "humans" in the broad, blanket sense could not digest starch? Feh.
We already know from analysis of Neanderthal remains that they could digest starch, and did in fact eat things like starchy tubers and grains. [google.com] By 8000 years ago, it's generally accepted that the Neanderthals were no more, at least as a distinct population, and that any remaining Neanderthal-specific genes had been absorbed by the wider Cro Magnon population. (Interestingly, it sounds like the Neanderthal genes might give their descendants, i.e. non-sub-Saharan-Africa humans, extra resistance to viral infection. [discovermagazine.com])
This study, where evidence from one individual is extrapolated to the entire human population, sounds silly in the extreme. "One Size Fits All!" never really does.
Cheers,
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, but this evidence points to that may be wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
Lack of milk digestion seems dubious (Score:4, Informative)
All mammals are, by definition, born with the ability to digest milk, therefore they have the genes to do that. It can happen that those genes are epi-genitically turned off in adults that are not exposed to milk. However, the genes would be still there.
Thus I'm extremely doubtful that any genetic studies could have revealed the lack of milk digesting genes. And since I don't see how they could assess any epi-genetic state of a long dead individual I really wonder about how they arrived at that conclusion.
Re:Lack of milk digestion seems dubious (Score:5, Insightful)
All mammals are, by definition, born with the ability to digest milk, therefore they have the genes to do that. It can happen that those genes are epi-genitically turned off in adults that are not exposed to milk. However, the genes would be still there.
The genes for digestion are still there, yes, but they shut off after childhood unless you have a specific genetic mutation that allows lifelong production of lactase. Source 1 [nih.gov], source 2 [nih.gov].
Re: (Score:1)
Mine shut off at about 35 years of age (European descent). Odd.
Re: (Score:2)
This would make sense though since only a baby typically would drink fresh milk unless you refrigerate it. If you leave fresh milk out the bacteria and enzymes in the milk and environment quickly digest the sugars (on the order of hours) and ferment the milk which also helps preserve it.
Re: (Score:2)
What is this silliness, that "humans" in the broad, blanket sense could not digest starch? Feh.
We already know from analysis of Neanderthal remains that they could digest starch, and did in fact eat things like starchy tubers and grains. [google.com] By 8000 years ago, it's generally accepted that the Neanderthals were no more, at least as a distinct population, and that any remaining Neanderthal-specific genes had been absorbed by the wider Cro Magnon population. (Interestingly, it sounds like the Neanderthal genes might give their descendants, i.e. non-sub-Saharan-Africa humans, extra resistance to viral infection. [discovermagazine.com])
This study, where evidence from one individual is extrapolated to the entire human population, sounds silly in the extreme. "One Size Fits All!" never really does.
Cheers,
Or they could have been using something starchy as a toothbrush.
Inability to digest milk (Score:3, Interesting)
makes breasts a curious adaptation.
Re: (Score:2)
You're confusing the milk from other animals with human breast milk.
Humans can - and have, historically - use that as their sole food source up to 5 years old.
The problem arises from using milk from other creatures.
Re: (Score:2)
No, the ambiguity lies in the summary (and possibly TFA). I posted to point out the absurdity.
Re: (Score:2)
You're confusing the milk from other animals with human breast milk.
Humans can - and have, historically - use that as their sole food source up to 5 years old.
The problem arises from using milk from other creatures.
THe article says they could not process lactose, the major carbohydrate in all milk, human and otherwise. So no this is not about processing the species specific milk, but milk in general. That's too surprising to be credible without further explanation-- mammal infants live on milk.
Re: (Score:1)
TFA says lactose. AFAIK human milk carbs are mainly lactose but the "hind milk" (that comes after feeding a little while) includes the lactase enzyme needed to digest it.
Re:Inability to digest milk (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Inability to digest milk (Score:5, Informative)
Humans, like most mammals, can universally digest lactose in childhood. Also, like most mammals, the gene for producing lactase largely shuts down in adulthood, since in nature, it's largely unneeded and a waste of energy resources. People descended from milk-drinking cultures (mostly Europeans) have variations of a gene that prevent lactase production from turning off in adulthood.
Of course, this has little to nothing to do with breasts, since humans are the only primates that have visible breasts when not nursing their newborn young, and even then they are much, much smaller than in humans. It's most likely they exist purely for sexual signalling (like a peacock's tail), since their size is mostly irrelevant to their function in child-rearing.
Re: (Score:2)
since humans are the only primates that have visible breasts when not nursing their newborn young, and even then they are much, much smaller than in humans. It's most likely they exist purely for sexual signalling
Though it must also be pointed out that other primates have mouths that stick out while human's have theirs set back below their noses, and therefore humans need something to stick out in order to suck on it. Of course, breasts are way to big for that to be the sole driving factor in their development, and I would blame sexual signalling for getting them to the size that they are.
Re: (Score:1)
It is possible that humans just have more babies than other primates. Size definitely does matter for milk production. We might have ridiculously enlarged breasts for primates, but we have tiny breasts compared to some other mammals.
Possibly we are just more fertile, or more likely to use wet-nurse babysitters throughout history?
And we have to remember, not all cultures have any interest at all in breasts. If it is not even close to universal today, we have no reason to believe that they were sexualised at
Re: (Score:3)
Size definitely does matter for milk production
Nope. The size (when not breastfeeding) is from the amount of fatty tissue, which is unrelated to the amount of milk-producing glandular tissue. It's possible to have not enough glandular tissue but it's very rare and takes insignificant space (enough glandular tissue to nurse exists in flat chested women).
Higher fertility wouldn't explain things because 97% of the time, humans have only one child at a time. And humans make enough milk for twins anyway, even conveniently having two breasts for simultaneo
Re: (Score:2)
"97% of the time, humans have only one child at a time."
Depends. Did the average human 100,000 years ago breastfeed until 12 years old, or until 6 months old. I doubt that we have any idea.
Re: (Score:2)
Did the average human 100,000 years ago breastfeed until 12 years old, or until 6 months old. I doubt that we have any idea.
Hunter-gatherer populations are a good proximate for human behavior that long ago. It varies by culture, but the average seems to be 3-5 years of age. Inuit are kind of an outlier at 7 years of age, but it makes sense given their environment. That's also about the same age at which most non-agricultural societies considered it safe to raise another child. Infanticide is common as a means of birth control until that age.
It is interesting though that we didn't evolve a means of controlling fertility until
Re: (Score:2)
This doesn't necessarily mean humans didn't drink milk. If you leave milk out for any period of time it naturally ferments into yogurt (or something similar). This process the bacteria converts the lactose into lactic acid. This acid then denatures the proteins which is why yogurt is more of a gel. Many people that can't drink milk have no problem eating fully fermented milk products.
evolution via virus (Score:2)
One of the i
Re: (Score:2)
Unless of course the new colony is in an environment filled with new wildlife that also uses DNA. If that happened to be the case then we could possibly see evolution in progress.
Bad link in summary (Score:2)
Prehistoric Lactose-Intolerant Celiac (Score:4, Funny)
WTF? OMG! DNA reveals mutant squence: E.I.E.I.O (Score:2)
That must be the "Old MacDonald had a Farm" genome ...or Mr. Green Genes.
At the time .... (Score:4, Insightful)
At the time, we humans needed a steady food supply. Hunting and foraging is too sporadic - and hence why we developed this ability to gain fat easily and it's a bitch to get rid of it. Feast or famine.
Agriculture and the the high calorie grains like wheat and corn allowed us to survive and develop a society where we have farmers and other professions.
Now that model is obsolete in the modern Western World, we are paying the price of our inability to adjust our taste buds.
High calorie food tastes great! But we're not suffering from food shortages or doing enough physical work to justify those tastes.
Wheat and corn didn't fuck us - our inability to judge our caloric needs is what screwed us.
Re: (Score:3)
The issue I am trying figure out about the new problems with getting fat. What is new that happened in the past 20 years?
We had a lot of the same bad for us foods 20 years ago, and no food shortages either.
Re:At the time .... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:At the time .... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
no, not when it contains amounts the inversion catalysts for the reaction. toxic shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:At the time .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Possibly the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup into everything that's artificially sweetened.
No, and also no. It's the rise of processed foods, which come without the enzymes which break them down and thus help regulate blood sugar, and then the substitution of vegetable oil with HFCS, not simply its inclusion. Using HFCS instead of sugar is barely different. Using HFCS+Citric Acid instead of vegetable oil packs food with unnecessary sugar instead of the fats which give long-term energy. Thus, HFCS is used to do evil, but it's not really inherently evil in its own right. Like a gun, or a bomb.
Re: (Score:2)
Not just in things that are sweetened, but literally everything. I won't buy Green Giant vegetables because they taste simply terrible, highly dosed with that damned sweetener. Damn it, vegetables aren't supposed to be sweet! Why should brocolli, cheese, and macaroni taste like candy??
But it isn't just HFCS, it's portions. When I was ten there were no Big Macs or Quarter Pounders, let alone the half and three quarter pound burgers you see a lot of places. The amount of food on a restaurant plate has at leas
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Corn subsidies, mostly. The middle of the US is nothing but giant flat open space, making it uniquely suited to growing a TON of corn.
So the government pays farmers to grow corn. It's a US crop, and we really can't import it (no one else grows it) so corn subsidies get the "America F*** YEAH!" vote
But then we have just too much corn. Way WAAY too much corn. So we try to turn it into Ethanol gas for our cars, and high-fructose-corn-syrup for our foods.
Both failed miserably, but when the Ethanol screwed up
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget that this is not an American issue, it is more or less common to the developed world. Sure, the US has a worse case of obesitas than other countries, but also in Europe the percentage of people overweight and obese is increasing quickly. So, the answer does not lie with corn subsidies or corn syrup, or at least not solely.
I think the main reason is simply affluence and the displacement of industry by services. Sure, that was also the case 20 years ago, but in much lesser degree, and especially
Re: (Score:2)
But I just got back from 2 weeks in Europe (Austria, Germany, and UK) and the number of muffintops, sagging beer bellies, and plumber's crack, that the gap to the US is much less than it was.
Re: (Score:3)
The other interesting thing to note is that much of the rest of the world - except the parts where people are starving -
Re: (Score:2)
obesity rates have been high but stable (not increasing further) since then. So the real question is what changed in food, plastics, personal eating habits, and social patterns from 1980 to 2000 but then stopped getting worse from 2000 until now.
Just because something has plateaued doesn't necessarily means that something has changed. It could mean that it is saturated and that the rest of
the population is not prone to getting fat either because of genetics, activity level, etc.... I know plenty of people (including myself) who eat like crap,
don't exercise at all and are still not overweight. I'm not saying that I'm healthy but I'm not overweight.
It's kindof like the war on drugs. Approx. 3% of the population is addicted to drugs and this holds
Re: (Score:2)
Regardless how much personal responsibility is related to the obesity epidemic, the headlines and promotions based on the idea that it's getting worse are mostly just sales vehicles for the diet, fitness, and liposuction
Re: (Score:2)
This is just my take. The average intake of the American consumer has increased steadily, I believe. However, weight gain happens at the margins. If you eat 2200 calories a day and burn 2000, you are gaining weight twice as fast as someone who averages 2100 with the same burn rate, even though your intake is less than 5% higher.
As the average intake passes the burn rate, a little exercise helps. However, with a small percentage-wise increase in your intake, you can double or triple the amount of exercise re
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
In a Adam and Eve type of story, yes.
Wheat and Corn, allowed for civilizations to grow and prosper.
One of the premises in Jared Diamond "Gun Germ and Steel", is that the ability for a civilization to really grow we needed grain, otherwise the culture will stay in more of a hunter gather type of living. Major Civilizations, Mayans, and Aztecs had Maize/Corn type of grains, Middle East and Europe had Wheat, East Asia had Rice. This is because they were a rather High protein food, that can be easily dried
Re:Wheat and corn fucked over the human race (Score:5, Informative)
Incas had potatoes. It does not need to be a grain. But starchy foods are usually more effective in useful energy generated per acre.
In the Pacific breadfruit was the staple. However it was so easy to grow there that there wasn't a lot of work 'farming' anything.
Re: (Score:1)
Atkins fanatics are totally myopic. There are countless civilizations around the globe that have subsisted on tubers probably since before humans were humans. Many of the existing ones are archetypical healthy sub-populations, just like other sub-populations with heavily protein based diets.
Re: (Score:2)
That is the 'gatherer' part of hunter gatherer. Humans can digest a lot of starchy foods even without cooking. Pine nuts, walnuts, etc. As for tubers, we can eat carrots even raw. While carrots have been selectively bred, the are precursors to carrots native which can be eaten raw too.
While it is true some foods are dangerous without cooking this is not specific and doesn't apply to all starches.
Re: (Score:2)
Wheat is particularly hard to eat because it needs milling and cooking. There are dangerous components in it raw.
Re: (Score:2)
Wheat is particularly hard to eat because it needs milling and cooking. There are dangerous components in it raw.
Wheat (and most other grains, beans and seeds) can be sprouted easily, which turns them into an easy-to-eat-raw food (which is also more nutritious and easier to digest than the dry kernel), and also makes them easier to fashion into a sort of dough for bread [wikipedia.org] (lightly pounding with hand tools, instead of milling). This is a process that has been in use for thousands of years.
I have heard it said that before industrial wheat farming, harvesting and storage, bundles of harvested wheat stalks might sit a day
Re: (Score:3)
One of the differences Diamond points out in his book is the difficulty in storing foodstuffs in certain climates. It's not too hard to store many grains that are commonly available in Europe and northern Asia, but go south and it becomes much more difficult to store foodstuffs like tubers and breadfruit for any period of time. This is significant because it allowed for people to do things rather than have to hunt for food all the time.
Re: (Score:2)
He's a moron then. The fact is the Incas had a vast empire [wikipedia.org]. The largest and most technologically advanced in the Americas. The Aztecs had maize and they did not fare better.
In the Pacific breadfruit is so easy to plant and harvest people spent most of their days doing something else. Sometimes nothing. In a lot of the early expeditions to the Pacific it was common for sailors to jump ship and go native because they were sick of the harsh conditions at sea and at home.
The problem is Pacific islands, where br
Re: (Score:2)
Also ignored is the fact that quinoa [wikipedia.org] was widely available in those places as a replacement. It is not as nutritious but would work in case of dire need.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
And it does seem to make a bit of sense. In the long timeline of human evolution, we've been 'farmers' for a very short stint overall.
Re: (Score:1)
It does work, it is in general similar to the Atkins diet, or the Conspiracy Diet.
Re: (Score:2)
Try to prove there is a god. You can't, cause there isn't.
You're the one who's deluded, buddy.