The best of times, the worst of times
Subtitle: health and nutrition in pre-Columbian America
By: Richard H. Steckel.
Contributors: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series ;; working paper 10299; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) ;; working paper no. 10299.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Subjects: Indians of Central America -- Health and hygiene -- History.; Indians of Mexico -- Health and hygiene -- History.
Description: "Lack of evidence has been the major obstacle to understanding trends and differences in human welfare over the millennia.  This paper explains and applies methods that are obscure to most academics and essentially unknown to the general public.  A millennial perspective is best obtained from skeletal remains, which depict not only childhood health conditions but also processes of degeneration that accompany aging and strenuous physical effort.  Compiled into an index of health, data from 23 localities as part of a large collaborative project on the Western Hemisphere reveal diverse health conditions for the pre-Columbian population.  For reasons not yet understood populations moved over time into less healthy ecological environments.  The analysis has implications for understanding environmental determinants of health, the pattern of European conquest, pre-contact population size, investigating human adaptation to climate change, and discovering prime movers of very long-term economic growth"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Title from PDF file as viewed on 1/25/2005.
Also available in print.
System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.