Nor did they have dentists or physicians.
(Price, 1970)
And in those fortunate places the most common causes of death were
accident (trauma) and old age. The typical life span was long into
the 70s and in some places quite a bit longer. One fabled place,
Hunza, was renowned for having an extraordinarily high percentage of
vigorous and active people over 100 years old.
I hope I've made you curious. "How could this be?" you're asking.
Well, here's why. First, everyone of those groups lived in places so
entirely remote, so inaccessible that they were of necessity,
virtually self-sufficient. They hardly traded at all with the
outside world, and certainly they did not trade for bulky,
hard-to-transport bulk foodstuffs. Virtually everything they ate was
produced by themselves. If they were an agricultural people,
naturally, everything they ate was natural: organic, whole,
unsprayed and fertilized with what ever local materials seemed to
produce enhanced plant growth. And, if they were agricultural, they
lived on a soil body that possessed highly superior natural
fertility. If not an agricultural people they lived by the sea and
made a large portion of their diets sea foods. If their soil had not
been extraordinarily fertile, these groups would not have enjoyed
superior health and would have conformed to the currently
widely-believed notion that before the modern era, people's lives
were brutish, unhealthful, and short.
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