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Implications of the NDT for World Wide Health and Mortality in Prehistory

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The Neolithic Demographic Transition and its Consequences

Abstract

This chapter discusses the significance of the NDT model in particular and of broad explanatory hypotheses in general. Various questions are raised about the aspects of the model, particularly about the timing of the NDT, the causes of increasing fertility, and the resulting pattern of increasing mortality. Data are presented demonstrating diminishing returns for labor in bringing food to the table in economies preceding and accompanying the adoption of agriculture. Also discussed are data from paleopathology indicating that health commonly declined during the same transitions.

The chapter discusses the problem of reconciling the robust evidence of diminishing economic returns and declining health with the dramatic increase in fertility at the NDT. It also suggests that the Neolithic Transition represents a far more profound change in human strategy than has hitherto been recognized.

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Authors
  1. Mark Nathan Cohen
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), UPR2147, 44 rue de L’Amiral Mouchez, 75014 Paris, France

    Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel

  2. Department of Anthropology Peabody Museum, Harvard University, 11 Divinity, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

    Ofer Bar-Yosef

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Cohen, M.N. (2008). Implications of the NDT for World Wide Health and Mortality in Prehistory. In: Bocquet-Appel, JP., Bar-Yosef, O. (eds) The Neolithic Demographic Transition and its Consequences. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8539-0_18

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