Civilisation is not kind... even to it's beneficiaries!!
When considering infant mortality and longevity people are naturally inclined to compare to civilised society of 20, 50 or 100 years ago. But what about pre-civilisation???? There is some information if you know where to look...
Below is an extract from an article that can be found at the following link: http://www.westonaprice.org/notes-from-yesteryear/100-years-before-weston-price
Catlin’s interest in skulls led him to conclude that the death among Native American children was very low. In searching through a graveyard, “I was forcibly struck with the almost incredibly small proportion of crania of children; and even more so, in the almost unexceptional completeness and soundness (and total absence of malformation) of their beautiful sets of teeth, of all ages.” “Shar-re-tar-rushe, an aged and venerable Chief of the Pawnee-Picts, a powerful Tribe living on the headwaters of the Arkansas River, at the base of the Rocky Mountains, told me in answer to questions, ‘we very seldom lose a small child—none of our women have ever died in childbirth—they have no medical attendance on these occasions—we have no Idiots or Lunatics —nor any Deaf and Dumb, or Hunch-backs, and our children never die in teething.’” The food of this tribe was “buffalo flesh and venison.” In contrast, Catlin observed, “in London and other large towns in England, and cities of the Continent, on an average, one half of the human Race die before they reach the age of five years, and one half of the remainder die before they reach the age of 25 yeas, thus leaving one in four to share the chances of lasting from the age of 25 to old age.” He noted statistics describing 20,000 idiots and 35,000 lunatics in England. “The contrast between the two societies, of Savage and of Civil, as regards to the perfection and duration of their teeth, is quite equal to their Bills or Mortality.” Like Price, Catlin was struck by the beauty, strength and demeanor of the Native Americans. “The several tribes of Indians inhabiting the regions of the Upper Missouri. . . are undoubtedly the finest looking, best equipped, and most beautifully costumed of any on the Continent.” Writing of the Blackfoot and Crow, tribes who hunted buffalo on the rich glaciated soils of the American plains, “They are the happiest races of Indian I have met—picturesque and handsome, almost beyond description.” “The very use of the word savage,” wrote Catlin, “as it is applied in its general sense, I am inclined to believe is an abuse of the word, and the people to whom it is applied.” Like Price, who argued against genetics as a cause of human disabilities, Catlin did not think that the diseases of civilized man were due to inherent flaws in the human physical makeup. “This enormous disproportion might be attributed to some natural physical deficiency in the construction of Man, were it not that we find him in some phases of Savage life, enjoying almost equal exemption from disease and premature death, as the Brute creations [animals]; leading us to the irresistible conclusion that there is some lamentable fault yet overlooked in the sanitary economy of civilized life.” “I offer myself as a living witness, that whilst in that condition [living among them], the Native Races of North and South America are a healthier people, and less subject to premature mortality (save from accidents of War and the Chase, and also from Small-pox and other pestilential diseases introduced amongst them) than any Civilized Race in existence.” As did Weston A. Price one hundred years later, Catlin noted the fact that moral and physical degeneration came together with the advent of civilized society. In his late 1830s portrait of “Pigeon’s Egg Head (The Light) Going to and Returning from Washington” Catlin painted him corrupted with “gifts of the great white father” upon his return to his native homeland. Those gifts including two bottles of whiskey in his pockets.
