
Farming gave us salmonella, ancient DNA suggests - Hooke
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/farming-gave-us-salmonella-ancient-dna-suggests
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mathgladiator
So, when I went to pet a tiger, I was told to wash up because they carry
salmonella. Fun fact: big cats carry all sorts of strange bacteria because
they eat raw meat and lick themselves.

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CoolGuySteve
Humans are the weirdest omnivore. The only reason we can eat meat is because
1-2 hundred million years of our homoerectus ancestors predigesting meat by
cooking it.

At our evolutionary roots we are a tech bubble, but that tech, cooking, was
discovered by a species that we would put in a zoo if it was still around.

~~~
dntbnmpls
> The only reason we can eat meat is because 1-2 hundred million years of our
> homoerectus ancestors predigesting meat by cooking it.

Not true. Chimps, our closest relative, eat meat which means our common
ancestor also ate meat. So not only have humans been eating meat before
cooking, our ancestors going back millions of years also ate meat. Also, human
populations, like the inuit, eat meat without cooking. It's quite a task to
start a fire in the frozen arctic. Anthony Bourdain had a show on the inuits a
a while ago. And that's not including human populations throughout the world
that eat insects/etc.

Cooking is what allowed humans to eat more meat and more efficiently, but it's
absurd to claim humans only started eating meat after learning to cook.

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ptah
it is not absurd. cooking would have helped ease the evolutionary transition
to being able to digest meat. aside from that we are still very poor at
digesting meat.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/red-meat-
processe...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/red-meat-processed-
meat-death-mortality-health-cancer-heart-disease-vegetarian-vegan-
diet-a7016986.html)

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LatteLazy
Didn't it also give us small pox, plague, and pretty much every other major
disease? Living closely with animals and with each other (which farming allows
and requires) created the grounds for all sorts of diseases right?

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LeifCarrotson
Yes. Two other sources for this are the book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared
Diamond, [1] and the video Americapox by CGPGrey. [2]

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel)

[2]: [https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk](https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk)

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contingencies
Just watched a BBC short video on this area.

[https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0850nn0/was-the-
neolithic-a-...](https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0850nn0/was-the-neolithic-a-
big-mistake-)

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reanimus
That kinda sucks, but I figure civilization is worth severe food poisoning

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blunte
Title should say "Animal farming". Plant farming did not give us salmonella.

~~~
cs02rm0
The article implies it might have done, not directly through the farming of
plants directly but because humans settled in one place for agriculture
instead of foraging.

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heratyian
Related book: “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond

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LoSboccacc
*husbandry

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1-6
Farming gave us salmons and salmonella. FIFY

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antepodius
The agricultural revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the
human race.

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onetimemanytime
>> _The agricultural revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for
the human race._

Go in a forested area somewhere and live there. Let us know how a disaster the
agro revolution and today's inventions are.

Yeah, life was all peaches back then

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TFYS
That's not exactly the same thing. Back when humans were hunter gatherers
there was a lot more forest and a lot more fauna to eat. You also had a tribe
that stuck with you for life. Modern inventions weren't known back then so you
wouldn't even know how to miss them. There was less work to do and the work
you did had real meaning. It's completely possible that life was better for
the average person back then.

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Nasrudith
More fauna with hunter gatherers? They were causing mass extinctions since
they picked up spears!

The whole reason they were usually 8nomadic was because they depleted local
food supplies and had to move on.

Once they had better nutrition (the source of huge barbarian myths) but
agriculture has advanced far past that now.

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jessaustin
You're really wrong about this. Pack hunters, such as wolves, lions, or early
humans, do affect local prey populations in temporary ways, but they don't
destroy ecosystems. Agriculture does destroy ecosystems.

