
You Say What You Eat - 80mph
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/346-1907/trenches/7748-trenches-physical-linguistic-development
======
Afton
There are a lot of really challenging questions about how to count languages,
so I'd need to read the actual study to determine how they counted. But this
is a pretty cool result actually. I'm also interested in how they quantified
'ease of articulation' for bilabials vs labiodentals.

Also, for those who don't have an overbite, can you more easily make er...
reverse labiodentals (dentalabials?) where you use your lower teeth and your
upper lip? I have an overbite, but the sound seems largely indistinct from my
'v/f'. I guess I'd have to see it's effect on surrounding vowels a bit more
too. But different articulation points for the same sound are not unheard of
(there are two different ways of making 's' for example).

Quite cool.

~~~
garmaine
They sound very distinct to me (with an overbite mind you). They would not be
distinguishing in English, but they are very much different sounds.

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papln
Web devs, please don't do this:

    
    
        p { color: #707070 !important; }
        body {     color: #7b7b7b; }
    

This is a deeply hostile attack on your users, telling your users that you
don't want them to read your site's primary content.

If you think you need this, UI development is not a good career choice for
you.

~~~
noitsnot
Why? I can read the grey for the most part, which doesn't seem too hostile.

~~~
papln
> for the most part,

is a terrible standard for main content. You should be able to read it for the
_all_.

You can read it, but many people do not have high-performance monitor and
high-performance eyes.

Users can configure monitor/browser defaults for contrast and text however
they like; web devs shouldn't try to forcibly reduce constrast for the primary
content that is supposed to be the main recipient of visual attention.

~~~
rimliu
How about not trying to back your personal dislike with some army of phantom
users?

~~~
lucasmullens
Do you disagree that there exists people with bad eyesight?

~~~
rimliu
I myself have bad eyesight. I can read that website perfectly fine. And author
owns the original commenter nothing so does not really deserve this kind of
attack. And most importantly — very high contrast (pure black on pure white)
is actually _bad_.

------
andai
The agricultural revolution and its effects have been a disaster for the human
race.

~~~
snazz
This seems to be one of Harari’s arguments in _Sapiens_. In many ways, hunter-
gatherers lived better lives, ate more varied foods, suffered fewer health
problems, and left a much less lasting mark on their environment. But now that
we’ve gotten to a point where much of the population lives in relative
comfort, we can see that there was a long-term payoff from investing in
agriculture.

~~~
chrisco255
Well, that and industrialization, technology and specialization of labor has
enabled us to be able to travel to outer space, for example. So we may be able
to be the first species to colonize another planet. Earth will probably be
smashed by another huge meteorite at some point in the future, so it's an
important feat.

------
chrisco255
Weston A. Price did a lot of studies on nutrition and its impact on health,
bone development, and growth, in particular, he focused on the impact of
nutrition on dental health [1]. He noted that people who consumed meat and
more primitive diets had superior dental health with few cavities (<1% of
teeth impacted) and almost perfect dental arches (as opposed to folks nowadays
who often require braces and extensive dental work in childhood or well into
adulthood).

It's interesting to see the skulls of pre-Columbus native Americans, for
example [2]. I'm not sure if we're "evolving" as the article says. I think
evolution tends to only evolve for traits that promote survival to the next
generation. In this case, I think modern agricultural diets promote
underdevelopment of the jaw and teeth, and we've compensated for that by
adding additional consonants to our language. The truth is though, the diet
that our jaws evolved for still live on in our genes and we're just suffering
from malnutrition to an extent.

[1]
[https://healthwyze.org/archive/nutrition_and_physical_degene...](https://healthwyze.org/archive/nutrition_and_physical_degeneration_doctor_weston_a_price.pdf)
[2]
[http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html#ch13](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html#ch13)

~~~
Cpoll
I had to do some research to understand the downvotes. For anyone else, the
Weston A. Price Foundation and Price's writing has a fair bit of criticism for
its weak science (see Quackwatch [1], Science Based Medicine [2], Rational
Wiki [3] among others).

It's hard to navigate their website, but it seems they're, among other things,
pro-homeopathy, critical of vaccines, anti-soy, pro 'natural' foods, and
advocate some controversial and potentially dangerous diets.

[1]
[https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/holisticd...](https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/holisticdent.html)
[2] [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/sbm-weston-prices-
appalling...](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/sbm-weston-prices-appalling-
legacy/) [3]
[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Weston_A._Price_Foundation](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Weston_A._Price_Foundation)

~~~
chrisco255
Don't know about the foundation itself, it was founded almost half a century
after his death (1999
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_A._Price_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_A._Price_Foundation)).
But his research itself is highly cited.

As for "weak science" the book itself "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" is
cited by 585 sources on Google Scholar, for example:
[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1184515186752252859...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=11845151867522528599&as_sdt=5,44&sciodt=0,44&hl=en)

It squares with the parent article that's posted, that diet affects jaw and
dental development.

It's well documented that diet and nutrition drastically affect health, and
plenty of other sources besides Weston Price's book attest to that:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14972061](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14972061)

The interesting thing about Price's book, is that he spent time traveling to
every continent and met with aboriginal tribes and met with the modern (book
was written in the 30's) tribes there. He took photos of their teeth. Keep in
mind, this book was written in a time before television, before dental hygiene
products were readily available in many countries, etc. The interesting thing
about the book is the photo evidence itself. Maori, Chumu, Samoans,
Melanesians, Gaelics, Aborigines, Inuit and many others are covered.

~~~
Cpoll
I spent some time looking through your Google Scholar link. Some of the
citations were blanket "nutritionists have studied diet (1-6)" where Price is
4, but I did like this citation:

Nevertheless, since Price did not report his original measurements or
statistical analyses, these observations need to be interpreted with some
caution.

Which is to say, citation count is not a proxy for quality.

~~~
chrisco255
I've read the book and it's filled with cited sources, charts, photo evidence
and logs. He was a published researcher and had over 150 publications on
dentistry.

Guy was one of the foundational figures in modern dentistry:
[https://books.google.com/books?id=pZnzxgEACAAJ&dq=weston+pri...](https://books.google.com/books?id=pZnzxgEACAAJ&dq=weston+price&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwimu_jM4t3jAhU7XhUIHbZnAlwQ6AEIOzAD)

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104863643...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048636431870033)

He's also far from the only one to link nutrition with dental health (or
health in general)...here's an article showing links between early carb
consumers and dental caries:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903197/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3903197/)

And another study confirming Price's assertions, with 34 Paleolithic skulls
being inspected for dental and oral health:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.2536](https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.2536)
(NPR interpretation here: [https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2013/02/24/1726888...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2013/02/24/172688806/ancient-chompers-were-healthier-than-ours))

Another study confirming link between sugar intake and cavities:
[https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/4/881S/4690063](https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/4/881S/4690063)
(conclusion is that fluoride is a crutch for bad nutrition and doesn't fully
solve the problem)

Suffice to say, criticism of some aspects of Price's works or opinions over
his many decades of work, I'm not here to defend all of that. But the links
between nutrition and dental health and development are well founded. And
that's exactly what the OP article suggested as well.

