City Cesspools vs. Hunters-Geniuses?

For some reason I hate that title.

Anyway, more Jared Diamond. Live in close proximity with thousands of other people and diseases will thrive. Those large, early civilizations were breeding grounds for some very complex strains and viruses. Those living in those civilizations created biological defenses against them. Those who survived a disease gave birth to a child more likely to survive it as well, or something like that. Take these complex diseases to a society of villages without biological defenses and they will all die.

People living in crowded towns were less likely than gatherers-hunters to die of starvation, murder (says diamond b/c of police forces etc.; i was surprised), animal attacks, things like that. They had to fight diseases instead. So, the most capable to fight disease lived to breed, not the most intelligent. On the other hand, those gatherers-hunters (my one professor says they may be referred to in this way soon b/c they are predominantly gatherers) that are most clever, crafty, practical, intelligent, will live to breed.

Look more modernly, America's and Europe's and Japan's and China's children may spend less time thinking actively and instead spend days thinking passively via tv, videogames, other entertainment. Diamond thinks on average the native hunter-gatherer is more intelligent than the average, say, American. He has spent about half his life with them and says they seem more alert and more able to adapt and learn in general. He says the effects on unstimulated children brains is irreversable.