Hunger and History

Book excerpt: The essays in this 1985 volume direct attention to important questions on the relationship between food and history. Throughout human history, man has had to adapt and sustain himself by varying or expanding the basic kinds or forms of his nutritional staples, by migration, or by employing remarkable ingenuities to alter his environment. But we have as yet only a rudimentary understanding of nutrition and malnutrition in the past. The authors of these essays show how much of the past can be better understood if the distinctions which are obvious to clinicians and nutritionists are assimilated by historians. Likewise, this volume challenges assumptions about the mechanisms of population growth and decline, as well as theories of how populations react or adapt to constraints on their resources.