Thomas Lunde: > I don't think we can assume that all humans >settlements in all areas of the world over a period or 100,000 years >consistently had short and brutish life spans. That some of those >communities existed for 1000's of years and the theory of natural selection >(note still called a theory) had plenty of time to develop decent teeth as a >life support to longevity. That once those genes had evolved ?, they have >had plenty of time to integrate themselves into the general population. A few years ago I stumbled across a paper on what happened to people's teeth in a formerly isolated Swiss valley after a road was built and sugar was introduced. Before that their teeth were very good, after that mediocre to rotten. We have seen much the same thing happen with Inuit kids in the Canadian north when sugar, in its various manifestations (coke, chocolate bars, etc.) was introduced. It may be much more a matter of "lifestyle" or social change than biological evolution. Ed Weick
