Perversely, farming didn’t bring improved diets but almost everywhere poorer ones. Focusing on a narrower range of staple foods meant most people suffered at least some dietary deficiencies, without necessarily being aware of it. Moreover, living in proximity to domesticated animals meant that their diseases became our diseases. Leprosy, plague, tuberculosis, typhus, diphtheria, measles, influenzas—all vaulted from goats and pigs and cows and the like straight into us. By one estimate, about 60 percent of all infectious diseases are zoonotic (that is, from animals). Farming led to the rise of
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