Observers have long noted a connection between geography and social performance, especially the persistence of poor health and poverty in the tropics. Although the relationship is well established, the underlying mechanism is controversial. Some researchers emphasize the constraints imposed by ecology, which affect the disease environment, food production, and a country's potential for economic development. An alternative mechanism emphasizes culture and institutions, whereby human creations enable people to adapt and to shape their environment for their benefit. The future health and quality of life of hundreds of millions of people living in developing countries depends on knowledge of these mechanisms. The distant and recent past provide an excellent laboratory for investigating these issues. Human health and welfare have varied enormously over the past 10,000 years, with transitions from foraging to farming, from rural to urban settlements, from relative isolation to global exploration and colonization, and ultimately from the artesian shop to industrialization. The researchers undertaking this interdisciplinary research project will use skeletons to assess health over this enormous span of time. They will employ a variety of sources to prepare measures of the environment or the context in which people lived. With a focus on Europe and the Mediterranean, the investigators will develop models that explain variations in health as a function of both ecological and socioeconomic variables. Ecological variables include climate; topography; soils; vegetation; access to water; and the nature of the terrain, while socioeconomic variables include settlement size; patterns of subsistence; technology in use; form of government; the degree of stratification and inequality that existed in the society; the nature of housing; and the presence or absence of monumental architecture. Project researchers will develop regression models to test the null hypothesis that ecological factors had no influence on health.
The project unites fields that rarely conduct research in concert, including economics, physical anthropology, history, archaeology, climate history, geography, and engineering. More than 50 representatives from these fields ranging from graduate students to distinguished professors will be coordinated through a project headquarters and via the internet. The chronological and geographic breadth of this project will be complemented by analysis of the health of men, women, and children. Graduate students working on this project will become research partners and coauthors in publications that flow from the project. Men and women from diverse ethnic groups across the U.S., Europe, and the Mediterranean will participate as researchers. One important legacy of this project is expected to be the formation of an international community of young interdisciplinary scholars who will be familiar with the organization and methods of large collaborative projects. Society at large will benefit from new knowledge of successful (and failed) human strategies for adapting to natural catastrophes, climate change, epidemics, new technologies, and types of political organization that have unfolded over the past several millennia. An award resulting from the FY 2005 NSF-wide competition on Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) supports this project. All NSF directorates and offices are involved in the coordinated management of the HSD competition and the portfolio of HSD awards.
