Re: Central America
Evan Hodgens (uncaug@well.com)
Thu, 30 Mar 1995 20:02:03 -0800
In article <Pine.SGI.3.91.950325140145.19428A-100000@server.uwindsor.ca>,
Bonedaddy <parker7@server.uwindsor.ca> wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Mar 1995, Jack Davis wrote:
> >
> > Alcoholism has been a huge problem for all Native American groups with
> > which I am familiar. Is there a genetic link? Maybe the fact that
> > Europeans have been consuming alcohol a lot longer than have Native
> > Americans who seem to not have had alcohol until the European
colonization.
> > I suspect, therefore, that Euro-Americans have a bit more tolerance to
> > low-alcohol drinks than do natives, although purified alcohol has only
> > existed for what, 800 or 900 years, and now reeks havoc on us as well.
There has been some researchers who have suggested that the amount of time
alcohol has been used in a population does seem to have a correlation to the
incidence of alcoholism. Use of alcohol appears to be longest in the
Mediterranean
region, and incidence of alcoholism among the populations there relatively
low. As
the use of alcohol spreads into Northern Europe later, alcoholism seems to
be more
prevalent the further from the Mediterranean you go.
Native Americans don't seem to have known of it until contact with
Europeans, and
rates of alcoholism are high. The theory suggests that what we have going
on here is
a form of natural selection -- the drunks die out and folks who aren't as
prone to
alcoholism replace those who are.
True? I don't know how respectable this research is. I have come across
the information
that alcohol was known in Meso America - I have even heard that among the Aztec
nobility getting drunk was a capital offense.
--
There is no such thing as a dumb question, but there IS such a thing as a dumb answer - I've given some.
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