The Nourisher - Editor’s Blog

Of all the peoples visited by Weston Priceduring his historic research expeditions of the 1930s, none elicited as much awe as the Australian Aborigines, whom he described as "a living museum preserved from the dawn of animal life on the earth." For Price, the Aborigines represented the paradigm of moral and physical perfection. Their skills in hunting, tracking and food gathering were unsurpassed. Their social organization allowed for the schooling of children from a young age. A series of initiations for the boys were designed to instill both fearlessness and respect for the welfare of the entire tribe, and respect and care for a sizeable number of old people, for whom were reserved special foods that were easy to gather and hunt. Price's photographs of Aborigines on their native diets illustrate dental structures so perfect as to make the reader wonder whether these natives were wearing false teeth. But like all the other primitive groups Price studied, the Aborigines soon succumbed to rampant tooth decay and disease of every type when they adopted the "displacing foods of modern commerce" - white flour and sugar, jams, canned foods and tea. Children born to the next generation developed irregularities of the dental arches with conspicuous facial deformities - patterns that mimicked those seen in white civilizations.10 MORE...