"Genetic load" in paläolithischer Bevölkerung – gab es kulturell bedingte Mutagene ?

As early as in human remains of the Middle Palaeolithic some instances of skeletal deformation are known, which can be of genetic (mutational) origin. Their number is slightly growing in Upper Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic respectively Mesolithic groups. The question is, if within the factors of "background" mutation (active in all living organisms) is there a complex specific for the environment of man. This may be a special use of fire : We know of artificial holes in rocks, which could be used like mortars to crush roots and fruits or molluscs or little reptiles and mammals for a meal. As a mutagen, heavy metals (e.g. Zn) from the stone (walls or pestle) could be incorporated with this form of nutrition, still without thermal influences. More, a form of "cooking" by throwing in hot stones must have brought in a lot of splinters from these "cooking stones" by the thermal difference.

Additional to the resorption of mutagenes via tractus digestivus we have to think for fire-bound chemical complexes (e.g. benzpyrene), coming to activity via tractus respiratorius. It is not only breathing, which may incorporate mutagenic substances. There is a second way of influence by the fluid of tears, produced by sitting near a smoking fire, via canalis nasolacrimalis to the pharynx. Corresponding reports are always given — from Carolus Linnaeus 1732 to the recent volumes of "Circumpolar health" from the Lapponic region to ancient and modern Greenland and Alaska. Early Eskimo had to live with the seal-oil or fish-oil soot of their lamps. Man in the Palaeolithic — could he (respectively his gametes) likewise have been loaded with mutagenic matter ?

There is no proof for such a possibility. Anyhow, now tasks are given for archaeochemistry and "experimental archaeology". We should not think, searching for mutagenic substances in "cooking stones" and lamp soot may be the most important problem. But answers could be very interesting because some mutants in the history of Palaeolithic mankind could be "man-made" ! However, we would win some knowledge more of the relation between man and his environment.