Not all dust is created equal. You mention many types, but I would differentiate between the following two classes:
All kinds of particles that would also be present in the ancestral environment, independent of size, such as human skin, soil material, natural fibers, pollen, and microbes adapted to these.
All other, mostly artificial particles, such as paint, pesticides, synthetic fibers etc., that the human immune system is not adapted to.
While both can lead to health complications in high concentrations, I am much more worried about the latter. And if the Hygiene Hypothesis is correct, a moderate amount of the former might even be beneficial overall.
If you want to compare to the “ancestral environment”, it’s crucial not to forget about the amounts of dust that are breathed in. How much dust of what particle sizes do we breathe in outside, compared to inside a dusty home?
I would argue that at least partly enclosed shelter is part of the ancestral environment. Here is a ChatGPT-4 summary:
Human habitation in dwellings dates back to prehistoric times, around 1.8 million years ago, as evidenced by the discovery of the earliest known human-made shelters at sites in Eastern Africa. The shelters consisted of simple arrangements of stones and branches.
Cave habitation became a significant part of human living as Homo sapiens began to migrate across the globe. The use of caves for shelter is believed to date back at least 100,000 years, based on archaeological evidence from caves like those found in the region of Mount Carmel, Israel.
The use of constructed huts or other types of simple buildings dates back tens of thousands of years. For instance, at a site in England known as Star Carr, archaeologists have found evidence of a 11,000-year-old house.
That seems mostly nonresponsive to his point, since those sorts of shelters are obviously going to let in a ton of outside air and where they do not, like caves, they will be concentrating smoke, and be so small & primitive that their endogenous dust levels don’t matter much compared to exogenous.
I also think it’s probably a bad idea to provide random GPT pastes if you haven’t factchecked them and they do not serve any particular point. The Star Carr part seems right, but the 100kya claim for caves seems badly wrong*, and the first use of caves for shelter more likely dates back at least 750,000 years ago (Carmel isn’t even mentioned in the cave-dwelling article, nor can I find a relevant one in its article or some searches, only an instance of a burial dated 100kya). Why do you think GPT-4 is any more accurate about, say, Luhmann or the Sequences than it is about human habitation of caves?
* Really, you found that plausible? Humans have been around for like a million years, and only ~100kya they noticed these warm comfy holes in the ground beloved by many other animals like bears and tried to live in them? Humans have clothing, seafaring, bone carving and beads etc ~100kya but still were figuring out ‘hey we can go into this cave thing!’?
I don’t think ChatGPT is “correct” with sources or numbers because it has no deep understanding of either. I think it is “directionally correct”.
As to the “non-responsive” part: I should have been more clear that I meant that in the ancestral environment, there is much more dust carried into and accumulated in the shelter than in modern homes.
Not all dust is created equal. You mention many types, but I would differentiate between the following two classes:
All kinds of particles that would also be present in the ancestral environment, independent of size, such as human skin, soil material, natural fibers, pollen, and microbes adapted to these.
All other, mostly artificial particles, such as paint, pesticides, synthetic fibers etc., that the human immune system is not adapted to.
While both can lead to health complications in high concentrations, I am much more worried about the latter. And if the Hygiene Hypothesis is correct, a moderate amount of the former might even be beneficial overall.
I haven’t given much consideration to the hygiene hypothesis but agree it seems likely that some types of particulate matter could be beneficial.
If you want to compare to the “ancestral environment”, it’s crucial not to forget about the amounts of dust that are breathed in. How much dust of what particle sizes do we breathe in outside, compared to inside a dusty home?
I would argue that at least partly enclosed shelter is part of the ancestral environment. Here is a ChatGPT-4 summary:
That seems mostly nonresponsive to his point, since those sorts of shelters are obviously going to let in a ton of outside air and where they do not, like caves, they will be concentrating smoke, and be so small & primitive that their endogenous dust levels don’t matter much compared to exogenous.
I also think it’s probably a bad idea to provide random GPT pastes if you haven’t factchecked them and they do not serve any particular point. The Star Carr part seems right, but the 100kya claim for caves seems badly wrong*, and the first use of caves for shelter more likely dates back at least 750,000 years ago (Carmel isn’t even mentioned in the cave-dwelling article, nor can I find a relevant one in its article or some searches, only an instance of a burial dated 100kya). Why do you think GPT-4 is any more accurate about, say, Luhmann or the Sequences than it is about human habitation of caves?
* Really, you found that plausible? Humans have been around for like a million years, and only ~100kya they noticed these warm comfy holes in the ground beloved by many other animals like bears and tried to live in them? Humans have clothing, seafaring, bone carving and beads etc ~100kya but still were figuring out ‘hey we can go into this cave thing!’?
Here are some actual sources as requested:
Sites of Human Evolution at Mount Carmel: The Nahal Me’arot / Wadi el-Mughara Caves go back up to 500.000 BP
Olduvai Gorge | Archaeological Site, Tanzania go back 2 million years BP
I don’t think ChatGPT is “correct” with sources or numbers because it has no deep understanding of either. I think it is “directionally correct”.
As to the “non-responsive” part: I should have been more clear that I meant that in the ancestral environment, there is much more dust carried into and accumulated in the shelter than in modern homes.