The linked author doesn't seem to have a clear thesis statement, but from the examples given (the Hadza and the Conquistadors) it appears the thesis statement could be something like this: "Each isolated ancient human community already has basically optimized microbiomes. In each such human niche, their traditional microbes can probably survive in that niche. Also, those same microbes will have been surviving for so long that second order optimizations (like ethnic genetic adaptation to the potentially harmful parts of their traditional microbiome package) have likely occurred. In the face of such 'bio-traditions', and their presumptively functional state, we should tread carefully, and study everything before we muck about too much."<p>This seems to me like an excellent argument for why people who grew up on family farms, or in jungles, or other vaguely historical places should not muck about too much with their microbiomes. Heck, even third generation New Yorkers are probably solid.<p>However, it seems to miss the point that urbanization, immigration, antibiotic use, and radically weird diets (to name a few factors) are happening all over the modern world.<p>Given the modern situation, having already been disrupted by biologically unprecedented events for centuries, it seems plausible that at least some of us are like sailors at sea, with the metaphorical equivalent of scurvy-before-its-etiology-was-determined.<p>Just as, <i>if you have scurvy</i>, it doesn't cost much to try eating citrus and see if it helps, it seems that for people who are already unhappy with their gut health, it probably doesn't cost much to experiment here.<p>If you can already see that your digestion/mood/hunger is funky by comparing it do to friends and family, and you can read the research on that suggests these processes can be affected by microbiomes, it seems plausible to me that checking out uBiome or General Biotics or one of the "dating websites for poop" (or whatever, I'm sure there are more of these things floating around) it doesn't seem <i>that</i> crazy to me. A bit crazy, yes. But way less crazy than the same experimentation would be for someone who is eating and living in the same manner as their mother's mother, and has no more tummy troubles than any of their grandparents.<p>I've published a little in this area, and I didn't know about the conquistador story, so the article was appreciated, but I'm also personally a fan of experimentation that is early, fast, and cheap and I didn't see any of the experimental cost benefit analysis that could have been there, and could have made the article better.