The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race
by Jason GodeskyIn my previous article, I glossed over a number of significant points, which I now must go back and revisit in greater detail. The most glaring of these glosses is probably my assertion that agriculture is a risky, marginal and difficult means of acquiring food. While I have previously covered the gross inefficiency of agriculture, I am sure many readers would object that agriculture provides a stable, secure and reliable source of food. After all, it was the bounty of agriculture that allowed us to give up hunting and gathering, constantly wandering and wondering where our next meal would come from, giving us the time to build civilization, right? That is the common picture we’ve all been told, but it is also the opposite of truth. In fact, the Neolithic Revolution was, to use Jared Diamond’s turn of phrase, the worst mistake in the history of the human race.
It is taken for granted in our culture that agriculture is the path of least resistance, an immediately obvious advantage over any other subsistence technology. Agriculturalist philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes assure us–without any empirical validation–that any other way of life is “nasty, brutish and short.â€? Before agriculture, humans lived like animals, constantly in search of food, always on the brink of starvation. With agriculture came ease and security, and a better way of
life. How can we ask why the Agricultural Revolution occurred? The question is how, not why; once agriculture appeared, its superiority would be so obvious, it would be adopted by all.
This view of agriculture has no grounding in reality. It is a necessary picture for our civilization to hold; we would not be agriculturalists today if we did not. This idea is a necessary meme for the functioning of an agriculturalist society, in order to maintain itself over generations. The traditional view can be broken down into four myths, which we must address in turn:
- Agriculture is the path of least resistance.
- Agriculture creates a more stable and secure food supply.
- Agriculture leads to greater health and nutrition.
- Agriculture allows more leisure time and a generally higher quality of life.
That agriculture represents the easiest or simplest way of attaining one’s food cannot be supported logically or empirically. Whereas hunter-gatherers must only accomplish the work equivalent to harvesting, and that on a low-intensity, rolling basis, an agriculturalist must also plant and tend to their crops. Agriculture is the most intensive form of cultivation, often requiring massive projects such as irrigation or terracing. This is borne out by empirical data. Due to the law of diminishing returns, though agriculture produces the most food absolutely, the ratio of food per unit of labor is in fact higher than any other subsistence technology. Agriculturalists must work harder for their food than anyone else. (Harris, 1993) In modern “petroculture,” 10 calories of fossil fuels are burned for every 1 calorie of food produced. Horticulturalists have the most efficient lifestyle; foragers have the easiest lifestyle. Ours produces the most calories, but is also the most grossly inefficient.
If agriculture is a more difficult means of attaining food, at least it is more secure, no? Where a forager won’t know if they will eat today or not, an agriculturalist can be assured she’ll have food for the day. This, as it turns out, is also a false statement. In all but the most marginal environments, a gatherer has a near 100% chance of finding some form of plant food, whereas the probability of a hunter’s success lies closer to 25%. This has led to an emphasis on sharing in many forager societies, allowing them to take advantage of multiplicative probability. Whereas the chance of a single hunter retrieving nothing on a given day is 75%, the chances that ten will come back with nothing is 0.75 x 10 = 5.63%. If even one hunter makes a kill on a given day, then the band will eat. (Lee, 2000)
On the other hand, few organisms are domesticable compared to the diversity of species available for food. Moreover, those species which are domesticable are very closely related to each other. Inclement conditions for one domesticate, then, are all the more likely to affect all of the staples, leading to a severe famine. Agriculturalists are forced to depend on a very narrow selection of closely related plants and animals for food, and this makes them highly susceptible to famine. There are also wars and political pressures which are more often the causes of famine than natural conditions; these are the results of the complex political structures which often require agriculture in order to exist. When Lee studied the !Kung in the Kalahari desert (2000), the region was in the midst of a severe draught. The neighboring Bantu farmers and pastoralists were dying by the thousands of starvation; the !Kung, however, were able to subsist very healthily on an average of two hours of foraging a day.
Neither can it be supported that agriculturalists are healthier. In fact, there is mounting evidence that agriculture may be very unhealthy. Of course, it is well known that most epidemic diseases would not exist if not for agriculture (Diamond, 1987). Most
epidemic diseases are not “native� to the human system—this should be evident from their virulence, as it is generally maladaptive for an organism to kill or even hinder its host’s survival. Chicken pox, cholera, and plague, for example, were all animal diseases which had the chance to jump the species barrier due to the newfound proximity of humans and other animals which followed domestication. Others, such as malaria, were spread by agricultural practices (malaria only became so virulent when slash-and-burn agriculture attracted mosquitoes to human population centers). (Diamond, 1997). Even so, these diseases and others might not have ever achieved their impact if not for the large, dense populations which agriculture created. Whereas an epidemic disease among foragers may destroy at most a single band of 25, with the advent of cities and extended trade networks, the threat of such diseases became global for the first time. This is, of course, a long-term impact of agriculture. The immediate effects are little better. Excavations at Dickson’s Mounds show a sharp drop in all the customary benchmarks of health and nutrition, and also signs of immediate malnutrition. They evidence a shorter life expectancy and smaller stature (indicating greater malnutrition). (Goodman & Armelagos, 2000) It is only in the past fifty years that the heights of Western Americans and Europeans, with the modern “affluent malnutrition,� have come to match those of their Mesolithic forager ancestors. Greeks and Turks still have not attained the full stature of their Mesolithic ancestors.
Does agriculture at least provide more leisure time, and a generally higher quality of life? As we have already seen, agriculturalists must work much harder for their food than foragers; obviously, the argument that agriculture allows more leisure time is based on the untenable, ultimately philosophical, contention that agriculture is the “path of least resistance.â€? Some argue that by providing for specialists, agriculture provides greater leisure time. However, such specialists must work comparable hours to farmers to offset the gross inefficiencies of agriculture. Whether by plowing the earth, making pots, or writing software, all agriculturalists must spend the majority of their life working for their food–whether directly, or trading their labor for various tokens that can be exchanged for food. Only the elites–what Thorstein Veblen called “the leisure class”–have greater leisure time. This class has an unprecedented amount of leisure, being able to shed even the few hours of walking that a forager must put in every day.
If by quality of life we mean health, then, as discussed above, agriculture is still a bad idea. To agriculture we owe disease, malnutrition and famine: things nearly unheard of to our Mesolithic ancestors (save perhaps for some foragers living in the most marginal areas, like the Arctic Circle), things we take for granted now as necessary and eternal evils. Even today, among the elites of the West, we have only achieved what some researchers have termed “affluent malnutrition.” We eat large quantities of food, yes; but they are so poorly mismatched to the evolutionary needs of our species as to constitute outright malnutrition in its own right. Though we alone of all the agricultural peoples in history have the affluence to eat truly healthy foods, we are still sickly and in poor health because of agriculture, combining a sedentary lifestyle and a high-carbohydrate diet lacking in other essential nutrients.
Perhaps we should define “quality of life� in more abstract terms? This is precisely what makes it such a slippery concept, because it becomes impossible to gauge empirically. It may be offered as counter-point that “refined� or “high� culture—art, music, etc.—owes itself to agriculture. The music of Bach no doubt does; however, we have archaeological evidence of musical instruments predating the Agricultural Revolution. Without agriculture, Michelangelo would no doubt have painted something else. Art itself, though, dates back to the Upper Paleolithic. Those elements so often referred to as “civilized� in fact have nothing to do with civilization; religion, music, art, and other such abstract cultural elements existed before agriculture, and are to be found in all forager societies. They are universals of human culture, however we get our food. The caves of Lascaux stand as an excellent counter-point to the contention that fine art can only develop from an agricultural society.
By any definition of “quality of life,� we cannot say that agriculture increased it in any way.
Agriculture is not entirely without benefit, though. There are certain advantages to an agricultural system, and these are quite telling. Agriculture allows for sedentism. While not impossible, it is difficult for a forager group to remain sedentary over long periods of time. Whereas an acre of wild land will have a fraction of its biomass consisting of edible human food, an acre of farmland is entirely human food. This denser concentration of food allows a denser concentration of population. Whereas a forager will eventually begin to drain the resources of the surrounding country and have to move on, an agriculturalist must remain in one place, as agriculture represents a heavy investment into the location of the settlement. (Gilman, 1981) Agriculture also allows two things to be accomplished, and in fact, forces them: the creation of a higher
population, and the production of a surplus.
The creation of a higher population, of course, is neither good nor bad to the general population itself. Nor is the creation of a surplus which is, by definition, unnecessary. While perhaps needed by populations facing periodic famine, as we have seen, this is an affliction of agriculturalists, not foragers. Sedentism, also, cannot be considered an advantage. In fact, it is the sedentary lifestyle of the West which leads to so much of our health problems (cf. Gladwell, 2000) However, as neutral as these are, there is one element of society to whom they are clear advantages: the elites. Before the modern era, elites were those able to control human capital more often than physical resources directly. (Hirth, 1992) They brokered more in esteem, opinion and influence than tangible wealth. A larger population, then, was advantageous to ancient elites, just as a larger treasury is advantageous to modern elites. Sedentism makes populations easier to control. It was nearly impossible for the Czar to control the Steppes nomads until they were co-opted as the Cossocks, for example. The surplus is no doubt the most important aspect, and, I believe, what drove the adoption of agriculture in the first place. With a surplus, specialists were able to develop, including elites themselves. However, emergent elites—“Big Men�—require surpluses for the competitive feasting which creates their power, by bolstering their influence.
Agriculture helps the elites by making most of humanity suffer. It is, as Jared Diamond put it, a mistake we are still trying to recover from. As he ends his famous article:
Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and logest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we’re still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it’s unclear whether we can solve it. Suppose that an archaeologist who had visited from outer space were trying to explain human history to his fellow spacelings. He might illustrate the results of his digs by a 24-hour clock on which one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time. If the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p. m. we adopted agriculture. As our second midnight approaches, will the plight of famine-stricken peasants gradually spread to engulf us all? Or will we somehow achieve those seductive blessings that we imagine behind agriculture’s glittering façade, and that have so far eluded us?
Bibliography
- Diamond, J.
- 1987 The worst mistake in the history of the human race. In: Discover, May 1987
- 1997 Guns, germs and steel: the fate of human societies. London: Random House.
- Gilman, A.
- 1981 The development of social stratification in Bronze Age Europe. In: Current Anthropology 22(1) pp. 1-23
- Gladwell, M.
- 2000 The Pima paradox. In: Goodman, A.H., Dufour, D.L. & Pelto, G.H., Nutritional anthropology: biocultural perspectives on food and nutrition. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Company.
- Goodman, A. and Armelagos, G.
- 2000 Disease and death at Dr. Dickson’s mounds. In: Goodman, A.H., Dufour, D.L. & Pelto, G.H., Nutritional anthropology: biocultural perspectives on food and nutrition. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Company.
- Harris, M.
- 1993 Culture, people, nature: an introduction to general anthropology, 6th edition. New York: Harper Collins College Publishers.
- Hirth, K.
- 1992 Interregional exchange as elite behavior: an evolutionary perspective. In: Chase, D.Z. and Chase, A.F., Mesoamerican elites: an archaeological assessment. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
- Lee, R.
- 2000 What hunters do for a living, or, how to make out on scarce resources. In: Goodman, A.H., Dufour, D.L. & Pelto, G.H., Nutritional anthropology: biocultural perspectives on food and nutrition. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Company.
Very well written.
Have you seen this month’s Scientific American? In it, William F. Ruddiman argues that agriculture is responsible for global warming, which has simply been accelerated by industrialization. Without agric., he writes, “new ice sheets should’ve started to grow several millennia ago.”
His argument is primarily focused on concentrations of greenhouse gases: He says that, b/c of agric, methane and CO2 cycles are not now in synch with the planet’s precession cycles. Originally, they peaked as summer solar radiation in the N. Hem. did during previous interglacials, but now we’re at the low point of summer radiation (i.e. most distant from the sun in summer), yet the concentrations are still rising.
Also, you note that “few organisms are domesticable compared to the diversity of species available for food.” That’s interesting, and jibes well with something I just read in Peter Farb’s “Man’s Rise to Civilization.” He writes that the people of the Great Lakes region “were using 275 species of plants for medicine, 130 for food, 31 as magical charms, 27 for smoking, 18 in beverages and for flavoring, and 52 others for miscellaneous purposes.” He describes this practice as “multiple-use conservation.” (p. 198)
I wonder how many the average American today uses? Most of them would be for food, but with a much greater concentration on a handful of plants (namely, wheat, rice, corn, soybeans, sorghum. Hay and cotton are also “major” crops according to the EPA.) than the Native populations would’ve used. I’d bet that over half of our plant-based food today is from these five grains, given how many different forms they come in.
You might find this quote, also from the EPA site, interesting:
Technological improvements have allowed the productivity of the American farmer to increase dramatically. During colonial times one farmer fed four others. Today, one farmer produces food for 130 others. This dramatic increase in productivity has freed up most of our population to pursue other vocations and has been the foundation for the lifestyle we enjoy today. With this growth however comes added responsibility to ensure that the environment is protected and that the production is sustainable.
Of course, this paragraph fails to note that this increase in production CREATED all those people who “pursue other vocations.” I’d bet there are almost as many people who farm today as there were in later colonial times, and if so, they can’t really argue that those people were “freed up” to do other things.
Comment by Gus — 20 March 2005 @ 5:35 PM
Your estimate on how many organisms we rely on today jibes well with other estimates I’ve heard.
On the greenhouse effect, yes, I’ve seen the article, as well as earlier studies saying much the same, and I think they’re probably right. The “Holocene” is an anthropocentric illusion; the Pleistocene never ended, and in every respect the past 10,000 years have been a rather typical interglacial period. Such periods average between 10 and 20,000 years in length, with temperatures about what we have now. Given the evidence of agricultural greenhouse gases, it seems our “Holocene” period is actually a pretty short interglacial period. I see the current state of the climate as a balance between the earth moving towards renewing the ice age, and the greenhouse effect of agriculture. It’s telling that the Little Ice Age followed a short drop in agricultural production from plague, war, and the thinning of fields from American expansion….
Comment by Jason Godesky — 20 March 2005 @ 5:42 PM
Hmmm… I knew of the Little Ice Age, but hadn’t made that connection as being the cause. To be accurate, it wasn’t American expansion as much as the spread of European diseases ahead of colonial expansion that caused it, since I believe the LIA actually began in the 1400s.
Presumably, then, as we start losing agricultural land due to overuse, desertification, and/or running out of petrol, we’ll probably see the temps start dropping again, although it might take time to see the effects b/c of the extra greenhouse gases we’ve pumped into the air.
Comment by Gus — 20 March 2005 @ 6:03 PM
homework sucks!!
Comment by Anonymous — 20 August 2005 @ 4:43 PM
The biggest advantage of agriculture over foraging is that it ended anarchy.
The hunter-forager societies basically live in anarcy. They are egalitarian - yes; but their egalitarianism is based on mistrust, fear, traumae and paranoia. Forager societies are especially paranoid of anyone too ambitious to rise over them and subjugate them under one rule - to gain the monopoly of violence. Hence the “big men” of the hunter-gatherers are rather nominal chieftains than actual, and the statehood is very close to anarchy. Anarchy in effect means the stronger individual ruling over the weaker, and any disputes being solved with violence. That leads in paranoia; while everyone is equal, everyone is equally mistrusted and feared.
Also the forager societies are infanticidial (the population growth is curbed by infanticide and possibly cannibalism) and mothers breast-feed their children well past the normal sucking period to control their fertility. They also have little nurture towards their offspring, and rather alienate their children when they are old enough to keep care of themselves. The children are also subject to continuous violence of their siblings and peers. Since we have the very same brains today as back then, the brutal childhood, mother killing (and perhaps eating) your siblings, mother clinging to you and dominating you well past your time and then rejecting you and you being subject to continuous dangers and violence, cannot be without leaving childhood traumas on you - as they do today.
The big leisure time the foragers have may prove more a deficiency than asset. When you have all the time and nothing to do, frustration is often the result, and when fertile young men and women meet, result is sex on its various forms; not only the our romantic lovemating, but also rape, incest, pedophilia and pederasty. Women and especially prepuberty girls live in continuous fear of rape.
Life in the forager societies is very brutal; intratribal violence and intertribal warfare is almost continuous, and murders commonplace. Some estimations are that 60-70% of all hunter-foragers die because of intrahuman violence; the rest die because of various predators, accidents or poisoning. Suicides are also commonplace.
Given the various variables, my estimation is that the foragers live in a state not unlike schizophrenia. Their world is full of spirits, ghosts and unnatural monsters everywhere; the inanimate world is alive; many foragers believe humans cannot die unless killed or because of witchcraft. Belief in magic and witchcraft are commonplace, and witch craze far exceeding anything amongst the agriculturalists. The splitting of personality into rocks, animals, trees and spirits occurs on almost every person - typical for schizophrenia. One very indicative symptom is that the foragers do not know the concept of time; they have no past and no present, only now. This is one of the symptoms of schizophrenia on its medical anamnesis. The various ghosts, spirits and monsters are, of course, hallucinations produced by malfunctioning brain.
Certain libertarians claim there are no such things as mental illnesses; they are only questions of definition, just various states of perception and consciousness. In that mindset, schizophrenia is the original state of mind or lifestyle of the humanity.
Agriculture allows despotism; that the one Big Man subjugates everyone else and creates a stable hierarchy, pecking order. While we may see this as a tragedy, it is an essential step for recovering from the schizophrenic mindset of the foraging cultures and pacifying the society. On agricultural communities there is now monopoly of violence and formal machinery on settling disputes; also wars turn from continuous into sporadic. Agricultural societies are far less violent than foraging; while women are property in the agricultural societies, in foraging they often are prey. Rapes and sexual assaults become sanctioned; infanticides end. Likewise, women no more need to carry their children with them nor suck them longer than needed; children can be also weaned more easily and earlier than before and raised decently. That is a clear advantage on sanity-wise.
There is one issue concerning on sanity. We all know how fond the hunter-foragers even today are on firewater. Schizophrenics are very fond on drugs and alcohol, so there may be a clear connection. Historically we know one of the first domesticated plants was barley, which is the ingredient of beer. Settling on one place and becoming sedentiary enabled cultivation of barley and brewing beer, and alcohol could now be consumed in larger quantities and more often than in the foraging lifestyle. Baking bread was invented far later than brewing beer. Instead of blood and sacrificial orgies, life now become drinking orgy - less violent. Alcoholism was one of the factors which may have contributed humanity adopting agriculture.
While life in despotism may be one of oppression, poorer and unhealthier than in anarchy, it is also safer and more sane (which is one of the greatest assets of order over chaos). It also allows accumulation of surplus and work distribution; everyone no more needs to participate on hunting and gathering, but may specialize on what he or she knows and masters best. Despotism combined with surplus stockpiling allows also economy; the surplus resources are no more wasted in potlatch parties, like the foragers do.
While turn on agriculture certainly may seem like a disaster, it is not without its benefits - which in the short run outweighed worse nutrition, earlier death, harder work, inequality and slavery. Otherwise we would never have done it but rather disappeared in suicidial extinction.
Comment by Susanna Viljanen — 9 November 2005 @ 9:42 AM
Hey –
Wow, Susanna, looks like you have bought into the Hobbesian ‘nasty, brutish and short’ line of thought.
Instead of breaking down the details, I just have a couple of questions for you:
Why is it that the human species, amongst all of the species of this planet, managed to eveolve as ‘broken’?
If, as you suggest, humans are this ‘broken’, how is it that our species managed to thrive for near a million years before agriculture?
This premise seems to lead to the obvious conclusion that we should have become extinct long before we ever discovered agriculture.
Janene
Comment by Janene — 9 November 2005 @ 10:20 AM
Susanna,
On agricultural communities there is now monopoly of violence and formal machinery on settling disputes; also wars turn from continuous into sporadic.
Only if you’re looking at it from an extremely anthropocentric point of view. Agriculture is war. War on the entire rest of the planet and its community of life.
Roxy
Comment by Raku — 9 November 2005 @ 10:38 AM
The first evidence for any kind of war comes from the Neolithic. Yes, Inuit murder each other, but the distinction between homicide and war in such small populations is very ambiguous. But archaeologically, we haven’t found a single skeleton with evidence of having been killed by another person that dates to anything before the Neolithic.
So goes there the “agriculture limits war” theory. Agriculture is the cause of all war.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 November 2005 @ 10:47 AM
Oh, as to the whole “paranoia and fear” argument, it’s a good thought experiment, but it’s the total opposite of what’s actually found in the field. Hobbes’ thought experiment was similiar–and similarly had almost no relationship with reality whatsoever. Of course, Hobbes was working at the very dawn of the Enlightenment, when the scientific method as we know it was being formulated. Hobbes wrote just as often about the poverty of empiricism, and how philosophical thought experiments are a far superior means of gaining knowledge that simply gathering data points. So, Hobbes’ stance was, who cares if all the data contradicts my theory? It’s logically sound, and therefore, it must be true. Well, at least he was consistent.
I don’t know if that’s the company you want to keep, but there you have it. Your argument also makes sense, in the very same anti-scientfic, purely logical, utterly divorced from reality sense.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 November 2005 @ 11:01 AM
I believe that would actually despotism. In anarchy no one rules over anyone either by force or other means, that’s what anarchy is.
Infanticide and cannibolism are pretty inefficent ways to curb a population. Especially one that would have found it impossible to increase beyond a certain point anyway. Only in agricultural societies is human growth exponential. In forager societies it’s a sine curve like all other animals. As for suckling, who told you what the normal period of time was? How about some good ol’ data points to livin up this discussion? Mothers who breastfeed longer have a substantially lower risk of breast cancer. Breastfeeding reduces fertitility, which you seem to think is a bad thing, but in fact allows the mother to more effectively care for the child until it can move quickly on it’s own. This increases survival rate. After this period the child isn’t abandoned, it’s a member of the tribe. But at this point it’s learning from the whole of the tribe not just it’s mother. It’s safe for the children to wonder around the community talking to and learning from other people.
I have never heard or seen a serious anthropologist say this in the past eighty years. The only thing I can even imagine this coming from would be if the study in question used a very narrowly and ethnocentrically defined conception of rape and other forms of sex. Incest is universally forbiden in tribes. And forms of pedaphilia that are found are always part of ritual, usually a coming of age ritual.
And the average life expectancy was still 60 in worst climates and pushed 100 in the better ones. But anyway, can you give me a reference for that figure? I’ve not heard it before and would like to read the study before answering. As for sucicides, they are only commonplace after civilization has stuck them in a box and handed them left-over table-scraps. The only time sucicide occured tribally was usually ritually, only for the elderly, and still very rarely. The old inuit men floating away on an ice float only happened in lean times, under great protests from the others, and they were greatly honored for their sacrifice. It wasn’t something that was done rutinely.
Again, not the case. Women had equality in tribes, in civilization they were made volunerable and weak. Also the higher fertility rate and subjegation led to more children, which killed women faster, younger, and made them sicker until then.
Sanctioned rapes and assaults are indeed a civilized phenomon. But I don’t think you mean sanctioned, to sanction something is to offical approve and condone it. As far as being decently raised, this is an ethnocentric sentiment and has no data to support it.
Ok, I just ran out of time. Talk to you later. I look forward to your repsonse.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 9 November 2005 @ 11:43 AM
Eeeeeeek!
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 9 November 2005 @ 2:56 PM
Susanna,
Hunter/Gathering people are fond of fire water, eh? I find it important to point out that approximately 10 million American’s are pretty fond of the Alcohol themselves, you know, in the addicted kind of way.
Ever heard the phrase, “It takes a village to raise a child?� Consider that for a moment. Do you see examples of that in western society? Probably not very many cases. A child in a tribal society is not simply abandoned. They are cared for, and not just by the mother, but by the tribe. As for breast feeding, western culture typically don’t breast feed at all, or they stop around one year or less. This is not always the best choice, as breast milk contains all sorts of goodies to help the baby grow and remain healthy. Generally, babies don’t even need anything else until after 6 months. Amazing. Breast milk has everything that they need! As for other cultures, I’d like to point out that it is the norm for women to breast feed their children till 2 or older.
Yes, breastfeeding does help to control fertility, but as Ben pointed out, controlling fertility was essential if you wanted to care for child the best that you can. Having a child and then having another one less than two years later can severely hinder your ability to care for them both.
A side note that I find pertinent to this topic: When visiting a house that had free flying birds inside, we found out that one of these birds had just become a new mommy. Now, the bird laid about 4 or 5 eggs, I don’t remember the exact amount, but after the first two hatched, she stopped sitting on the remaining eggs. Not warming the eggs=the eggs never hatching. Now why would she do this? Perhaps it was because she knew that two little birdies were all she could care for and do a good job. Stressing the good.
One last thing, yes, foragers had leisure time. They weren’t out “earning� their food all the time. But were they bored? I doubt it. Just because it took them 2 hours to get their food doesn’t mean that they didn’t have other things to do. To say that their excessive amounts of leisure time led to rape and other taboo sexual activities is, I’m sorry to say it, rather silly. Consider the instances of rape that occur everyday in the US. More happen that are never heard about, because victims are too scared or they are not believed. Typical working hours of an American? A good 8 hours or more. I’m sorry, your argument is just not adding up.
Comment by Miranda — 9 November 2005 @ 4:35 PM
Actually, it’s best for both mother and child to continue at least some breastfeeding until the age of five. Recently (past few centuries), Western society has deemed this “perverse” as a consequence of its novel sexualization of the female breast. The bizarre, uniquely northern European mutation to continue producing lactase into adulthood (allowing for the consumption of milk after childhood–unique not just in our species, but in the entire animal kingdom) may have had something to do with this strange taboo, as well.
At any rate, Western reluctance to continue breastfeeding over the normal span of time has led to myriad health problems, for both infants and mothers.
As a fringe benefit, proper breastfeeding also helps control fertility, in order to curb exponential overpopulation and eventual catastrophic extinction of the species.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 November 2005 @ 4:47 PM
Oh, and on the note of pedophilia … the tribes I believe you’re referring to are all horticulturalists. That makes them your people, not mine.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 November 2005 @ 4:48 PM
Oh, once when discussing breast feeding with a (former) co-worker of mine, she told me that she ended breastfeeding well before her baby turned a year old. What was her reason why?
She didn’t want her son to remember that he had once sucked on his mother’s breast.
Gasp!
Taboo!
Comment by Miranda — 9 November 2005 @ 5:01 PM
Susanna, got to say I loved the article! See, last night, I was lucky enough to be at a potluck sponsored by the American Indian Student Association at Cal State Northridge. We were honoring the head of the Pan-African studies for her contributions to civic rights and justice.
So, while I and members of about a dozen tribal nations were at the event, a spiritual leader of the Tongva got up and said (mind you, I’m paraphrasing here):
“When you Europeans came, you taught us how to grow things here, how to live so that we could find a different way. We taught you how to rape your women, beat your wives, molest your children…”
Hold on…
Wait a minute…
Oh wait! He said the -opposite- of that!
“When you Europeans came, we taught you how to grow things here, how to live so that you could find a different way. You gave us firewater. You taught us how to get drunk.
You taught us how to rape our women.
You taught us how to beat our wives.
You taught us to molest our children.”
A hell of a speech.
Hey, you want to know the jist of it? He doesn’t care about the past. He justs wants to see all of his children free.
He wants to see all of us treated like a blanket. You don’t say “Why isn’t this blanket a table? Wouldn’t it make a nicer tree? I think this blanket should be a lamp.” No. It’s just a blanket. And that’s what he wants. Just to be recognized for who he is and allowed to live as he wants to live, a right he wants for everyone else.
So hey, Susanna, next time you wish to say such things, come on down to an AISA meeting or, better yet, talk to the tribes. I’m sure they’ll enjoy your comments.
Best
Bill Maxwell
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 9 November 2005 @ 7:05 PM
I don’t like speeches like that. Indians making Europeans feel bad about their skin color is just as bad as Europeans making Indians feel bad about their skin color. It doesn’t help anything; It just generalizes. And if you go back far enough, this horror was done to everyone, even tribal Europeans. The Indians are just one of the most recent ones, so the wounds are still fresh - and in memory. My fear is that too many Indians will see their solution to be “playing the white man’s game”, the same way blacks are doing, the same way women are doing. But the game is always a losing one. And by playing it we lose everything that makes us us, and end up being just like those people our ancestors fought so hard against. Until after so many generations we forget it ever happened.
Comment by Raku — 10 November 2005 @ 10:15 AM
Bill: A great example. Many of us who have been raised in this competitive society are unable to even imagine the feasibility of egalitarian relationships.
Susanna: What you are describing is not anarchy. You are describing competitive chaos. When individual members’ personal goals include a strong desire for the groups success it is possible to work cooperatively without coercion or competition. The group is egalitarian in the sense that the autonomy of each individual is respected. Members may differ to the advice of those they respect because of advanced skill, knowledge or wisdom. This is always the individuals voluntary decision for which h/she retains responsibility. Gifted individuals gain respect, not power. There are many ways that individuals can exert power over others. Individuals in the group must value freedom and autonomy and defend each other from oppression.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 10 November 2005 @ 10:41 AM
One point I’m still not clear on: I get that agriculturalism benefits the elites and is self-perpetuating, but why would that system be adopted in the first place by an egalitarian society?
Comment by L33tminion — 17 January 2006 @ 5:04 AM
I discussed some of the mechanisms for that in thesis #10.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 17 January 2006 @ 10:34 AM
It seems to me that the empirical evidence that agriculture is worse than hunting and gathering depends on how you define “worse”. In my view the human species (meaning the human animal) is not aware of the little difficulties that individuals within it may have. Quality of life has no factor in the equation unless it is so extreme that it impacts procreation. Life or death are the only two outcomes for judging the quality of behavior in the members of a species. If a certain behavior leads to greater numbers of that species surviving then that behavior can be considered “better” than another in which fewer numbers survive.
No one disputes that agriculture has allowed a mass increase in human population. Jared Diamond has stated that the increase is something like 100 to 1. When you anthropomorphize a species and pretend that it has concerns about “quality of life” you are being misleading.
An example: If you had the choice of watching your baby starve to death or take up farming - even knowing what you know about the general bad effects of farming - I’ll bet you would go ahead and do it anyway. We are hard-wired as animals to procreate and increase our numbers. It is our most basic biological mission. If farming helps achieve that goal then everything else is secondary.
Comment by Anonymous — 13 August 2006 @ 5:02 AM
Anonymous, you ask “If you had the choice of watching your baby starve to death or take up farming … I’ll bet you would go ahead and do it anyway. ”
Jason specifically stated “In all but the most marginal environments, a gatherer has a near 100% chance of finding some form of plant food, whereas the probability of a hunter’s success lies closer to 25%. This has led to an emphasis on sharing in many forager societies, allowing them to take advantage of multiplicative probability. Whereas the chance of a single hunter retrieving nothing on a given day is 75%, the chances that ten will come back with nothing is 0.75 x 10 = 5.63%. If even one hunter makes a kill on a given day, then the band will eat. “( [meat] regardless, they’ll have veggies)
The only way a forager is going to face a starving child is if the agriculturalists around her force her to live in a camp that she cannot leave under threat of her very life, as is currently happening to the !Kung. Those individuals among them who have managed to evade the agriculturalists to live free are doing fine and are providing meat to their relatives who are relegated to the camps. BTW the threat to their very life in this case is that ALL water sources that are known to the agriculturalists are being guarded with guns to keep the !Kung away. The only way for them to get water is in the camps. And because the Kalahari is indeed a desert and so many of them are there together, there is not sufficient forage available within walking distance for them. They are NOT choosing agriculturalist ways, those ways are being forced on them very much against their wills. For that matter if you will study your history, the same was true of the foraging peoples of North America. They only became involved with agriculture when faced with the very real threat of extermination.
Comment by Chandra Shakti — 13 August 2006 @ 11:15 PM
I posted the first anonymous comment - forgot to include a name on it though. Anyway - I still see it as an issue of population. You don’t rebut the point that farming can support a 100 times increase in population which is the fundamental benefit.
Also - why do you think farming societies have been able to overcome hunter/gatherer societies in all but the most esoteric cases? Because they have so many more people and resources on which to draw.
Comment by Jay — 15 August 2006 @ 1:51 AM
Jay,
You are certainly correct that I’ve made some assumptions about what is “good.” One can hardly call anything a “mistake” without such assumptions. But then you made this argument:
The idea that we took up farming to answer hunger is a common one, but still utter nonsense. We farm crops where the edible portion is the seed. A handful of grain can either be eaten, or planted. So, farming is an investment. If your baby is starving right now, and you have a handful of grain, you’re telling me your first instinct is to bury that grain, rather than feed your starving baby? Farming is an investment, and as the overlap of people on food stamps, and people in the stock market, should attest, such investment is primarily an activity of those who have plenty, not those who are just scraping by. Starving people do not take up farming.
You also said:
The species in question is Homo sapiens sapiens. To “anthropomorphize” means to make one seem like a human. The only thing you cannot anthropomorphize is a human being! I’m not taking the perspective of the Species As A Whole; I’m taking the perspective of an individual human being. Evolution may be blind to things like quality of life, but humans are not. I would think that humans would be very interested in things like quality of life. Farming allows a larger population, this is true, but for a human being, a large population is neither good nor bad (though a very large population is very bad). I’m not pretending to some detatched, aloof position that you imply; mine is the perspective of a human being forced to deal with the consequences of this mistake, and from the perspective of a human being, the invention of agriculture was an unmitigated disaster. To make agriculture anything less than that, you’ll need to explain to me why an individual human being would be so concerned with a large population.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 15 August 2006 @ 9:38 AM
Jay wrote: “Life or death are the only two outcomes for judging the quality of behavior in the members of a species…. You don’t rebut the point that farming can support a 100 times increase in population which is the fundamental benefit.”
Farming can support a population explosion, but not for very long without serious expansion. Ultimately, farming does not support human species procreation, because it will eventually wipe out the resources it requires for its own perpetuation, AND the resources required for non-agricultural survival, everywhere.
Overpopulation is fundamentally destructive for any species and makes long-term survival less certain than if that species lived in appropriate balance with its ecosystem. Farming has allowed humans to overpopulate and in coming decades we will pay the price. It is by no means assured that we will survive the trajectory on which farming put us all those millennia ago.
If life or death are the only two outcomes for judging the quality of behavior in the members of a species, then surely farming must be judged “bad” because the 100:1 survival ratio it brings now threatens life on the entire planet.
Comment by Paula — 15 August 2006 @ 12:14 PM
In response to Paula - I think you are confusing our present day population problems with the situation in Mesopotamia ten thousand years ago. In that environment a 100-1 population increase was a massive success for the human species. The adoption of that behavior pattern (farming and animal husbandry) allowed the species to grow dramatically which was a very good thing. Our success as a species may have depended on it. At that point our ancestors had nothing like the assured safety from natural forces and other animals which we enjoy today. Of course there were periods of famine and starvation which may have been avoided had the population remained small to begin with. But my point is that the human species was able to feed many many more members and thus was able to grow. Thus more life. Thus “better”.
I think my main point (and also responding to Jason here) is that calling the adoption of agriculture a “choice” (or implying that it was a choice by calling it a “mistake”) is incorrect. Thus my comment about not anthropomorphizing a species (note - a species is not a human being and does not have thoughts or feelings like one. Thus you can ‘anthropomorphize’ a species. But you shouldn’t :). The adoption of agriculture was done over at least a period of 1000 years. The end result was that groups which took up agricultural methods out-survived and probably destroyed virtually all groups which did not. I believe that this is directly related to their having a 100-1 numerical superiority. You can’t deny that agriculture became the dominant behavior pattern in the human species (compared to the hunter/gatherer behavior). No one made a “choice” about it, it just won out. No individual had the benefit of our 8000 years of hind-sight to say “hey, this is going to lead to overpopulation in 2100 AD”.
So - less a choice and more an inevitable occurance. Once agriculture was discovered it was basically inevitable that it would enjoy widespread adoption. Speaking as if it were a “mistake” is like saying it was a “mistake” to lose our fur. Maybe - but at this point, totally moot.
Comment by Jay — 16 August 2006 @ 4:24 PM
It should be noted that the word “mistake” is not my own: I’m quoting Jared Diamond’s classic article, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,” first published in Discover magazine, May 1987. I think the term “mistake” is well chosen. We make mistakes when we are under pressure to make a decision that may be yield positive results in the short term, but will ultimately cause disastrous long term consequences. Before the Agricultural Revolution, we were under pressure, but there were other ways to respond to that pressure. Agriculture did have short-term benefits, but at catastrophic long-term costs. It’s the very definition of a mistake.
How so? You’re greatly underestimating the hunter-gatherer population. We’d had our brushes with extinction, but the last one was over 50,000 years in our past by the time we began farming. In fact, the Mesolithic had some fairly thick hunter-gatherer populations. But even if that were true, in what way is a large population a good thing?
Again, how? Our population was holding steady; since then, we’ve been in a state of overshoot, ensuring die-off and possibly extinction. How does the threat of extinction improve the status of our species, versus a dynamic equilibrium?
No, it was much better before. Foragers are not subject to natural disasters as we are, because they’re mobile (see, for instance, the Andamnan foragers in last year’s tsunami).
Foragers do not starve; farmers do. See thesis #9, myth #2.
But it was not a species that took up farming. As Daniel Quinn cautions us, “We are not humanity.” It was a very small number of isolated groups that took up farming, grew beyond their ability to support themselves like a cancer, and began conquering everything around them (because they had no choice). The choice those groups made, to deal with their pressures through farming, was the last time in our history that someone did have a legitimate choice. Only with the final, inevitable collapse of the system created by that mistake, will any of us have any choice again.
So, it’s your opinion that it’s not a mistake, unless you’re aware of the negative consequences beforehand? Oh good, that means I’ve never made a mistake! I’m surprised anyone ever has, by that criteria. Who is it that says to themselves, “I know this is going to end in disaster, but I think I’ll do it anyway!”
Not at all—because we’re about to get a choice again when this finally breaks down. Will we waste ourselves throwing ourselves at it again and again to keep it going, or will we walk away from it because it was never a good idea in the first place? Our answer to that question will determine whether we outlive agriculture, or if our mistake kills us off with it.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 16 August 2006 @ 4:43 PM
“Will we waste ourselves throwing ourselves at it again and again to keep it going, or will we walk away from it because it was never a good idea in the first place?”
Jason, there is no choice in the answer to this question. Ofcourse, people will throw themselves at ir to keep it going. If they succeed, the ones who walk away will again be conquered and disappear. If they fail, the ones who walked away will still try again later. It will take multiple failures continously to outlive agriculture.
Comment by _Gi — 17 August 2006 @ 12:53 PM
Populations do not have choices. Individuals always do. We may not be able to change the fact that only 1% will ever even think of foraging as a possibility, but it’s entirely up to us as individuals to decide whether we’ll be in that 1%, or the 99%.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 17 August 2006 @ 1:33 PM
Jay writes: “I think you are confusing our present day population problems with the situation in Mesopotamia ten thousand years ago.”
Okay, so is what you mean then, “Life or death in the immediate are the only two outcomes for judging the quality of behavior in the members of a species” and that: “…(farming and animal husbandry) allowed the species to grow dramatically which was a very good thing. Our success as a species may have depended on it” given the conditions of Mesopotamia 10k yrs ago.
I’m not convinced. 65,000 yrs before agriculture arose in Mesopotamia, the Toba Caldera exploded in Indonesia, plunged the world into severe environmental cooling, and wiped out all but 10,000 reproduction-age females globally (at the highest estimate — there may have been as few as 1000, and one paper I came across postulated as few as 40). Even under these conditions homo sapiens managed to pull through without resorting to agriculture. So I find it hard to believe that life in the Fertile Crescent was so brutal it required agriculture to survive.
Jay writes: “I think my main point (and also responding to Jason here) is that calling the adoption of agriculture a ‘choice’ (or implying that it was a choice by calling it a ‘mistake’) is incorrect.”
There is plenty of room to doubt whether settlement was the result of a switch to survival by agricultural means — it is entirely possible that humans switched from their nomadic life to settlements due to social & cultural changes, and turned to agriculture as a way of supporting these changes.
If this is the case, then farming was, in fact, a conscious decision. It would have been just as legitimate for settled tribes to once again pick up and follow migrating herds when they’d depleted their natural food base, as it was for them to stick seeds in the dirt.
“Adoption” is a choice. Someone made the decision to stay put.
Jay writes: “So - less a choice and more an inevitable occurance. Once agriculture was discovered it was basically inevitable that it would enjoy widespread adoption. Speaking as if it were a ‘mistake’ is like saying it was a ‘mistake’ to lose our fur. Maybe - but at this point, totally moot.”
I disagree. Human history is not a matter of things just happening to us, always beyond our control, as if we have no agency in our own evolution. Human history is a matter of people making decisions that shape the future. Even your example of losing our fur can potentially be tied to a decision: we chose to use animal skins to keep ourselves warm, thereby protecting ourselves from the selective pressures that would have caused us to remain furry.
I do not believe it was an inevitable occurrance that agriculture should be adopted everywhere. It did not just magically happen among nomadic tribes around the world. Agriculture was a miserable half-life of disease, malnutrition, and social oppression compared with the freedom that nomadic hunter-gatherers lived prior to the Neolithic Revolution. The mystery is why agricultural settlements weren’t abandoned en masse when their lack of benefits became apparent. The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is that those who benefitted most from agriculture — kings, priests, and others that we would today consider the “rich and powerful” — maintained mass commitment to misery via religion and violence.
Everywhere that some tribes chose to adopt agriculture, that I am aware of in any case, the nomadic peoples in its orbit were conquered and forced to abandon their ways. Someone, somewhere, had to make that decision, too.
In any event, I agree with Diamond and with Jason in that agriculture was a huge mistake, and probably the greatest mistake in our history. IMO, understanding the decisions that led some tribes to adopt agriculture is the key to undoing that mistake so that we humans might avoid the global suicide to which it has brought us. Everything we face right now has its roots in the original unsustainable act: farming. The only way we’re going to survive is to undo that mistake somehow.
Comment by Paula — 17 August 2006 @ 2:56 PM