
The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race – Agriculture - kumarski
http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race
======
theaeolist
"To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught
us that our earth isn't the center of the universe but merely one of billions
of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren't specially created
by God but evolved along with millions of other species. Now archaeology is
demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million
years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries
suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step
toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never
recovered."

Science, astronomy, biology and archaeology -- all advanced culture -- cannot
happen without the critical mass of population provided by cities, fed by
agriculture. This article is such nonsense.

~~~
rndmize
For all our tremendous advances and expansive knowledge, we still have some
billions of people that that are malnourished or starving, some that live on
less than a dollar a day, some that die by the hundreds of thousands in wars
over resources or religion; we have nations and societies that collapse within
a few hundred years as they generally grow too top-heavy to function without
replacement; we are depleting resources at tremendous rates without care to
the cost; and so on.

As the article says, if you chose to be born twenty thousand years ago,
there's a good chance you would be born in a tribe with a reasonably stable
social and cultural structure that rarely lacked for any major needs. Today,
you would most likely be born as one of the masses of poor subsistence farmers
throughout the world, but most likely in China or India, who's life and work
is miserable/back-breaking enough that they'll choose to make our electronics
for 10 or 12 or 14 hours a day and consider it an improvement.

It seems that only in the last decade has modern technology reached the point
where it can be provided to the masses and begin what might be a global
transformation that leads to better lives for all - rather than better lives
for a few at the expense of the many.

~~~
raverbashing
"if you chose to be born twenty thousand years ago, there's a good chance you
would be born in a tribe with a reasonably stable social and cultural
structure that rarely lacked for any major needs"

If you survived your first year of life, then your first 5 years of life, etc

Then you would have to hunt or do dangerous stuff with precarious tools, no
health care in case of accident, etc

Oh and you would probably die by your 30s.

Makes the chinese factory kind of look good.

~~~
michaelgrafl
Wow. Really? Wow.

No. It doesn't make the Chinese factory look good. [edit: removed because it
sounded too mean to me]

I suggest watching some documentaries about Asian nomads or other indigenous
peoples. They live a primitive life, sure. But they seem pretty content and
stress free. I'm not even sure if I prefer my own pampered life to theirs.

I'd rather kill myself than work in a Chinese factory. From what I hear on the
news, I'm not the only one who thinks that way.

~~~
raverbashing
"I suggest watching some documentaries..."

And you heard about the Chinese factories on the same documentaries right?

But the Chinese workers have a choice, most of them came from the Chinese
countryside willingly.

Now, why did they choose that instead of having a simple, stress free life in
the Chinese countryside? It's probably "easier" than being an Asian nomad, and
some may have that exact background.

------
InclinedPlane
"The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a
lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

------
gbog
MmHg, I like my fellow human beings, I prefer more of them than less of them,
and therefore agriculture is positive, as are culture, cities, medical
science, and so forth.

------
gordaco
It's a matter of tradeoffs. Yes, agriculture had some severe disavantages, but
the advantages were also huge. Without the stability that agriculture gave us,
we wouldn't be what we are now.

------
nottrobin
Jesus Christ could the author take longer to get to the point? Also, they are
terribly selective of their evidence. It's perfectly possible that life
expectancy decreased following invention of agriculture and that people had
more stressful lives, but the other benefits of social organisation so totally
make up for that, as shown by the huge increase in life expectancies since
then. Do you realise just how much more peaceful we are in organised society
than in hunter-gather societies? Watch the talk on "the surprising decline in
violence" by Stephen Pinker:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen...](http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html)

~~~
InclinedPlane
Also, life expectancy is a tricky thing, in an agricultural settlement people
would be having more children than a hunter-gatherer tribe would. And the end
result would be that in the settlement you'd have an explosion in terms of
person-years lived, even though on a per person level the life expectancy
might have gone down.

~~~
snogglethorpe
> _in an agricultural settlement people would be having more children than a
> hunter-gatherer tribe would_

Er, is this true? Birth-control seems a relatively modern thing... Even if a
H-G society might be less _inclined_ to have lots of children (I dunno,
really), did they actually have the knowledge and/or wherewithal (e.g. to
purposely refrain from sex) to achieve that?

~~~
InclinedPlane
How it happens isn't relevant, we know for a fact that hunter-gatherer tribes
have low population growth rates compared even to stone age agrarian
settlements. Exactly why this is so is probably an interesting question. A few
things to remember: fertility is dependent on consistent nutrition, people
_don't_ necessarily have sex like rabbits all the time, and in low population
tribes the ability to find a mate may be a challenge. Also, infant mortality
during the winter can be a bitch, even in an agrarian society with tons of
stored food.

Edit: poking around on the internet, it looks like infant mortality is the big
differentiator. In hunter-gatherers it's rather high, at around 1 in 3, which
is nearly double the infant mortality you'd expect even in primitive agrarian
societies. That's going to have a tremendous impact on the population growth.

~~~
snogglethorpe
Certainly increased mortality would be the obvious explanation for low
population grow absent birth-control...

[Which makes H-G society sound rather less peachy than the original article
seems to have been claiming...]

------
sliverstorm
_One Bushman, when asked why he hadn't emulated neighboring tribes by adopting
agriculture, replied, "Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in
the world?"_

I'm sure this would seem like a much more profound statement if I hadn't yet
learned ecology.

~~~
ybaumes
You're right in a sense. I am trying to be controversial here: I remember high
school courses teaches us that nature, through natural selection, influenced
mankind. Until man empowered enough intelligence and influence back its
environment, through Agriculture first, shaping the lands, steering water
streams and so on. Then through industrial revolution. Generating green house
gas emissions. I am not sure which one of a bushman or a agriculture lead to
the best ecologic behavior then. :-/

~~~
illuminate
"You're right in a sense. I am trying to be controversial here"

Not surprising, "controversial" claims often require selective myopia in order
to make claims that counter how the world works.

------
nnq
It's funny how technology brings us back to this "hunter gatherer heaven":

\- population crowding is no longer necessary as telecommuting is a viable way
of doing most jobs (hopefully the naysayers will be "silenced" in a few
generations... like Moses's people that had to die in the desert before
reaching the "promised land" as their mentalities were not compatible with it)

\- we're becoming "hunters" again, as we engage in competitive activities to
earn more "game" (money), dedicating more resources to this "hunting" than to
actually "producing things"

\- we're "gatherers" again - only that we gather from the supermarket instead
of the bushes and we gather from the fruits of mechanized agriculture and
industry instead of the fruits of the land

...but better still, _we may soon be able to have the cake and eat it too_ :
space colonization, ocean colonization, even higher yield concentrated
agriculture via new biotech breakthroughs and "too cheap to meter" energy via
large scale thorium reactors deployments and later fusion will allow _even
faster exoponential continuous population growth_.

Let our Zerg (err... Human) swarm grow exponentially and engulf the universe!
:)

------
lalc
I'm assuming this is being posted (from 1987!) because of how hilariously
wrong it was.

~~~
rndmize
I think not. This is very much in line with what I know from cultural
anthropology, and the writer is Jared Diamond, who you might know as the
author of "Guns, Germs and Steel" and "Collapse".

------
tubelite
The author is Jared Diamond - IMHO one of the great thinkers of our time, who
certainly deserves serious consideration. His books, "Guns, Germs and Steel",
"Collapse", "The Third Chimpanzee" are excellent, thought-provoking (even
worldview-altering) reads.

That said.. he is right, but from the vantage point of someone in this day and
age, who loves science and technology, who has benefitted from the efforts of
the billions of post-agricultural humans, I selfishly prefer this outcome to
sitting around gathering nuts in uncomfortable underwear, waging endless war
with neighbouring bands and tribes.

Sure, agriculture produced a Long Dip in living standards, with population
increases outstripping any gains made in production. But the whole point of a
large population - perhaps the only redeeming feature of civilization - is
that one can trawl the probabilistic waters and produce the few very mad, very
interesting geniuses who make it all worthwhile.

I've always thought that the Matrix really came about due to the natural
tendency of civilization to increase population density. From the open
savannah to cubicles, cars and capsule hotels.. the Matrix is just highly
aggressive telecommuting.

And it worked, too. Humans maintained ever higher population densities,
produced lots of crazy geniuses who kept improving the interfaces, until
significant bits of personalities could jump across from brain to brain. "AIs"
were nothing more than mobile multiple-personality disorders. Morpheus' crowd
were basically scavengers, helping keep the Matrix clean of dangerous
personalities while maintaining a reserve pool of free-range human at Zion, in
case the Matrix needed to be repopulated... which it did, from time to time,
after epic meme-virus infections which killed off most of the existing
inhabitants. The whole "AI vs humans" story and attempts to kill Morpheus & co
was a big piece of drama to keep them righteously motivated rather than
relaxing with the blue pill.

------
seanmcdirmid
I wonder if the evolution of agriculture has been similarly negative/positive
for the other animals that do it, namely some species of ants. Ants overall
make up 15-20% of this planet's animal biomass, visiting aliens wouldn't be
crazy to call them one of our planet's dominant species (and completely ignore
the hairless apes).

------
eli_gottlieb
Funny, I like my modern, high-tech lifestyle.

~~~
gurkendoktor
The article specifically mentions that the top X% are better off in
agriculture. If you have an enjoyable high-tech lifestyle, then you are
probably a part of them (as most of HN).

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Actually, for where I live I'm pretty median by income.

~~~
chii
if you are able to comment on hackernews thru an internet connection, you are
probably living within the top ~10% of the world.

------
sktrdie
I'm not sure I completely agree with this view. It's not confronting the other
argument: what if we were still all hunter-gatherers, and agriculture never
became mainstream?

I'm not sure we would reach the same level of a sophisticated society that we
enjoy today. Would the writer of this article have time to dedicate to
writing, if he had to hunt for food, instead of having it ready in a dish in a
few minutes? I highly doubt it.

I also think there's an evolutionary benefit that came out of agriculture. As
the complexity of our behavior towards dealing with an agricultural system
increased, so did our intelligence.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm not sure we would reach the same level of
intelligence - through natural evolution - that we have today, if we didn't
build highly complex systems that required lots of logical thinking
(agriculture). If we were all still hunters, we would not be as intelligent.

~~~
chii
you mean the same level of knowledge, not intelligence - people were just as
intelligent back then. Knowledge accumulation required agriculture, since it
freed up time.

~~~
sktrdie
Evidence of that? I actually think that knowledge accumulation led to an
evolutionary change at the gene level.

------
majkinetor
I guess some people here dont understasnd the point of the article.

There are 3 levels on which we can think about survival.

1\. Population level

On this level, agriculture is clear benefit as it provided stable
microenvironment to practice abstract sciences that led us here.

2\. Individual level

On this level, we clearly lost it. Degenerative disease, particularly dental
one and so called diseases of civilization. It may or may not reflect on u as
individual depending on ur environment and genetics, but it reflects badly on
majority of people. So this is middle ground heading bad way ATM and in what
direction will it go depends on how fast we can adapt (epigenetics etc.)

3\. Cell level.

Ask your enterocytes how they feel about glutens and friends. Ask your neurons
how they feel about sugar surge and Coca Cola. Its total disaster here. Way to
much for adaptation. Thats why we have rogue cells converting to metazoa 1.0
software (i.e. cancer).

~~~
adamauckland
> 3\. Cell level. Ask your enterocytes how they feel about glutens and
> friends. Ask your neurons how they feel about sugar surge and Coca Cola. Its
> total disaster here. Way to much for adaptation. Thats why we have rogue
> cells converting to metazoa 1.0 software (i.e. cancer).

Is this true? (The bit about cancer)

~~~
chii
i have heard that humans didn't used to eat so much sugar. It was a desirable
food, high energy concentrations. but it was "hard" to get in nature. But with
modern tech, it is now so cheap that the process of evolution hasn't really
"selected" for people who could cope because it happened so fast.

------
popeshoe
Maybe in a few thousand years time people will be reading about how the
widespread adoption of computers and the internet in the 20th century was
actually a catastrophe because before that it was so much easier to maintain
your privacy and there weren't so many goddamn robots everywhere.

------
bjourne
One important difference was how society was organised. Before agriculture,
hunter-gatherer groups were collaborators. They depended on each other to put
down game and gather vegetables. The more individuals in the group, the
stronger they were. That's a completely different situation from a farming
community in which its inhabitants are in competition to each other. The more
farmers on a given area, the worse for each of them. They have to compete with
each other over the arable land.

------
InclinedPlane
This sort of paean to the "noble savage" always glosses over some of the worst
aspects of such lifestyles. Such as excessive tribalism and racism, lack of
individual liberty, and a stultifying lack of art and cultural refinements.

It's fascinating to me how some of the most liberal folks can idolize some of
the most regressive and socially conservative lifestyles and cultures in
history.

------
digitalWestie
If you, unlike most, don't believe modernity = progress history I'd recommend
you read Ishmael. Great story which explores the cultural and environmental
effect of leaving our hunter-gatherer lifestyle behind.

------
scribu
> a hundred malnourished farmers can still outfight one healthy hunter.

Did anyone else envision an awesome zombie movie while reading this?

------
vacri
_Finally, at 11:54 p. m. we adopted agriculture._

And at 11:59pm we adopted the Enlightenment, egalitarianism, scientific
method, self-determination. Just because something was the case for a long
time doesn't mean it was by default the best case.

~~~
sliverstorm
We best hope that longest adoption doesn't make for the default best case, or
else the dinosaurs are a much better choice than humans.

~~~
zanny
And single celled bacterium that feed off nitrogen are the best animal ever.

------
rorrr
> _It turns out that these people [hunter-gatherers] have plenty of leisure
> time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors_

That's got to be a logical fallacy.

A single farmer with modern tools can feed hundreds of people.

~~~
gushie
Someone needs to make those modern tools...

~~~
rorrr
Most people are not involved in production anymore, most of it is automated,
and levels of automation will only increase.

