Graeber and Wengrow contest that take severely with their survey of modern anthro and archaeological research, I recommend their papers or Dawn of Everything
Yes highly recommended. For those not familiar, Dawn of Everything essentially starts with the assumption that people have always been curious, intelligent, flexible creatures, and that smaller core populations let a ton of different societal organizations be tested and tried over the years. They also take aim at the "farming is inevitable and the root of inequality" trope that's prevalent. Since, as they show, a ton of really large societies over the years chose not to become primarily agricultural.
Yes, large societies including many that have been shown to have discovered agriculture much earlier on than expected, and chose not to build hierarchical societies around it / found alternative structures. I particularly liked the several wacky varieties of "police" such as the clown ones
One intriguing line of analysis in _The Dawn of Everything_ is how people in early settlements would often just pack up and leave when their leaders started acting like a*holes (think human sacrifices in Mesoamerica). That reminded me of how many citizens abandoned frontier towns during the late Roman period, often helpfully directing advancing northern tribes where the wealthiest villas might be found.
Maybe the peoples in earlier times were simply less willing to put up with being bullied and exploited. Relatively low numbers and abundant unsettled land gave them more options that many humans have had since. The Nile watershed was a wonder of ancient agricultural engineering: it was also the largest slave society up to that point in history.
Have you read the book? What I remember is that it took 5000 years for the transition to happen, and that human went back in forth with the two systems.
That was far from a black and white transition.
Hunther gatherer knew about farming and were actually farming
Also: trash and bones of the two groups indicate that farming was more subject to instability and shortage of nutrients. ( as backward as it sound for us )
You're missing a lot of nuance. Graebers work is great. Tons of evidence-based discussions and thorough logic. What you've written here is even really deserving of a forum post.
Yeah but that chain of comments was originally talking about James C. Scott "against the grain". A historian specialized in early agricultural history and thus relevant here in that comment section about early human history.
I even got confused and thought that Scott wrote "bullshit job", but it's Graeber.
In regards to jobs: I think it's perfectly conceivable that one job is useful to a few, but generally pointless for society.
