Agriculture may have been humanity’s greatest blunder (1987)
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Agriculture may have been humanity’s greatest blunder (1987)
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Re: Agriculture may have been humanity’s greatest blunder (1987)
#2Did not expect to see this story in a mainstream publication, and from --twenty-- er, thirty years ago!
For more details, and options for the future, I recommend "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Planet – But Not Civilization" and the sequel "Redesigning Civilization with Permaculture"
http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/how-permaculture-can-save-hum...
http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/redesigning-civilization-with...
Re: Agriculture may have been humanity’s greatest blunder (1987)
#3This article successfully supports an intriguing assertion that hunter-gathering societies existed on a fitness plateau, and for humanity to achieve improvements upon that quality of life it was necessary to cross a deep valley. To extend this to making the claim that human beings were and are universally better off as hunter-gatherers than they are today is absurd.
Publishing this article in a magazine, with later distribution online, is a very special kind of irony given that hunter-gatherer societies rarely if ever developed writing systems.
Re: Agriculture may have been humanity’s greatest blunder (1987)
#4Since author is so preoccupied with class, sexism and progressive issues, I wonder how consent culture was in hunter gatherer communities. If a women said no to big-muscle-abe, did it mean no?
Good thing author doesn't need to worry about their next meal, and has time to write such bullshit.
Re: Agriculture may have been humanity’s greatest blunder (1987)
#5"In one study, the Bushmen's average daily food intake (during a month when food was plentiful) was 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily allowance for people of their size."
"during a month when food was plentiful"
Don't know if the article discusses the other 11 months, since the next page button doesn't seem to work on Firefox Android.
Oh, and what was that early childhood mortality rate?
Re: Agriculture may have been humanity’s greatest blunder (1987)
#6But the article does point out that agriculture was a response - folks didn’t farm until they had to.
So maybeagriculture wasn’t the blunder. The blunder was hunting and gathering so hard that you had no choice but to farm. Agriculture itself was probably the best thing our ancestors could have done given the scarcity they created for themselves.
But I don’t know anything about this, I’m just a computer programmer.
Re: Agriculture may have been humanity’s greatest blunder (1987)
#7" In one study, the Bushmen's average daily food intake (during a month when food was plentiful) was 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily allowance for people of their size. " "during a month when food was plentiful" Don't know if the article discusses the other 11 months, since the next page button doesn't seem to work on Firefox Android. Oh, and what was that early…
In re: the San†, it's not exactly an anthropological study but the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy"‡ shows a life of relative happiness despite what seems like abject poverty. They don't know they are poor, and so it doesn't bother them. They have problems, but in their world all their problems are people-sized, if that makes sense. In contrast, our modern civilization seems Brutalist (as in the architectural style.)
Their way of life is stable, "A set of tools almost identical to that used by the modern San and dating to 42,000 BCE was discovered at Border Cave in KwaZulu-Natal in 2012."†
Re: Agriculture may have been humanity’s greatest blunder (1987)
#8The book Sapiens explored some of this. I can see how agriculture has shaped us and the planet negatively. Not sure what the alternative would have been, other than remaining foragers.
Re: Agriculture may have been humanity’s greatest blunder (1987)
#9Since author is so preoccupied with class, sexism and progressive issues, I wonder how consent culture was in hunter gatherer communities. If a women said no to big-muscle-abe, did it mean no? Good thing author doesn't need to worry about their next meal, and has time to write such bullshit.
Betcha that women tend to be protein deprived in hunter-gatherer groups, at least the ones where they don't get to run a bunch of buffalo off of a cliff. I should look around for a study based on dental remains.
I've always been amused by the concept of egalitarianism in tribal societies. Prison (or high school) should teach you otherwise
Re: Agriculture may have been humanity’s greatest blunder (1987)
#10This article successfully supports an intriguing assertion that hunter-gathering societies existed on a fitness plateau, and for humanity to achieve improvements upon that quality of life it was necessary to cross a deep valley. To extend this to making the claim that human beings were and are universally better off as hunter-gatherers than they are today is absurd. Publishing this article in a magazine, with later d…
It seems to me that it would be difficult to separate those valleys from the valleys you see from long term cycles in mass human behavior...under/over population of labor for example (or under/over supply of prey animals and food plants).