The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race (by Jared Diamond)
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Re: The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race (by Jared Diamond)
#2>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.
Neither of which would have been possible if we were too busy hunting for food every waking hour.
Re: The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race (by Jared Diamond)
#3>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. Neither of which would have been possible if we were too busy hunting for food every waking hour.
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Re: The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race (by Jared Diamond)
#4>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. Neither of which would have been possible if we were too busy hunting for food every waking hour.
>>It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania.
FTA... please read it :p
You can make the argument that by increasing population size and crowding, it also made collaboration, partnership, and the growth of ideas easier but the article itself debunks the whole "they spent their entire life looking for berries" argument.
Jared Diamond is awesome.
Re: The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race (by Jared Diamond)
#5>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. Neither of which would have been possible if we were too busy hunting for food every waking hour.
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I beg to differ. If you compare the average member of a hunting-gathering society to the average farmer, then sure, the hunter-gatherer has more time. That's because the farmer farms very intensively, and feeds everybody else in the society. If you take the average member of a farming society, on the other hand, probably about 1.5% of his waking time is spent farming. (3% of the population farms, and each farmer maybe spends half or maybe a little more of his waking time farming). Thus, farming does, in fact, lead to time freed up from acquiring food, but it does so unequally, letting those who choose to farm farm, and letting everybody else do something else.
Re: The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race (by Jared Diamond)
#6This article certainly is well documented... still I don't see why agriculture is a mistake. Yes, our ancestors were intelligent enough to understand that progress usually involves a temporary loss of comfort to achieve long-term benefits. Why is it a mistake?
Re: The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race (by Jared Diamond)
#7>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. Neither of which would have been possible if we were too busy hunting for food every waking hour.
>>It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. FTA... please read it :p You can make the argument that by increasing population size and crowding, it also made collaborat…
It still does not make sense. Humans were in a hunter-gathering mode for quite some time. If they were so much healthier, AND had more free time, why did the society start rapidly progressing only with the advent of agriculture? Did they just magically become smart? I'm sorry, but no. While this article is certainly interesting, and thought provoking, the thesis doesn't hold.
Re: The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race (by Jared Diamond)
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I beg to differ. If you compare the average member of a hunting-gathering society to the average farmer , then sure, the hunter-gatherer has more time. That's because the farmer farms very intensively, and feeds everybody else in the society. If you take the average member of a farming society , on the other hand, probably about 1.5% of his waking time is spent farming. (3% of the population farms, and each farmer ma…
Not to pick a fight here or anything but in your original message, you implied something completely different. You implied that the hunter/gatherers would have no time to make any discoveries since they'd be off looking for food all the time.
Second, one of Diamond's premises in this essay seems to be that farming and its consequences are, directly or indirectly, the cause of the malaise in the world (over-crowding, wealth inequality, class structure, war etc).
So I think the point is that with farming you get free time, but also all the bad things mentioned above. What Diamond is arguing is that hunter/gatherers didn't have to deal with most (all?) of the negatives but still had plenty of free time to pursue their leisure. That is, civilization might not have been set back just because we didn't adopt farming. In the end, it was sheer numbers that decided the outcome, not the best method.
Re: The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race (by Jared Diamond)
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I beg to differ. If you compare the average member of a hunting-gathering society to the average farmer , then sure, the hunter-gatherer has more time. That's because the farmer farms very intensively, and feeds everybody else in the society. If you take the average member of a farming society , on the other hand, probably about 1.5% of his waking time is spent farming. (3% of the population farms, and each farmer ma…
You might want to be careful about anachronism when stating facts.
It is true that very few today farm, but take into account that, within the past century alone, the yield of farmers has increased by an order of magnitude, not to mention the millennia of domestication and invention before it. For most of agricultural history, the percentage of farmers was much higher than 3%.
For example, from Wikipedia's article on Roman Agriculture:
>In the Roman Empire, a typical family of 3.25 persons would need between 7-8 iugera of land to meet minimum food requirements (without animals). If a family owned animals to help cultivate land, then 20 iugera is needed. There would not be a surplus production on this farm.
Re: The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race (by Jared Diamond)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I beg to differ. If you compare the average member of a hunting-gathering society to the average farmer , then sure, the hunter-gatherer has more time. That's because the farmer farms very intensively, and feeds everybody else in the society. If you take the average member of a farming society , on the other hand, probably about 1.5% of his waking time is spent farming. (3% of the population farms, and each farmer ma…
Not to pick a fight here or anything but in your original message, you implied something completely different. You implied that the hunter/gatherers would have no time to make any discoveries since they'd be off looking for food all the time. Second, one of Diamond's premises in this essay seems to be that farming and its consequences are, directly or indirectly, the cause of the malaise in the world (over-crowding,…
> Second, one of Diamond's premises in this essay seems to be that farming and its consequences are, directly or indirectly, the cause of the malaise in the world (over-crowding, wealth inequality, class structure, war etc).
And he's not wrong; because farming is progress, and progress brings good things as well as bad things. But, as we're an intelligent species, we recognize bad things (yes, it takes generations) and work around them.