Jared Diamond on Agriculture

How will oil depletion affect the way we live? What will the economic impact be? How will agriculture change? Will we thrive or merely survive?

Moderator: Peak Moderation

Post Reply
User avatar
Ballard
Posts: 826
Joined: 24 Nov 2005, 11:09
Location: Surrey

Jared Diamond on Agriculture

Post by Ballard »

An Interesting article on Agriculture v's Hunter gatherer.

Possibly in the distant (200 years plus) time scale we could once again see the H/G lifestyle as the norm, if there is anything left to hunt and gather that is.

http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/ag ... stake.html
For most of our history we supported ourselves by hunting and gathering: we hunted wild animals and foraged for wild plants. It?s a life that philosophers have traditionally regarded as nasty, brutish, and short. Since no food is grown and little is stored, there is (in this view) no respite from the struggle that starts anew each day to find wild foods and avoid starving. Our escape from this misery was facilitated only 10,000 years ago, when in different parts of the world people began to domesticate plants and animals. The agricultural revolution spread until today it?s nearly universal and few tribes of hunter-gatherers survive.

While the case for the progressivist view seems overwhelming, it?s hard to prove. How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming? Until recently, archaeologists had to resort to indirect tests, whose results (surprisingly) failed to support the progressivist view. Here?s one example of an indirect test: Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalahari bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. 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. 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?"
Bootstrapper
Posts: 91
Joined: 24 Nov 2005, 11:09
Location: Canberra, Australia

Post by Bootstrapper »

And this says it all:
Jared Diamond wrote:Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.
Post Reply