Most people would argue that the transition from hunting and gathering of food to agricultural food production was the best innovation in human history. We are taught to believe that this innovation gave rise to civilization, allowed for more leisure time in which people could then focus on arts and allowed for a higher yielding, more consistent and reliable food source. Despite some of the innovations that sprang from agriculture, upon a closer look, we can see that with the advent of agriculture came class division, gender inequality, less leisure time, overpopulation, diseases, deficient diets and starvation. The transition from hunting and gathering to agricultural food production may have been the worst mistake in human history.
Hunter-gatherer is a term applied to those people that exist by gathering wild plants, fishing, hunting, and foraging for other types of food stuff. According to Kent Flannery, the hunter-gatherer culture has been characterized as having close family ties or kinship’s, a remarkably sophisticated knowledge of indigenous plants and animals, egalitarian societies and relatively small groups or bands consisting of between twenty-five to thirty-five people (Flannery, 2002). Hunter-gatherer bands did not have hereditary titles of authority, rank or leadership. The basis for leadership depended on a persons skill, age, experience, personal charm and popular opinion. The division of labor was largely established by a persons age, gender and ability to do certain tasks. Men tended to hunt while women did the gathering although they could do either or if they wanted to. The transition to an agrarian society changed the complete structure of how the hunter-gatherer lived and interacted.
Agriculture provided ...
... middle of paper ...
...the benefit of an elite class. For all these reasons I have to agree with Jarred Diamond that the transition to agriculture was the worst mistake in human history.
Works Cited
Diamond, J. (1987, May). The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race. Discover Magazine.
Diamond, J. (1992, October). The Arrow of Disease. Discover Magazine.
Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York:W. W. Norton.
Flannery, K. (2002). Prehistoric Social Evolution. [PDF document]. Retrieved March 16, 2014, from http://depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu/anthro/faculty/mitrovic/Flannery.pdf
O'Neil, D. (2006). Foraging. Retrieved March 16, 2014, from http://anthro.palomar.edu/subsistence/sub_2.htm Schultz, E. & Lavenda, R. (n.d.). The Consequences of Domestication and Sedentism. Retrieved March 16, 2014, from http://www.primitivism.com/sedentism.htm
12,000 years ago, the discovery of agriculture triggered such a change in society and the way in which people lived that we now call this important era in time the “Neolithic Revolution.” Traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles were cast away in favor of more permanent settlements and a reliable food supply. Agriculture helped form cities and civilizations, and because crops and animals could now be farmed to meet growing demand, populations skyrocketed from around five million people 10,000 years ago, to more the more than seven billion people that walk this earth today.1
Ellis, John. The Social History of the Machine Gun. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986. Print.
c. 8000 B.C.E. was the beginnings of agriculture also known as the Neolithic or Agricultural Revolution. Agricultural Revolution transformed human life across the planet. This event demonstrates KC 1.2: I.A because this led to cultivation of plants and domestication of animals that caused creating abundant amount of food supplies. It illustrates the interaction between human and environment, development of technology, settling patterns, and how natural resources gave some lands advantages over others. Agriculture developed independently at different times in different regions. Historians believe that the Agricultural Revolution might have originated from Middle East (ME), although they are not fully sure.
Crops can kill thousands and build millions. During the Potato Famine, an infamous crop failure, “1845 to 1947, more than one million people died of starvation or emigrated. Additionally, over 50,000 people died of diseases: typhus, scurvy, dysentery” (American University). For thousands of years crops have fueled large societies allowing for mass population growth and human expansion. But the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to an agricultural reliance bered many consequences along with its pros. Switching to an agricultural way of life provided health issues among humans, drastic changes socially and culturally, as well as ecological implications. This paper examines the changes accumulated by this transition including its enduring
The understanding and expertise of cultivating food promoted advancement of human society, meaning that cultures were able to last longer and better.
The book tells the history of human civilization through the development of our food production and culture. A highly relevant book to present although food is a special type of natural resource or products hereof and history is a wider subject than conflict. The gradual transition towards hierarchical social order is described. Especially the significance of irrigation is compelling.
64-66), author Jared Diamond claims that agriculture as opposed to popular belief, didn’t help civilization bloom, but instead proved detrimental to human lives ever since its introduction. He states that the progressives believe agriculture was adopted due to its efficiency and how it complimented our race. He contradicts this view with multiple studies and expert sources. According to his research, modern day humans are much worse off than their hunter gatherer counterparts due to a variety of lifestyle changes ranging from greatly deteriorated nutritional quality to increased sexual discrimination. He gathers the support from various archaeological research conducted on various remains found in Chile, Greece, Turkey, etc. Archaeologists can further point out the date at which this switch (from Gathering to agriculture) took place. He further establishes that Hunter gatherers may have chosen to change ways with the preconceived idea that the capability to feed more people and reducing the burden on mothers (hence allowing them to bear a child every 2 years instead of 4) would in turn drastically improve quality of life. He concludes the article by emphasizing on how it created disparities between the elite and the commoners and by defending his own kind for having discovered mankind’s biggest mistake and the motive behind
Hunting and gathering is probably a preferable lifestyle compared to a farmer, but it seems a bit over the top to blame absolutely every problem in our society on agriculture. It’s a common argument, but Jared Diamond's theory does seem to be quite an over-simplification. For example, he argues that inequality between sexes could be caused by agricultural because women were made beasts of burden and given greater pressure to work on the fields. However, the root cause of that isn’t agriculture, it’s sexism and stereotyping, because without an outdated sexist mindset no one would treat women differently in the agricultural department, and it is an oversimplification to ignore this. Furthermore, because of farming and globalization people now are given even more opportunity for a diverse diet. Although early farmers had access to only one or a few crops versus hunter-gatherers who had an entire forest of varied food, people nowadays have many more options than both hunter-gatherers and early farmers combined. A grocery store has ten times as many diverse and varying food items as a forest does, providing food from all corners of the world not just a single location or country, allowing people to create a perfectly balanced diet if they so choose. In conclusion, I agree with Jared Diamond's thesis on certain grounds, but I mostly disagree that the introduction of agriculture was the “worst mistake in human
Diamond states that the reason hunter-gatherer groups became agriculturists was simply because it was easier to create more food for your individual group if it was grown, this statement does have validity. Everyone would be responsible for themselves and would be expected to help out. There wouldn’t be the constant grumbling that there are so many people being lazy and living off of handouts like there are in the modern world today.
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W. W.
“The discovery of agriculture was the first big step toward a civilized life.” (Arthur Keith)
The blessing and curse of the Agricultural Revolution is advocated with its augmentation and dissemination. Taking the stipulative definition of “blessing” and “curse” from the original premise, one can only superimpose the layman’s terms of “negative” and “positive”. Upon examination of the two classifications within the Neolithic Period and ancient Mesopotamian civilization one can confirm the premise. Therefore, the agriculture revolution was a blessing and a curse for humanity. Human society began to emerge in the Neolithic Period or the New Stone Age. This new age began around 9,000 B.C.E. by the development of agriculture in the region surrounding the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and what is commonly referred to as “The Fertile Crescent” located in West Asia.1 The very development of agriculture had benefited humans by no longer having to move about in search of wild game and plants. Unencumbered by nomadic life humans found little need to limit family size and possessions and settled in a single location for many years. One negative aspect of this settling is that the population increased so much so that wild food sources were no longer sufficient to support large groups. Forced to survive by any means necessary they discovered using seeds of the most productive plants and clearing weeds enhanced their yield.2 This also lead humans to develop a wider array of tools far superior to the tools previously used in the Paleolithic Period or Old Stone Age. The spread of the Agricultural Revolution in the Neolithic Period also cultivated positive aspects by creating connections with other cultures and societies. Through these connections they exchanged knowledge, goods, and ideas on herding and farming.3 Another major positive aspec...
Establishing an adequate supply of food is historically one of the fundamental challenges facing mankind. The modern food infrastructure employed by contemporary society is rooted in the creation and innovation of food production. Its effective utilization decreases the level of societal labor contribution required and discourages food shortage trepidation amongst individuals. It is hard to fathom given the current status of our society massive agricultural-industrial complex that the hunter-gatherer organization of society dominated for more than 99 percent of our existence (Fagan 2007: 126). The hunter-gatherer population was characterized by their primary subsistence method, which involved the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild. The primary methods employed were foraging and hunting, which were conducted without any significant recourse to the domestication of either food source (Fagan 2007: 129). Food production is presumed to have emerged approximately 12,000 years ago as a system of “deliberate cultivation of cereal grasses, edible root plants, and animal domestication” (Fagan 2007: 126). The pronounced change from hunting and gathering to agriculture and domestication can be simplistically designated the Agricultural or Neolithic Revolution (Pringle 1998). The catalytic developments of the Neolithic Revolution mark a major turning point in the history of humankind. The resulting animal and plant domestication established the foundation on which modern civilization was built.
...as greatly advanced in the past 200 years thanks to mechanical tools replacing manual labor. It is the most important industry and will forever remain the base of our economy. Humans have constantly been trying to make it easier and quicker to produce crops, from wooden ploughs to pesticides. Agriculture is easily one of the most important and obvious signs of humanity and its adaptation and evolvement over thousands of years.
HUNTING AND GATHERING SOCIETIES are the simplest types of societies in which people rely on readily available vegetation and hunted game for subsistence. Only a few people can be supported in any given area in such subsistence societies. Hence they usually have no more than 40 members or so, must be nomadic, and have little or no division of labor. All societies began as hunting and gathering societies. These societies were still common until a few hundred years ago. Today only a few remain, including pygmies in central Africa and aborigines in Australia. Most of the rest have had their territory overrun by other forms of society. Hunter-gatherer societies also tend to have non-hierarchical social structures. There is rarely surplus food, and since they are nomadic little ability to store any surplus. Thus full-time leaders, bureaucrats, or artisans are rarely supported by hunter-gathering societies. Hunting and gathering society consumes a great deal of time, energy, and thought, collecting and hunting for food. Most of these societies today generally live in marginal areas where resources are scarce, so life for the hunter and gatherer seems more oriented toward mere survival. Life expectancy is also very low compared to the post industrial society. Technology is minimal in the hunting and gathering society, which again relates back to the need for expending time and energy finding food. Technology in medicine is also primitive for hunters and gatherers. Equality is great and social stratification is low, opposed to the post-industrial society.