The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race
Jared Diamond, Discover (1987)
- Main thesis: Archeological findings (including paleopathology)
suggest that "in many ways, adoption of agriculture was not
progress but a catastrophe from which humans have never
recovered"
- How archeology allows us to know this
- Analysis of what is in ancient garbage dumps: wild or
domesticated food
- Paleopathology: study ancient skeletons, can tell sex, eight, age
at death, growth rates, disease, teeth show signs of childhood
malnutrition, bones with scars tell of anemia, tuberculosis,
leprosy
- Ancient feces, well preserved, see if have hookworm and other
parasites
- With Ag came:
- Social inequality
- Sexual inequality
- Malnutrition/starvation
- Poor health and disease epidemics
- Despotism
- Some were better off, but most/average person was worse off
- Diamond's critique of progress aimed at
- Well accepted idea that human history has been a long tale of
progress: We are better off than people in middle ages, who were
better off than cave men, who were better off than apes
- PROGRESS ARGUMENT HE CRITICIZES
- Traditional argument for progress; Today we have
- Most abundant and varied foods
- Best tools and material goods
- Longest and healthiest lives (1900 average life span was 47,
today 76 in U.S.)
- Most are safe from starvation and predation
- Get energy from oil and machines, not sweat
- Hunter-gathers' lives were nasty, brutish and short
- No food grown, so little stored, so each day struggle to go out
and find food to avoid starving
- Ag gave us more food for less work
- Ag gave us the free time to do art
DIAMOND'S CRITICISM OF THIS VIEW OF PROGRESS
- Hunter-gatherer life is not all work and misery
- 20th century hunter-gatherers have plenty of leisure, sleep a good
deal, and work less than farming neighbors
- Average time a week in search of food
- Kalahari Bushman 12-19 hours
- Tanzania Hadza nomads, 14 hours
- Why work to grow food when nature provides it for free?
- Agriculture increases food insecurity by relying on so few species
that when they fail results in a disaster
- Farmers risk starvation if one crop fails
- Irish Potato famine of 1840s, hundreds of thousands died
- Bushman use 75 or so wild plants for food, unlikely to starve
- H/G ate varied thus healthier diet; farmers ate only a few starchy crops
(cheap calories and poor nutrition)
- With agriculture height went down
- Skeleton from Greece/Turkey show average height of hunter-gathers at end of ice ages was 5' 9" for men and 5' 5" for women
- With agriculture, height when down by 300 BC: 5' 3" men, 5"
women
- Modern Greeks & Turks still not regained average height of
ancestors
- Could this be due to selection of big and strong and weak die off
- Not sure this is a sign they were better off
- Indian burial skeletons in Illinois/Ohio compared hunter-gatherers
(=H/G) to maize farming in 1150 AD;
- Farmers had:
- 50% increase in malnutrition
- 4X increase in iron deficiency anemia
- 3X rise in infectious disease
- Higher degeneration in spine (due to hard physical labor of
farming)
- Life expectancy at birth dropped from 26 to 19 due to nutritional
stress and infectious disease
- Increased concentration of humans allowed by farming led to much
greater disease
- Farmers crowded together and traded with other crowded
societies, led to spread of infectious disease and parasites
- H/G had no epidemics
- Tuberculosis/diarrheal disease awaited farming
- Measles and bubonic plague waited for large cities
- Ag lead to despotism and deep class division
- In H/G societies no one had stored food sources (herd of animals
or orchards)
- Thus, could be no kings-a class of social parasites who grow fat
on food seized from others
- Only with farming could a healthy, non-producing elite set itself
above disease-ridden masses
- Greek royalty enjoyed better diet than commoners
- With ag, elite became better off, most people worse off
- Same story today: Healthy in rich developed world, sickly in
poor developing world
- For many in today's world, better to be a H-G
- True for the 800 million malnourished-starving people today
- Yes: To us it sounds silly to extol virtues of H/G
- But for much of the world-e.g., poor peasant farmers in Ethiopia
or starving ghetto dwellers outside Mexico city--would be better
to be a bushman gatherer in Kalahari
- Agriculture led to sexual inequality:
- With farming, women needn't carry babies and pressure for more
farm hands led to more babies and resultant decline in women's
health
- From average of one every 4 years in H/G to one every 2
years in farming
- Women made beasts of burden in agricultural societies--gather
the firewood, get the water, men go empty-handed
- Rejects idea agriculture led to flowering of arts
- Great painting and sculpture produced by H/G 15,000 years ago
- Post agricultural technology allowed for different, not better art
- H/G practiced most successful and longest lasting lifestyle in
human history
- Human life on planet represented in 24 hours, agriculture came
11:54pm
- Why then did hunter-gathers take up farming?
- Not by choice (as not choosing a better life)
- Got trapped by agriculture, despite its pitfalls
- Most H/G didn't farm until had do and doing so they traded
quality of life for quantity
- Farmed out of necessity to feed their growing numbers
- Farming supports more people
- Farming bands out bred and killed off people who remained
H/G
- Drove H/G to marginal areas farmers didn't want