1
0

The transition to agriculture trap


 invite response                
2020 Feb 18, 4:21pm   3,805 views  29 comments

by Heraclitusstudent   ➕follow (8)   💰tip   ignore  

The key reason people transitioned from hunting gathering to agriculture, it that agriculture allowed a steadier source of food. And it was. At least initially.

Yet by studying skeletons, it became obvious that the life expectancy and the quality of life collapsed after transitioning to agriculture. There were more wars, more famines and more diseases. Why is this?

1 - people were bound to their fields, couldn't move, and had to defend against marauders.
2 - people are far less flexibility in the source of their food and were very vulnerable to bad harvests.
3 - Because they had more food initially, the population grew by a large factor. People lived in denser settlements, and close their livestock. As a result they were far more vulnerable to epidemics.
4 - Because of the much larger population, there is no way they could go back to hunting gathering. The land would just not support all of them.

So this is how people went from a leisurely life style of hunting and gathering, that was what humans evolved to do, and was extremely satisfying on a personal level, to a life of backbreaking work, that could be cut short anytime by diseases, famine or war.

Just because they found a better source of food.
We forget more food just means we will grow to the next limit, and that most likely will be a far more undesirable condition than our current one.



« First        Comments 9 - 29 of 29        Search these comments

9   Heraclitusstudent   2020 Feb 18, 8:28pm  

Onvacation says
Personally I enjoy a modern lifestyle of smartphones and not starving.

Signs are that in these short intervals when we are not starving, we grow up to the next point where we will be starving - or killing each other - or infecting each other.
10   Onvacation   2020 Feb 18, 8:50pm  

Heraclitusstudent says
Signs are that in these short intervals when we are not starving, we grow up to the next point where we will be starving - or killing each other - or infecting each other.


Yep. AF has been talking about it for years, Cannibal Anarchy; When the masses no longer have a place at the feeding trough, harvesting yams for food and having belts of ammo for protection will be your only salvation. I'm not quite that cynical but there are some storms on the horizon.

I'm more concerned about communists than climate change.
11   Heraclitusstudent   2020 Feb 18, 9:20pm  

NoCoupForYou says
The answer to too many eggs is more baskets.

That would be nice but at max you're gonna move 1 million apes off this planet. That not enough to change anything to what will happen on earth.

This is at best an act of preservation for civilization, not a safe passage for humanity for humanity as a whole. And it looks VERY iffy at this point.

We're probably better off hoping that AI can enable a progressive reduction in the population without triggering an economic collapse.
12   noobster   2020 Feb 18, 9:24pm  

"Leisurely? Would you call hunting down a
woolly mammoth with a spear or ....."

They were probably also smoking cigars and making un pc jokes. Probably not too boring of a day/week
13   Heraclitusstudent   2020 Feb 18, 9:26pm  

TrumpingTits says
Our ancestors (and those living in the Amazon and Papuan jungles today) knew what the fuck they were doing

People were probably smarter than now. Just to survive they had to be experts at hunting, fishing, expert botanists, experts at making stone tools, tanning hides, making tools from ivory and bones, sewing, making fire, they had to have deep knowledge of different environments, animals behavior. Most probably knew several languages as well.
14   FortWayneAsNancyPelosiHaircut   2020 Feb 19, 9:37am  

Heraclitusstudent says
TrumpingTits says
Our ancestors (and those living in the Amazon and Papuan jungles today) knew what the fuck they were doing

People were probably smarter than now. Just to survive they had to be experts at hunting, fishing, expert botanists, experts at making stone tools, tanning hides, making tools from ivory and bones, sewing, making fire, they had to have deep knowledge of different environments, animals behavior. Most probably knew several languages as well.


I don't know if they were smarter. Look at Indians (American once), they were experts at all that, and got ran over like gullible children by conquistadors. They definitely grew up faster, because survival required it. But smarter, I don't see evidence of it. Even today. My generation matured faster than next generation is maturing. They still mature, just a lot later, and they half apply themselves, plenty smart, just not as mature and a lot lazier.
15   Heraclitusstudent   2020 Feb 19, 9:55am  

Onvacation says
Leisurely? Would you call hunting down a woolly mammoth with a spear or scraping edible moss and collecting berries was a life of leisure?


Hunting mammoths for a living must have been incredibly fun.
Certainly less dull than a day at the office.
16   HeadSet   2020 Feb 19, 11:24am  

Hunting mammoths for a living must have been incredibly fun.
Certainly less dull than a day at the office.


Add to that pleasure the adventure of avoiding the saber-tooth cats, giant sloths, various wolf species, bears, etc, that are hunting you.
17   RC2006   2020 Feb 19, 11:34am  

Also all of this life of leisure has been causing humans brains to shrink. Still unknown if it is because our brain is controlling less mass or we are becoming dumber in the grand scheme of things.
18   MisdemeanorRebel   2020 Feb 19, 11:39am  

Heraclitusstudent says
That would be nice but at max you're gonna move 1 million apes off this planet. That not enough to change anything to what will happen on earth.


You don't have to. You can have the million somewhere else. Just need the breeding stock.
19   Heraclitusstudent   2020 Feb 19, 11:55am  

HeadSet says
Add to that pleasure the adventure of avoiding the saber-tooth cats, giant sloths, various wolf species, bears, etc, that are hunting you.


As soon as they had relevant stone points like clovis points, Homo Sapiens quickly massacred most of the megafauna in the regions they entered.

Do you know there used to be a type of elephant called Palaeoloxodon that could have rested its chin on the head of a modern African elephant. There was a hornless rhino called Paraceratherium, which was at least 10 times heavier than living rhinos. There was once a giant wombat that could have looked you level in the eye, a ground sloth the size of an elephant, a short-faced bear that would have loomed over a grizzly, and car-sized armadillos with maces on their tails.

Australia had giant flightless birds 3 m high and twice as heavy as ostriches, giant marsupials like Diprotodon, giant kangaroos, giant koalas, etc... all gone.

In North America 13,000 years ago, 78 species that weighed over a ton vanished - as Homo Sapiens spread.

Saber-tooth cats survived for millions of years and through many ice ages, but were never a match for group of apes equipped with long spears and spear-thrower that could throw a spear at 150 km/h.
A short-faced bear standing up 4m high on his hind legs to scare humans away from their kill would soon look like a porcupine, stuck with spears on all sides.

The truth is that Sapiens started changing the world long before starting agriculture. Long before global warming.
20   HeadSet   2020 Feb 19, 12:09pm  

As soon as they had relevant stone points like clovis points, Homo Sapiens quickly massacred most of the megafauna in the regions they entered.

I have heard that, but do not buy it. A sparse population of men armed with pointy sticks did not wipe out a continent full of mastodons, mammoths, giant sloths, smilodons, giant bears, rhinos, hippos, horses, and so on. If that were the case, then Africa would have lost its large animal species long ago. Try climate change from the receding (and still receding) ice age.

Do you know there used to be a type of elephant called Palaeoloxodon that could have rested its chin on the head of a modern African elephant. There was a hornless rhino called Paraceratherium, which was at least 10 times heavier than living rhinos.

Yes, and if you are ever in Lincoln, NE, check out the University of Nebraska State Museum of Natural History. It has tar pit recovered remains of such animals on display.


21   Bd6r   2020 Feb 19, 12:33pm  

HeadSet says
I have heard that, but do not buy it. A sparse population of men armed with pointy sticks did not wipe out a continent full of mastodons, mammoths, giant sloths, smilodons, giant bears, rhinos, hippos, horses, and so on. If that were the case, then Africa would have lost its large animal species long ago. Try climate change from the receding (and still receding) ice age.

Humans wiping out large animals is the currently scientifically accepted theory, which makes some sense. For example, large birds were wiped out in historic times in New Zealand, after humans arrived; there is a connection between humans arriving and megafauna extinction; and so on. I do not know enough about this to figure out why Africa was different from everywhere else. Perhaps animals coexisted with humans for so long time that there was some adaptation?
22   Heraclitusstudent   2020 Feb 19, 12:34pm  

HeadSet says
I have heard that, but do not buy it. A sparse population of men armed with pointy sticks did not wipe out a continent full of mastodons, mammoths, giant sloths, smilodons, giant bears, rhinos, hippos, horses, and so on.


Then you need to explain:
- why their extinction time matched the arrival of men
- why the same scenario happened in different regions: Australia, North America for ex, where men arrived at different times.
- why many of these species had survived many ice ages and intervals in-between ice ages but couldn't adapt that one particular time.

Remember you are talking of species that did not evolve to be scared of humans, species that were vulnerable to spear attacks (a few spears in the flank could kill a mammoth), and reproduced very slowly because of their size.

They were like walking food for homo sapiens. And remember that the number of sapiens could easily double every generation, multiply by 10 every 100 years, and a billion times over in 1000 years, essentially until food ran out, because they had no worthy predator. The only competition to sapiens was other sapiens.
23   Onvacation   2020 Feb 19, 1:24pm  

Heraclitusstudent says
Long before global warming.

If the globe wasn't warming, how did the glaciers retreat?
24   theoakman   2020 Feb 19, 2:00pm  

rd6B says
HeadSet says
I have heard that, but do not buy it. A sparse population of men armed with pointy sticks did not wipe out a continent full of mastodons, mammoths, giant sloths, smilodons, giant bears, rhinos, hippos, horses, and so on. If that were the case, then Africa would have lost its large animal species long ago. Try climate change from the receding (and still receding) ice age.

Humans wiping out large animals is the currently scientifically accepted theory, which makes some sense. For example, large birds were wiped out in historic times in New Zealand, after humans arrived; there is a connection between humans arriving and megafauna extinction; and so on. I do not know enough about this to figure out why Africa was different from everywhere else. Perhaps animals coexisted with humans for so long time that there was some adaptation?


To be fair, humans have also been the only species that has worked to prevent the extinction of certain species.
25   Shaman   2020 Feb 19, 2:25pm  

TrumpingTits says
CovfefeButDeadly says
Watch Naked and Afraid and then tell me how leisurely that hunter gatherer lifestyle was.


Our ancestors (and those living in the Amazon and Papuan jungles today) knew what the fuck they were doing compared to these city yahoos.


Exactly. I’m always amazed at the sheer incompetence of these sorts of contestants. Even the professional survivalists who have their own single camera shows just exhibit how to starve a bit more slowly for a week or ten days rather than actually reach homeostasis and SURVIVE.

There’s a world of knowledge we as a species have largely forgotten. And it’s fucking embarrassing to watch on tv.
26   Booger   2020 Feb 19, 3:20pm  

Heraclitusstudent says
So this is how people went from a leisurely life style of hunting and gathering


I doubt that it was leisurely.
27   Booger   2020 Feb 19, 3:25pm  

rd6B says
I recall that they studied skeletons of hunter-gatherers vs farmers, and hunter-gatherers were typically more healthy. They were on average more healthy than humans today, with very little to no cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure or diabetes.


Living at near starvation levels does tend to keep ones blood sugar low.
28   HeadSet   2020 Feb 19, 3:34pm  

Then you need to explain:

- why their extinction time matched the arrival of men
In North America, humans existed along with these animals. Homo Sapiens, being adaptable, was able to survive the climate change

- why the same scenario happened in different regions: Australia, North America for ex, where men arrived at different times.
Australia did not have the population of large animals that North America and Europe had. Wiping out a large flightless bird is different than mammoths and dozens of other
large animals. And you would need to explain how Africa still has its large animals, despite humans being there longer than anywhere else.

- why many of these species had survived many ice ages and intervals in-between ice ages but couldn't adapt that one particular time.
Because the other ice ages did not recede as far, or effect the climate as the last one. Even a changing plant life would affect the food chain.

And remember that the number of sapiens could easily double every generation, multiply by 10 every 100 years, and a billion times over in 1000 years
Now this is really grabbing at straws. Primitive people do not grow into billions, and there is no evidence that North America was anything but sparsely populated before
Columbus. Certainly not by Indians or by the ancients the Indian's ancestors may have displaced.
29   Heraclitusstudent   2020 Feb 19, 4:40pm  

HeadSet says
Australia did not have the population of large animals that North America and Europe had.

They had something like 25 species of large animals, 23 of which disappeared - just after humans arrived. Coincidence?

HeadSet says
Primitive people do not grow into billions

Because there wasn't enough food. Population was always limited only by food. If you suddenly became able to kill mammoth, that's a large supply of food, and you will multiply until they are gone.

Please register to comment:

api   best comments   contact   latest images   memes   one year ago   random   suggestions