You're totally right. As a matter of fact, in undergrad I had a professor (Dr. Robert? Hard) who found even more correlates, some of them environmental, and plu

You're totally right. As a matter of fact, in undergrad I had a professor (Dr. Robert? Hard) who found even more correlates, some of them environmental, and plugged them into a GIS that would highlight good candidate sites for archaeological digs. Amazingly, he would go to these places, and often find important sites. Foremost among these was Cerro Juanaqueña, where Dr. Hard (at least a decade ago) earned the distinction of finding the oldest use of corn north of Mexico. So yes, there comes a tipping point where agriculture becomes the most attractive option, and when that happens, humans begin the sequence that causes them to lose a few important things and gain a lot of great things. And strangely, it looks like we're getting some of the things we lost back.