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Do people actually take seriously the notion that agriculture had no advantages? The biggest factor has been well studied: infant mortality. Hunter gatherers ha

Do people actually take seriously the notion that agriculture had no advantages? The biggest factor has been well studied: infant mortality. Hunter gatherers have more precarious populations and very slow population growth because they have higher infant mortality. Having food reserves from agriculture makes it easier to keep children fed through the occasional harsh winter, and that translates to higher population growth rates for agriculturalists.

jholman 9y ago
The claim has never been that it had no advantages. The claim has always been that, although agriculture is a dominant strategy at the cultural level (obviously, from history!), it allegedly involves a less pleasant life experience for the individuals (more work, higher rates of malnutrition, whatever else). If I understand correctly (big "if"), agriculture scales better with population, and so while the HGs are inherently limited in population size, the farming society ends up larger and swamps them. 1000 HGs vs 10k farmers is going to have a pretty straightforward outcome, even if it's the case (as these theses claim) that the HG is happier, healthier-on-average, stronger, smarter, etc. (After all, the per-individual advantages are not alleged to be enormous).
milesvp 9y ago
I actually just ran across this article talking about the romanticization of hunter gatherer cultures. http://quillette.com/2017/12/16/romanticizing-hunter-gatherer/ http://quillette.com/2017/12/16/romanticizing-hunter-gathere... The tl;dr; seems to be that there was one paper 50 years ago that everyone cites around how great it is to be a !Kung. But that the study didn't take into account some of the downsides, and it also happened to be a particularly fruitful year for the tribe. (BTW, an extra shout out to http://marginalrevolution.com http://marginalrevolution.com which is where I found the link to the article. I mention it here, because it seems like a site that a large cross section of HN would enjoy on a regular basis, as it's a very thoughtful Econ blog.)

jholman 9y ago

The claim has never been that it had no advantages. The claim has always been that, although agriculture is a dominant strategy at the cultural level (obviously, from history!), it allegedly involves a less pleasant life experience for the individuals (more work, higher rates of malnutrition, whatever else). If I understand correctly (big "if"), agriculture scales better with population, and so while the HGs are inherently limited in population size, the farming society ends up larger and swamps them. 1000 HGs vs 10k farmers is going to have a pretty straightforward outcome, even if it's the case (as these theses claim) that the HG is happier, healthier-on-average, stronger, smarter, etc. (After all, the per-individual advantages are not alleged to be enormous).

milesvp 9y ago

I actually just ran across this article talking about the romanticization of hunter gatherer cultures. http://quillette.com/2017/12/16/romanticizing-hunter-gatherer/ http://quillette.com/2017/12/16/romanticizing-hunter-gathere... The tl;dr; seems to be that there was one paper 50 years ago that everyone cites around how great it is to be a !Kung. But that the study didn't take into account some of the downsides, and it also happened to be a particularly fruitful year for the tribe. (BTW, an extra shout out to http://marginalrevolution.com http://marginalrevolution.com which is where I found the link to the article. I mention it here, because it seems like a site that a large cross section of HN would enjoy on a regular basis, as it's a very thoughtful Econ blog.)