4 ms·

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: “Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of whea

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: “Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn't easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn't like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn't like sharing its space, water and nutrients with other plants, so men and women labored long days weeding under the scorching sun. . . . The body of Homo sapiens had not evolved for such tasks. It was adapted to climbing apple trees and running after gazelles, not to clearing rocks and carrying water buckets. Human spines, knees, necks and arches paid the price. Studies of ancient skeletons indicate that the transition to agriculture brought about a plethora of ailments, such as slipped discs, arthritis and hernias. Moreover, the new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat fields. This completely changed their way of life. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.”

foxhop 4y ago
it was used as a tool to grow weak unfree men to work that way for a lord or king. Freeman still existed outside of the sick bodies throughout the millenia. there were powerful men controlling the wheat & peseants growing & eating it.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Overall health and life quality declines with the introduction of agriculture. Disease run rampant. Teeth rot. Social inequality and group violence increases. ... But population growth explodes because of the reliable supply of food and the ability to be settled in one place and also the ability to wean babies sooner for the above reasons. It turns out people will trade many valuable things -- including freedom and their own health -- in exchange for food security and stability and the knowledge that they don't die this winter because the neighbouring tribe overhunted all the deer and the fish didn't spawn this year.
api 4y ago
From a Darwinian perspective though agriculture vastly increased the population of humans. So as far as nature's inbuilt goal functions goes, it was an enormous win. Natural evolution doesn't optimize for hedonic well being. It optimizes for survival and growth. It's also possible that if we manage to cope with things like climate change, avoid self-inflicted disasters like nuclear war or bioterrorism, and adapt to resource constraints, we'll eventually end up on the other end of the post-industrial transition better off than we started ~15,000 years ago. If it does turn out that way it makes the whole period of agricultural and early industrial toil look like a kind of "fitness valley," a decline between two local maxima. In any case I don't think there's any going back. We have long ago passed the point at which reversion to a hunter-gatherer condition is politically, economically, and socially feasible. By the time large scale agricultural societies had standing armies it was pretty unlikely. I've long believed that we conclusively passed the point of no return at exactly 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_%28nuclear_test%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_%28nuclear_test%29 That's also where I plant the stake as the beginning of the Anthropocene epoch.
- mcv 4y ago
  Do you want quality of life or quantity of life? But you're right; we can't go back. We'd have to get rid of at least 90% of the population to be able to feed people without agriculture. The best step forward is to automate all the hard work and make sure we divide the benefits equally.
- bionsystem 4y ago
  > It's also possible that if we manage to cope with things like climate change, avoid self-inflicted disasters like nuclear war or bioterrorism, and adapt to resource constraints, That's a massive if.
  - api 4y ago
    It always was.
euroderf 4y ago
> We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. Seemingly, the key enemies of fundamental human freedom are wheat and... cats.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Funnily enough the cat domestication process happened because of the wheat domestication process. We domesticated them to keep rodents away from our wheat storage. So the wheat domesticated both us... and the cats.
  - euroderf 4y ago
    And we let grains domesticate us because... beer. Alcohol domesticated the grains domesticated the cats & people. And BTW the cats also domesticated the people.

foxhop 4y ago

it was used as a tool to grow weak unfree men to work that way for a lord or king. Freeman still existed outside of the sick bodies throughout the millenia. there were powerful men controlling the wheat & peseants growing & eating it.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Overall health and life quality declines with the introduction of agriculture. Disease run rampant. Teeth rot. Social inequality and group violence increases. ... But population growth explodes because of the reliable supply of food and the ability to be settled in one place and also the ability to wean babies sooner for the above reasons. It turns out people will trade many valuable things -- including freedom and their own health -- in exchange for food security and stability and the knowledge that they don't die this winter because the neighbouring tribe overhunted all the deer and the fish didn't spawn this year.

api 4y ago

From a Darwinian perspective though agriculture vastly increased the population of humans. So as far as nature's inbuilt goal functions goes, it was an enormous win. Natural evolution doesn't optimize for hedonic well being. It optimizes for survival and growth. It's also possible that if we manage to cope with things like climate change, avoid self-inflicted disasters like nuclear war or bioterrorism, and adapt to resource constraints, we'll eventually end up on the other end of the post-industrial transition better off than we started ~15,000 years ago. If it does turn out that way it makes the whole period of agricultural and early industrial toil look like a kind of "fitness valley," a decline between two local maxima. In any case I don't think there's any going back. We have long ago passed the point at which reversion to a hunter-gatherer condition is politically, economically, and socially feasible. By the time large scale agricultural societies had standing armies it was pretty unlikely. I've long believed that we conclusively passed the point of no return at exactly 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_%28nuclear_test%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_%28nuclear_test%29 That's also where I plant the stake as the beginning of the Anthropocene epoch.

mcv 4y ago
Do you want quality of life or quantity of life? But you're right; we can't go back. We'd have to get rid of at least 90% of the population to be able to feed people without agriculture. The best step forward is to automate all the hard work and make sure we divide the benefits equally.
bionsystem 4y ago
> It's also possible that if we manage to cope with things like climate change, avoid self-inflicted disasters like nuclear war or bioterrorism, and adapt to resource constraints, That's a massive if.
- api 4y ago
  It always was.

euroderf 4y ago

> We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. Seemingly, the key enemies of fundamental human freedom are wheat and... cats.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Funnily enough the cat domestication process happened because of the wheat domestication process. We domesticated them to keep rodents away from our wheat storage. So the wheat domesticated both us... and the cats.
- euroderf 4y ago
  And we let grains domesticate us because... beer. Alcohol domesticated the grains domesticated the cats & people. And BTW the cats also domesticated the people.