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People moved from a hunter gatherer society to an agrarian society because the latter was easier.

euroderf 11mo ago
And also beer became possible.
UltraSane 11mo ago
Initially but the excess food allowed population to increase and the only way to feed them was to keep farming. So in a way humans trapped themselves.
- LanceH 11mo ago
  The population increased because half of it wasn't dying off immediately. You have to include the half that dies off early in the calculations of QoL for hunter/gatherers.
- rhubarbtree 11mo ago
  “Trapped” in a life that meant women didn’t have to regularly murder their children. Such nonsense the idea that farming was a trap. I think it was Sapiens that propagated this myth in recent times.
  - strudey 11mo ago
    I think there’s a version of the Malthusian trap that has explanatory merit - the idea that as population increased, you got diminishing returns from more people farming the same land. Population would therefore increase until famine, after which there would be good times until the cycle repeated. This cycle was broken by the industrial revolution.
    - kzrdude 11mo ago
      Isn't this the same "trap" that any living life "falls into"? It gets many offspring, and only those survive who can feed themselves. Exponential growth fills up the niche until there are no more resources: any successful species is trapped against some kind of resource or environmental ceiling, unfortunately. Is there a ceiling in the industrial revolution era? Famously the 1972 book Limits to Growth says yes for that question.
      - UltraSane 11mo ago
        Humans should be able to act smarter than bacteria.
- andsoitis 11mo ago
  > So in a way humans trapped themselves. It is actually the plants (barley, grain, grapes, millet, potatoes, taro, maize, rice, sorghum, manioc) that tricked the humans into cultivating (reproduce) them/
bandrami 11mo ago
Not easier, lower-risk. Agriculture produced a standard of living with a lower mean but a much thinner left tail.
- tor825gl 11mo ago
  This wisdom is preserved for us in the story of Esau and Jacob. Esau was a hunter and Jacob was a farmer. When hunting went badly, Esau's desperation for protein, which Jacob could guarantee a supply of by cultivating lentils, was such that he gave up his whole birthright in exchange for the food. The era in which humans chose whether to continue with a hunter gatherer life or join the new farming communities also seems to have influenced the stories of Adam and Eve ("cursed is the ground because of you; through toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it will yield for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread") and Cain and Abel. Some have also suggested that archaic prohibitions against eating the food of fairies were a taboo designed to warn off young people from leaving farming or herding groups and joining hunter gatherer communities. They would be 'enchanted' by the easy going lifestyle but then end up hungry and sick. The need to spend hours every day working a field, in a season when food was plentiful, in order to prepare for another season 6 or 9 months away, must have been a huge cultural crossroads, possibly a bigger break from our close animal ancestors than tool making, and its influence is still with us. Rules around not eating animals who are needed to supply milk and to reproduce the herd similarly cast a long shadow.
  - decremental 11mo ago
    [dead]
  - truegoric 11mo ago
    That is a very interesting take. Would you mind sharing some sources, preferably academic, that discuss the topic of agrarian/hunter-gatherer relations and its influence on historical stories and myths?
    - andsoitis 11mo ago
andsoitis 11mo ago
> People moved from a hunter gatherer society to an agrarian society because the latter was easier. Agriculture began from a convergence of climate stability, resource abundance, sedentary living, population pressure, and co-evolution with useful plants and animals. Hunting and gathering alone cannot feed everyone. Farming is harder, less healthy, more labor-intensive but yields more calories per acre. As a population grows, farming becomes the least bad option.
kzrdude 11mo ago
It looks more like agrarian society outcompeted hunter gatherer society because the agrarians got more surviving kids. This replacement and assimilation happened in Europe, for example, where it's visible in genetic and linguistic history.
- margalabargala 11mo ago
  Yes, because it was easier, to not have your kids die among other things. Hunter-gathering doesn't scale. What is fine when it's one person, collapses the whole society when it gets too large.

And also beer became possible.

Initially but the excess food allowed population to increase and the only way to feed them was to keep farming. So in a way humans trapped themselves.

LanceH 11mo ago
The population increased because half of it wasn't dying off immediately. You have to include the half that dies off early in the calculations of QoL for hunter/gatherers.
rhubarbtree 11mo ago
“Trapped” in a life that meant women didn’t have to regularly murder their children. Such nonsense the idea that farming was a trap. I think it was Sapiens that propagated this myth in recent times.
- strudey 11mo ago
  I think there’s a version of the Malthusian trap that has explanatory merit - the idea that as population increased, you got diminishing returns from more people farming the same land. Population would therefore increase until famine, after which there would be good times until the cycle repeated. This cycle was broken by the industrial revolution.
  - kzrdude 11mo ago
    Isn't this the same "trap" that any living life "falls into"? It gets many offspring, and only those survive who can feed themselves. Exponential growth fills up the niche until there are no more resources: any successful species is trapped against some kind of resource or environmental ceiling, unfortunately. Is there a ceiling in the industrial revolution era? Famously the 1972 book Limits to Growth says yes for that question.
    - UltraSane 11mo ago
      Humans should be able to act smarter than bacteria.
andsoitis 11mo ago
> So in a way humans trapped themselves. It is actually the plants (barley, grain, grapes, millet, potatoes, taro, maize, rice, sorghum, manioc) that tricked the humans into cultivating (reproduce) them/

bandrami 11mo ago

Not easier, lower-risk. Agriculture produced a standard of living with a lower mean but a much thinner left tail.

tor825gl 11mo ago
This wisdom is preserved for us in the story of Esau and Jacob. Esau was a hunter and Jacob was a farmer. When hunting went badly, Esau's desperation for protein, which Jacob could guarantee a supply of by cultivating lentils, was such that he gave up his whole birthright in exchange for the food. The era in which humans chose whether to continue with a hunter gatherer life or join the new farming communities also seems to have influenced the stories of Adam and Eve ("cursed is the ground because of you; through toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it will yield for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread") and Cain and Abel. Some have also suggested that archaic prohibitions against eating the food of fairies were a taboo designed to warn off young people from leaving farming or herding groups and joining hunter gatherer communities. They would be 'enchanted' by the easy going lifestyle but then end up hungry and sick. The need to spend hours every day working a field, in a season when food was plentiful, in order to prepare for another season 6 or 9 months away, must have been a huge cultural crossroads, possibly a bigger break from our close animal ancestors than tool making, and its influence is still with us. Rules around not eating animals who are needed to supply milk and to reproduce the herd similarly cast a long shadow.
- decremental 11mo ago
  [dead]
- truegoric 11mo ago
  That is a very interesting take. Would you mind sharing some sources, preferably academic, that discuss the topic of agrarian/hunter-gatherer relations and its influence on historical stories and myths?
  - andsoitis 11mo ago

andsoitis 11mo ago

> People moved from a hunter gatherer society to an agrarian society because the latter was easier. Agriculture began from a convergence of climate stability, resource abundance, sedentary living, population pressure, and co-evolution with useful plants and animals. Hunting and gathering alone cannot feed everyone. Farming is harder, less healthy, more labor-intensive but yields more calories per acre. As a population grows, farming becomes the least bad option.

kzrdude 11mo ago

It looks more like agrarian society outcompeted hunter gatherer society because the agrarians got more surviving kids. This replacement and assimilation happened in Europe, for example, where it's visible in genetic and linguistic history.

margalabargala 11mo ago
Yes, because it was easier, to not have your kids die among other things. Hunter-gathering doesn't scale. What is fine when it's one person, collapses the whole society when it gets too large.