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Historians will tell you that in many ways, agriculture was the worst thing that ever happened to humanity. Agriculture meant hard, back-breaking, monotonous la
by d_burfoot 5mo ago
Historians will tell you that in many ways, agriculture was the worst thing that ever happened to humanity. Agriculture meant hard, back-breaking, monotonous labor; it meant pests and disease due to population concentration; it meant a bland diet that did fully meet nutritional requirements; it meant social hierarchies of kings and priests. But societies that did not adopt agriculture were outcompeted and eventually destroyed by those that did.
- UtopiaPunk 5mo agoIshmael is a good read.
- jackbravo 5mo agoWhat is it about?
- UtopiaPunk 5mo agoIt's a fictional dialog that gives an account of history from a different viewpoint, from a society that was destroyed by modern civilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(Quinn_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(Quinn_novel)
- voidmain 5mo agoFollow this reasoning to its conclusion: once humans are no longer part of the most efficient military-industrial "meta build", states that keep them alive will be outcompeted and eventually destroyed by those that do not.
- NoGravitas 5mo agoYep, it's all driven by Moloch, and nothing but.
- bena 5mo agoHistorians. Well, one. Well, he's not a historian. He's a biochemist and physiologist who has studied some anthropology. It's Jared Diamond. That's who says agriculture was the worst thing that ever happened to humanity.
- NoGravitas 5mo agoHe's actually pulling that from about 70 years of anthropology and anthropological archaeology; it wasn't in any way original to him.
- bena 5mo agoWhich is why anthropologists published a book containing a bunch of essays that basically said, "No, this guy is wrong".
- lbrito 5mo agoI don't think that's a very mainstream view amongst historians. I can only name two popsci authors, Jared Diamond and Yuval Harari, that espouse that thought.
- throw4847285 5mo agoOk, but try the same argument with sedentary societies. Those seem "superior" despite all the negative side effects, right? But here comes one of a number of steppe nomad tribes to show up and decimate their "superior" neighbors. The vast diversity of human societies refuses any kind of rigid hierarchy of development. There are many branching paths, and no paradigm wins for long. History is a not a game of Civilization.