The Worst Mistake
in the History of
the Human Race.
-oplopanax publishing- Jared Diamond
us, and it’s unclear whether we can solve it. Suppose that an
archaeologist who had visited from outer space were trying to
explain human history to his fellow spacelings. He might illus-
trate the results of his digs by a 24-hour clock on which one hour
represents 100,000 years of real past time. If the history of the
human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at
the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly Originally published in Discover Magazine, May 1987
the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and
sunset. Finally, at 11:54 pm we adopted agriculture. As our
second midnight approaches, will the plight of famine-stricken
T
peasants gradually spread to engulf us all? Or will we somehow o science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-im-
achieve those seductive blessings that we imagine behind agri- age. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn’t the center of
culture’s glittering facade, and that have so far eluded us? the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies.
From biology we learned that we weren’t specially created
by God but evolved along with millions of other species. Now
archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human
history over the past million years has been a long tale of prog-
ress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption
of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better
life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never
recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual
inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.
At first, the evidence against this revisionist interpre-
Further reading tation will strike twentieth century Americans as irrefutable.
We’re better off in almost every respect than people of the Middle
Origins of the 1%: the Bronze Age by John Zerzan Ages, who in turn had it easier than cavemen, who in turn were
Coming Home to the Pleistocene by Paul Shepard better off than apes. Just count our advantages. We enjoy the
Woman the Hunter by Mary Zeiss Stange most abundant and varied foods, the best tools and material
Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram goods, some of the longest and healthiest lives, in history. Most
Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization of us are safe from starvation and predators. We get our energy
by Richard Manning from oil and machines, not from our sweat. What neo-Luddite
among us would trade his life for that of a medieval peasant, a
The Primitivist Critique of Civilization by Richard
caveman, or an ape?
Heinberg
For most of our history we supported ourselves by hunt-
ing and gathering: we hunted wild animals and foraged for wild
plants. It’s a life that philosophers have traditionally regarded
as nasty, brutish, and short. Since no food is grown and little is
stored, there is (in this view) no respite from the struggle that
starts anew each day to find wild foods and avoid starving. Our
escape from this misery was facilitated only 10,000 years ago,
when in different parts of the world people began to domesticate
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plants and animals. The agricultural revolution spread until Thus with the advent of agriculture and elite became
today it’s nearly universal and few tribes of hunter-gatherers better off, but most people became worse off. Instead of swal-
survive. lowing the progressivist party line that we chose agriculture
From the progressivist perspective on which I was because it was good for us, we must ask how we got trapped by
brought up, to ask “Why did almost all our hunter-gatherer it despite its pitfalls.
ancestors adopt agriculture?” is silly. Of course they adopted it One answer boils down to the adage “Might makes right.”
because agriculture is an efficient way to get more food for less Farming could support many more people than hunting, albeit
work. Planted crops yield far more tons per acre than roots and with a poorer quality of life. (Population densities of hunter-
berries. Just imagine a band of savages, exhausted from search- gatherers are rarely over on person per ten square miles, while
ing for nuts or chasing wild animals, suddenly grazing for the farmers average 100 times that.) Partly, this is because a field
first time at a fruit-laden orchard or a pasture full of sheep. How planted entirely in edible crops lets one feed far more mouths
many milliseconds do you think it would take them to appreciate than a forest with scattered edible plants. Partly, too, it’s because
the advantages of agriculture? nomadic hunter-gatherers have to keep their children spaced
The progressivist party line sometimes even goes so far at four-year intervals by infanticide and other means, since a
as to credit agriculture with the remarkable flowering of art that mother must carry her toddler until it’s old enough to keep up
has taken place over the past few thousand years. Since crops with the adults. Because farm women don’t have that burden,
can be stored, and since it takes less time to pick food from a they can and often do bear a child every two years.
garden than to find it in the wild, agriculture gave us free time As population densities of hunter-gatherers slowly rose
that hunter-gatherers never had. Thus it was agriculture that at the end of the ice ages, bands had to choose between feeding
enabled us to build the Parthenon and compose the B-minor more mouths by taking the first steps toward agriculture, or else
Mass. finding ways to limit growth. Some bands chose the former solu-
While the case for the progressivist view seems over- tion, unable to anticipate the evils of farming, and seduced by
whelming, it’s hard to prove. How do you show that the lives of the transient abundance they enjoyed until population growth
people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting caught up with increased food production. Such bands outbred
and gathering for farming? Until recently, archaeologists had and then drove off or killed the bands that chose to remain
to resort to indirect tests, whose results (surprisingly) failed to hunter-gatherers, because a hundred malnourished farmers can
support the progressivist view. Here’s one example of an indi- still outfight one healthy hunter. It’s not that hunter-gatherers
rect test: Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse abandoned their life style, but that those sensible enough not to
off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen abandon it were forced out of all areas except the ones farmers
groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalahari bushmen, didn’t want.
continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these At this point it’s instructive to recall the common com-
people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work plaint that archaeology is a luxury, concerned with the remote
less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the aver- past, and offering no lessons for the present. Archaeologists
age time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 studying the rise of farming have reconstructed a crucial stage
hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza at which we made the worst mistake in human history. Forced
nomads of Tanzania. One Bushman, when asked why he hadn’t to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food
emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation,
“Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the warfare, and tyranny.
world?” Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and lon-
While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops gest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we’re still
like rice and potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled
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Similar contrasts in nutrition and health persist on a diets of surviving hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a
global scale today. To people in rich countries like the US, it bettter balance of other nutrients. In one study, the Bushmen’s
sounds ridiculous to extol the virtues of hunting and gathering. average daily food intake (during a month when food was plen-
But Americans are an elite, dependent on oil and minerals that tiful) was 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein, considerably
must often be imported from countries with poorer health and greater than the recommended daily allowance for people of
nutrition. If one could choose between being a peasant farmer in their size. It’s almost inconceivable that Bushmen, who eat 75 or
Ethiopia or a bushman gatherer in the Kalahari, which do you so wild plants, could die of starvation the way hundreds of thou-
think would be the better choice? sands of Irish farmers and their families did during the potato
Farming may have encouraged inequality between the famine of the 1840s.
sexes, as well. Freed from the need to transport their babies So the lives of at least the surviving hunter-gatherers
during a nomadic existence, and under pressure to produce more aren’t nasty and brutish, even though farmes have pushed them
hands to till the fields, farming women tended to have more into some of the world’s worst real estate. But modern hunter-
frequent pregnancies than their hunter-gatherer counterparts gatherer societies that have rubbed shoulders with farming soci-
-- with consequent drains on their health. Among the Chilean eties for thousands of years don’t tell us about conditions before
mummies for example, more women than men had bone lesions the agricultural revolution. The progressivist view is really
from infectious disease. making a claim about the distant past: that the lives of primitive
Women in agricultural societies were sometimes made people improved when they switched from gathering to farming.
beasts of burden. In New Guinea farming communities today I Archaeologists can date that switch by distinguishing remains
often see women staggering under loads of vegetables and fire- of wild plants and animals from those of domesticated ones in
wood while the men walk empty-handed. Once while on a field prehistoric garbage dumps.
trip there studying birds, I offered to pay some villagers to carry How can one deduce the health of the prehistoric garbage
supplies from an airstrip to my mountain camp. The heaviest makers, and thereby directly test the progressivist view? That
item was a 110-pound bag of rice, which I lashed to a pole and question has become answerable only in recent years, in part
assigned to a team of four men to shoulder together. When I through the newly emerging techniques of paleopathology, the
eventually caught up with the villagers, the men were carrying study of signs of disease in the remains of ancient peoples.
light loads, while one small woman weighing less than the bag In some lucky situations, the paleopathologist has almost
of rice was bent under it, supporting its weight by a cord across as much material to study as a pathologist today. For example,
her temples. archaeologists in the Chilean deserts found well preserved mum-
As for the claim that agriculture encouraged the flow- mies whose medical conditions at time of death could be deter-
ering of art by providing us with leisure time, modern hunter- mined by autopsy (Discover, October). And feces of long-dead
gatherers have at least as much free time as do farmers. The Indians who lived in dry caves in Nevada remain sufficiently well
whole emphasis on leisure time as a critical factor seems to me preserved to be examined for hookworm and other parasites.
misguided. Gorillas have had ample free time to build their own Usually the only human remains available for study are
Parthenon, had they wanted to. While post-agricultural techno- skeletons, but they permit a surprising number of deductions. To
logical advances did make new art forms possible and preserva- begin with, a skeleton reveals its owner’s sex, weight, and approx-
tion of art easier, great paintings and sculptures were already imate age. In the few cases where there are many skeletons, one
being produced by hunter-gatherers 15,000 years ago, and were can construct mortality tables like the ones life insurance com-
still being produced as recently as the last century by such hunt- panies use to calculate expected life span and risk of death at
er-gatherers as some Eskimos and the Indians of the Pacific any given age. Paleopathologists can also calculate growth rates
Northwest. by measuring bones of people of different ages, examine teeth for
enamel defects (signs of childhood malnutrition), and recognize
6 3
scars left on bones by anemia, tuberculosis, leprosy, and other of the seminal books in the field, Paleopathology at the Origins
diseases. of Agriculture. “When I first started making that argument ten
One straight forward example of what paleopatholo- years ago, not many people agreed with me. Now it’s become a
gists have learned from skeletons concerns historical changes in respectable, albeit controversial, side of the debate.”
height. Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the aver- There are at least three sets of reasons to explain the
age height of hunger-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages findings that agriculture was bad for health. First, hunter-gath-
was a generous 5’ 9’’ for men, 5’ 5’’ for women. With the adoption erers enjoyed a varied diet, while early fanners obtained most of
of agriculture, height crashed, and by 3000 BC had reached a their food from one or a few starchy crops. The farmers gained
low of only 5’ 3’’ for men, 5’ for women. By classical times heights cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition, (today just three
were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and high-carbohydrate plants -- wheat, rice, and corn -- provide the
Turks have still not regained the average height of their distant bulk of the calories consumed by the human species, yet each one
ancestors. is deficient in certain vitamins or amino acids essential to life.)
Another example of paleopathology at work is the study Second, because of dependence on a limited number of crops,
of Indian skeletons from burial mounds in the Illinois and Ohio farmers ran the risk of starvation if one crop failed. Finally, the
river valleys. At Dickson Mounds, located near the confluence mere fact that agriculture encouraged people to clump together
of the Spoon and Illinois rivers, archaeologists have excavated in crowded societies, many of which then carried on trade with
some 800 skeletons that paint a picture of the health changes that other crowded societies, led to the spread of parasites and infec-
occurred when a hunter-gatherer culture gave way to intensive tious disease. (Some archaeologists think it was the crowding,
rather than agriculture, that promoted disease, but this is a
maize farming around AD 1150. Studies by George Armelagos
chicken-and-egg argument, because crowding encourages agri-
and his colleagues then at the University of Massachusetts
culture and vice versa.) Epidemics couldn’t take hold when pop-
show these early farmers paid a price for their new-found live-
ulations were scattered in small bands that constantly shifted
lihood. Compared to the hunter-gatherers who preceded them,
camp. Tuberculosis and diarrheal disease had to await the rise
the farmers had a nearly 50 per cent increase in enamel defects
of farming, measles and bubonic plague the appearnce of large
indicative of malnutrition, a fourfold increase in iron-deficiency
cities.
anemia (evidenced by a bone condition called porotic hyperosto-
Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases,
sis), a theefold rise in bone lesions reflecting infectious disease in
farming helped bring another curse upon humanity: deep class
general, and an increase in degenerative conditions of the spine,
divisions. Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and
probably reflecting a lot of hard physical labor. “Life expectancy
no concentrated food sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows:
at birth in the pre-agricultural community was bout twenty-six
they live off the wild plants and animals they obtain each day.
years,” says Armelagos, “but in the post-agricultural community
Therefore, there can be no kings, no class of social parasites who
it was nineteen years. So these episodes of nutritional stress
grow fat on food seized from others. Only in a farming popu-
and infectious disease were seriously affecting their ability to
lation could a healthy, non-producing elite set itself above the
survive.”
disease-ridden masses. Skeletons from Greek tombs at Mycenae
The evidence suggests that the Indians at Dickson
c. 1500 BC suggest that royals enjoyed a better diet than com-
Mounds, like many other primitive peoples, took up farming not
moners, since the royal skeletons were two or three inches taller
by choice but from necessity in order to feed their constantly
and had better teeth (on the average, one instead of six cavities
growing numbers. “I don’t think most hunger-gatherers farmed
until they had to, and when they switched to farming they traded or missing teeth). Among Chilean mummies from c. AD 1000,
quality for quantity,” says Mark Cohen of the State University the elite were distinguished not only by ornaments and gold hair
of New York at Plattsburgh, co-editor with Armelagos, of one clips but also by a fourfold lower rate of bone lesions caused by
disease.
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