25. Worst Mistake in History of Human Race PDF

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Dr. Ford...

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Worst Mistake in History of Human Race Progress?  Archeology is demolishing sacred belief: o That human history over the past million yeas has been a long tale of progress  In particular, recent discoveries suggest that o The adoption of ag o Supposedly, our most decisive step toward a better life o Was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered  With ag came the gross social and sexual inequality  The disease and despotism  That curse our existence Progressivist view  Hunters and gatherers have a nasty, brutish life  Constant struggle to survive  Our escape from this was facilitated 10,000 years ago o In the ag revolution  Why did hunter-gatherers adopt ag?  Because it is an efficient way to get more food for less work  Ag gave us free time to build the glories of civilization th 20 century hunters/gatherers  Can the progressivist view be proved?  When we adopted farming  Today the few indigenous hunters and gatherers have more free time than their farmer neighbors  The diet of hunters and gatherers is more varied than farmers eating high carb diets Adoption of agriculture  The health of human populations deduced from skeletal remains  Turkey and Greece: With the adoption of ag o Height dropped from 5’9-5’3 for males o Still hadn’t recovered  When farmers adopted maize ag o Was 50% increase in enamel defects indicative of malnutrition o 3x increase in bone lesions reflecting infectious disease in general o An increase in degenerative conditions of the spine, reflecting a lot of hard physical labor o Life expectancy dropped from 26 to 19 years Why adopt ag?  Perhaps not by choice but from necessity to feed constantly growing numbers  Three problems with ag: o Hunters/gatherers had varied diet o Farmers ran the risk of starvation if crop failed o Crowding and high populations led to infectious disease and parasites

Class divisions  Ag led to deep class divisions  Hunters and gatherers can have no kings o No special class of parasites who grow fat on food seized from others  Elites got the best food and were the healthiest  Similar contrasts in nutrition and health persist on a global scale today Better to be a bushman?  Americans are an elite  If one could choose between o Being a peasant farmer in Ethiopia o Or a bushman gatherer in the Kalahari o Which do you think would be the best choice? Inequality between the sexes  Farming may have encouraged inequality between the sexes  Since women did not have to transport babies in nomadic existence o Farming women had more babies than hunting-gathering o And thus poorer health  Women in ag societies are sometimes made into beasts of burden o Women working while men do little Most people worse of  With ag, the elite became better of o But most people became worse of  How did we get trapped into this?  Farming can support more people than hunting o But with a poorer quality of life Population density  Populations rose among farmers and so did population densities  Hunter gatherers need low population density: One person per 10 sp. Miles  Farmers average 100 times that density Population and conquest  As population densities rose, bands had to choose between feeding more mouths via ag or else finding ways to limit growth  If farming was chosen, such bands outbred and then drove of or killed the bands that chose to remain hunter-gatherers Most successful lifestyle in history  Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting lifestyle in human history Humans are hunter-gatherers  Evolutionary view o Humans evolved for 1 million years as hunter-gatherers o Gene pool has not evolved in last 10,000 years of ag o Therefore humans are genetically hunter-gatherers  Creation view

o God created humans as hunter gatherers o God provides for human life like other animals o Humans wished to control their life, become godlike  Garden of Eden o Adopted ag, civilization o Separated from nature  Saw God as promoting ag and way o By historical times  They forgot they were hunters and gatherers...