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Was agriculture the greatest blunder in human history?
Darren Curnoe, Author provided
Twelve thousand years ago everybody lived as hunters and gatherers. But by 5,000 years ago most people lived as farmers.
This brief period marked the biggest shift ever in human history with unparalleled changes in diet, culture and technology, as well as social, economic and political organisation, and even the patterns of disease people suffered.
While there were upsides and downsides to the invention of agriculture, was it the greatest blunder in human history? Three decades ago Jarred Diamond thought so, but was he right?
Agriculture developed worldwide within a single and narrow window of time: between about 12,000 and 5,000 years ago. But as it happens it wasn’t invented just once but actually originated at least seven times, and perhaps 11 times, and quite independently, as far as we know.
Farming was invented in places like the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, the Yangzi and Yellow River Basins of China, the New Guinea highlands, in the Eastern USA, Central Mexico and South America, and in sub-Saharan Africa.
And while its impacts were tremendous for people living in places like the Middle East or China, its impacts would have been very different for the early farmers of New Guinea.
The reasons why people took up farming in the first place remain elusive, but dramatic changes in the planet’s climate during the last Ice Age — from around 20,000 years ago until 11,600 years ago — seem to have played a major role in its beginnings.
The invention of agriculture thousands of years ago led to the domestication of today’s major food crops like wheat, rice, barley, millet and maize, legumes like lentils and beans, sweet potato and taro, and animals like sheep, cattle, goats, pigs, alpacas and chickens.
It also dramatically increased the human carrying capacity of the planet. But in the process the environment was dramatically transformed. What started as modest clearings gave way to fields, with forests felled and vast tracts of land turned over to growing crops and raising animals.
In most places the health of early farmers was much poorer than their hunter-gatherer ancestors because of the narrower range of foods they consumed alongside of widespread dietary deficiencies.
At archaeological sites like Abu Hereyra in Syria, for example, the changes in diet accompanying the move away from hunting and gathering are clearly recorded. The diet of Abu Hereyra’s occupants dropped from more than 150 wild plants consumed as hunter-gatherers to just a handful of crops as farmers.
In the Americas, where maize was domesticated and heavily relied upon as a staple crop, iron absorption was consequently low and dramatically increased the incidence of anaemia. While a rice based diet, the main staple of early farmers in southern China, was deficient in protein and inhibited vitamin A absorption.
There was a sudden increase in the number of human settlements signalling a marked shift in population. While maternal and infant mortality increased, female fertility rose with farming, the fuel in the engine of population growth.
The planet had supported roughly 8 million people when we were only hunter-gatherers. But the population exploded with the invention of agriculture climbing to 100 million people by 5,000 years ago, and reaching 7 billion people today.
People began to build settlements covering more than ten hectares – the size of ten rugby fields – which were permanently occupied. Early towns housed up to ten thousand people within rectangular stone houses with doors on their roofs at archaeological sites like Çatalhöyük in Turkey.
By way of comparison, traditional hunting and gathering communities were small, perhaps up to 50 or 60 people.
Crowded conditions in these new settlements, human waste, animal handling and pest species attracted to them led to increased illness and the rapid spread of infectious disease.
Today, around 75% of infectious diseases suffered by humans are zoonoses, ones obtained from or more often shared with domestic animals. Some common examples include influenza, the common cold, various parasites like tapeworms and highly infectious diseases that decimated millions of people in the past such as bubonic plague, tuberculosis, typhoid and measles.
In response, natural selection dramatically sculpted the genome of these early farmers. The genes for immunity are over-represented in terms of the evidence for natural selection and most of the changes can be timed to the adoption of farming. And geneticists suggest that 85% of the disease-causing gene variants among contemporary populations arose alongside the rise and spread of agriculture.
In the past, humans could only tolerate lactose during childhood, but with the domestication of dairy cows natural selection provided northern European farmers and pastoralist populations in Africa and West Asia the lactase gene. It’s almost completely absent elsewhere in the world and it allowed adults to tolerate lactose for the first time.
Starch consumption is also feature of agricultural societies and some hunter-gatherers living in arid environments. The amylase genes, which increase people’s ability to digest starch in their diet, were also subject to strong natural selection and increased dramatically in number with the advent of farming.
Another surprising change seen in the skeletons of early farmers is a smaller skull especially the bones of the face. Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers had larger skulls due to their more mobile and active lifestyle including a diet which required much more chewing.
Smaller faces affected oral health because human teeth didn’t reduce proportionately to the smaller jaw, so dental crowding ensued. This led to increased dental disease along with extra cavities from a starchy diet.
Living in densely populated villages and towns created for the first time in human history private living spaces where people no longer shared their food or possessions with their community.
These changes dramatically shaped people’s attitudes to material goods and wealth. Prestige items became highly sought after as hallmarks of power. And with larger populations came growing social and economic complexity and inequality and, naturally, increasing warfare.
Inequalities of wealth and status cemented the rise of hierarchical societies — first chiefdoms then hereditary lineages which ruled over the rapidly growing human settlements.
Eventually they expanded to form large cities, and then empires, with vast areas of land taken by force with armies under the control of emperors or kings and queens.
This inherited power was the foundation of the ‘great’ civilisations that developed across the ancient world and into the modern era with its colonial legacies that are still very much with us today.
No doubt the bad well and truly outweighs all the good that came from the invention of farming all those millenia ago. Jarred Diamond was right, the invention of agriculture was without doubt the biggest blunder in human history. But we’re stuck with it, and with so many mouths to feed today we have to make it work better than ever. For the future of humankind and the planet.
Darren Curnoe, Associate Professor and Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, University of New South Wales, UNSW
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Article: The Tsar Bomba (Big Ivan)
The link below is to an article that takes a look at the Soviet Union’s ‘Big Ivan,’ the greatest atomic weapon ever made and exploded.
For more visit:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/07/the-story-of-the-tsar-bomba/
Australia: Phar Lap
The link below is to an article that takes a look at Australia’s greatest race horse – Phar Lap.
For more visit:
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/phar-lap
Article: 10 Greatest Nurses of World War I
The link below is to an article that looks at ten of the greatest nurses who served in World War 1.
For more visit:
http://www.toprntobsn.com/greatest-nurses-of-world-war-i/
Article: George Washington Britain’s Greatest Foe
The link below is to an article reporting on a survey that identified George Washington as England’s greatest foe.
For more, visit:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9204961/George-Washington-named-Britains-greatest-ever-foe.html
Today in History: 20 March 1760
USA: A ‘Great Fire’ of Boston
On this day in 1760, the greatest fire up to that time (in Boston) destroyed a large area of Boston in the United States. Some 349 buildings, including homes and shops were destroyed, and over 1000 people rendered homeless. Though a great tragedy for Boston, this great city suffered from many like disasters, as can be seen in the article linked to below.
For more, visit:
http://massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=86
http://www.kellscraft.com/GreatFireOfBoston/GreatFireofBostonCh02.html
http://www.archive.org/details/godshandproviden00mayh
For an account of the Great Fire of Boston in 1872 (November 9 10), visit:
http://www.archive.org/details/historyofgreatfi00conw
http://www.kellscraft.com/GreatFireOfBoston/GreatFireofBostonContentPage.html
Today in History – 10 May 1863
American Civil War: Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson Died
On this day in 1863, Confederate General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson died from wounds sustained from friendly fire during the American Civil War. Following a magnificent victory at Chancellorsville on the 2nd May 1863, Jackson was making his way back to his own lines when he was accidently shot by Confederate pickets who mistook him and his staff for Union troops.
Having been returned to Confedrate lines, Jackson survived the amputation of an arm only to die of pneumonia on the 10th May 1863. It was a loss the south could ill afford. He was one of the greatest generals of the war.
Today in History – 21 April 1509
King Henry VIII: Begins His Reign in England
Henry VIII was born Henry Tudor, to Henry VII (King of England) and Elizabeth of York on the 28th June 1491. His reign began on this day in 1509 and continued until his death on the 28th January 1547. He succeeded his father, Henry VII as King of England, Lord of Ireland and claimant to the throne of France. his reign lasted over 37 years and was perhaps one of the greatest (certainly one of the most powerful) kings in English history – not that this necessarily made him a great man.
Henry VIII is well known for his six wives and what became of them. He is also known for the part he played in the English Reformation. His split with the Roman Catholic Church saw the advance of Protestantism and the Reformation in England, though he remained theologically ‘Roman Catholic.’
For more on Henry VIII and the Tudor Dynasty, visit:
http://www.tudorhistory.org/
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