Were they stupid?

An academic suggests that

only recently has the European standard of living surpassed that of hunter-gatherer societies.

Interesting. That implies an odd choice by all those hunter gatherers, no? Why would they step from a higher to a lower standard?

I believe that writ large, over many decades or centuries, people get the kind of societies they want and choose. So it seems to me that the transformation from hunter-gatherer to farmer must have been voluntary -- people saw advantages. They perceived a higher standard of living; they made a choice or series of choices.

So how can we assume that they were wrong? And that their "standard of living" went down?

Such a perspective certainly conflicts with a capitalist view of the world and is more consistent with the "someone is doing it to me" aqpproach. No, I am not an Ayn Rand simpleton. But I do believe that within some very large bounds humans as a group choose.

Any anyway, even if that view is not in some ultimate manner "true" I think it is a much more useful life outlook than to think that we are merely creatures of the tides of the universe.

Comments

[Chris M.]

Agriculture is great if you're the King, not so if you're the serf. Think about Robin Hood: stealing game from the King's forest (hunting) may have been preferable to the common man, but the King wanted the common man farming his land, and had the power to get his way. Agriculture, especially with irrigation, enables an economic system that produces a surplus, and that surplus can be used by political leaders to finance henchmen, police, militias, etc to use violence to control everybody else.

Farming may have been an idea that was good in the short run (less work than hunting), terrible in the long run (being ruled by the village big man, chief, etc; slavery), and ultimately amazingly good in the last few hundred years.

There's a terrific little book about this whole process called, "How Chiefs Come to Power". There are some surprises in it. For example, with the advent of agriculture in Northern Denmark population density actually went down.

[JRoth]

This has puzzled me for a number of years. It seems quite clear that, by certain significant measures (lifespan, caloric consumption, nutritional intake), farming was a loser of a decision for H-Gs. But I think that there are a number of explanations entirely consonant with that basic story.

1. H-Gs couldn't analyze this. Agriculture must have offered a number of comprehensible advantages, and it would have been hard to judge the disadvantages.

1a. Comprehensible advantages may have included stability - I think it's easy to see ways in which humans to this day value quotidian certainty over high stakes uncertainty. Actually, I can see the New Yorker cartoon (or maybe Far Side) in my head - haggard H-G sees his compatriots mauled by a saber-toothed tiger, and thinks "maybe a nice place in the country, just a few acres with some proto-wheat...."

1b. Another (likely) comprehensible advantage would have been culture. I may be wrong about this, but I would imagine that semi-dedicated agriculture would almost instantly offer the benefits of specialization, etc. It wouldn't take much experience of pottery made by full-time potters, or clothing made by full-time tailors, to value that material improvement.

2. Agriculture benefits societies more than it does individuals. So the farming village is able to outcompete the nearby H-Gs, even though each farmer is doing (a bit) worse than each H-G.

2a. Obviously, you start to get into politics and power here, as well. If that village leader has a couple dozen dedicated warriors at his disposal, he grows far more powerful than any neighbors. Aside from what that does for him (booty, wives, ego), it also makes him a more desirable leader in the eyes of his tribe. And other tribes. So they join him, whether directly or in imitation.

3. Deny the premise of the question: what village life lacks in longevity, it gains in culture. Straight-up superiority, even if the life is shorter. Hell, this is easy to see: do you want 75 years without any products of culture (save, perhaps, bardery), or 50 years with expert-made goods, art, literature, etc.

4. Directionality. It's not clear that H-G to farmer is reversible, maybe not even after just one full generation. Studies of modern H-G societies show staggering levels of detailed, sophisticated environmental knowledge. But how would you retain that after a decade of disuse?

So let's posit the transitional, horticultural H-G tribe - they have some known gathering areas where they've learned to tend the berries for better yield. They realize that, with a bit more attention, yields keep growing. At some point, in a good year (or three), they do better without so much wandering. Soon, the H-G becomes supplementary, thus becoming less all-consuming. H-G knowledge atrophies, replaced by horticultural/agricultural knowledge. A few more years, and H-G can't compete, because they can't do it as well anymore. And, as they fail to find quarry, or are less successful in utilizing it, they think back on that nice, reliable crop. And the words drought, blight, and (animal-borne) disease don't even exist yet....

PS - Actually, I think Jared Diamond says herding preceeds agriculture, not the other way around, but I'm not sure that hurts my argument in any meaningful way.

[Richard Tibbetts]

I've seen a pretty simple explanation for the dominance of agriculture over hunter-gatherers: Population growth. As a hunter-gatherer, you have to carry your babies until they are 4 and can walk on their own. So you have to space kids about 4 years apart. Using agriculture, there is no such limitation, and so you can achieve a spacing of approximately 2 years. Twice as many kids leads to a significant advantage in any kind of conflict, and eventual numerical dominance.

[Andrew Salzberg]

Right. I agree with the comments here. 10 malnourished, unhappy farmers are still going to win a conflict with an able bodied H-G. It doesn't have to be a matter of choice.