Was the Agricultural Revolution a good thing?
History's Biggest Fraud (Ch.5)
Was the Agricultural Revolution a good thing?
For me and you, absolutely. Without it, we wouldn’t have houses, beds or even Fortnite! A true nightmare. But for the thousands of years in which people died increasingly of disease, famine, and violence… probably not.
From a biological standpoint, it was a clear step forward. The way that’s measured is by DNA helices, AKA population of the species. Anything that makes more humans is considered a victory. But it’s not always an individual victory.
Agricultural humans had immense amounts of work to do to live. With increased food supplies, humans had more babies. With more mouths to feed, people needed more food. To make more food, they needed more people working.
Then they needed to be more efficient by getting rid of any stones and start taking care of the soil. Then they needed to protect against animals eating their crops. Finally, after all that, they needed to protect themselves from other humans who might come and steal their wheat. Suddenly, there’s a massive amount of work to be done just to barely survive.
Beyond that, our diet changed from omnivorous and varied to hyper-centered on a single crop. The Chinese diet became rice for breakfast, rice for lunch and rice for dinner. The middle-eastern diet became entirely wheat-based. We saw similar changes across the globe. This dramatically increased the number of childhood deaths, with estimates at about 1 in 3 people dying before age 20.
We traded being small nomadic tribes working just a few hours a day, eating varied diets, and surviving famines for being bigger tribes, working most hours everyday, eating only one thing and being fatally vulnerable to famines.
But eventually it led to the 21st century. So was the Agricultural Revolution a good thing? Maybe.
Why did we become Agriculturists if it sounds so terrible?
It didn’t happen all at once. It took generations slowly relying more and more heavily on single crops. By the time all the problems of agriculture became clear, it was too late to turn back.
The population was too large for hunting and gathering
Generations passed and humans weren’t skilled or knowledgeable enough to rely on hunting and gathering
Each generation added another step for a better future. One person started removing stones from the crop. Another started using a hoe to bury the seeds deeper. This continued until we created armies, taxes and class systems. Each individual step made sense. It was all the steps put together that started problems.
We do this ourselves today. How many times do people sacrifice their present happiness for the future only to get to the future and have a new sacrifice? It’s not the individual sacrifice that’s the problem. It’s the accumulation of them all that leads to a life with no time to enjoy it.
We learn here about the importance of “2nd Order Thinking”. Oftentimes, when we consider decisions, we think of how the decision will affect different parts of our life. What we don’t do enough is the next step. We need to ask “and then what?”
Question of The Day
If you decide to do that thing you’ve been thinking about, what’ll happen? What’ll happen after that?
Your Biggest Fan,
Noah “BigNerd” Sochaczevski