IP Blog

Throughout all progress made in humankind over the past 30,000 years, adopting agriculture is the most direct and aggressive step to becoming the modern society that we are today. “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race” by Jared Diamond, suggests that the adoption of agriculture by hunter-gatherer tribes was, in fact, the worst mistake in the history of the human race. The moment hunter-gatherers chose to farm, they received a life of lower nutrition, infectious diseases, social inequality, and increased warfare than they previously possessed. The reverberations of that choice reach to every corner of the society we live in today. By accepting the agricultural revolution, have humans compromised what could be a better existence as a hunter-gatherer? Despite the problems created by farming, what benefits has the human race acquired because of agriculture?

Scientists suggest that humans turned to agriculture when their tribal population became too unmanageable to feed. Farming created more calories (with lower nutritional value) per person, for less work than used to forage. Growing populations led to city-states, where a visibly stratified social order developed. Men worked in the fields, and women created children to work in the fields. Dominant city-states overpowered the weaker ones. Those early farmers possessed the problems that humans are still combating today- starvation, inequality, and warfare. In spite of those problems, humans benefited from agriculture in the long arc of time.

With farms, hunter-gatherers could acquire somewhat control over their lives. Rather than moving nomadically and living at the whims of nature, farming allowed humans to settle down and pursue opportunities other than subsistence. Surplus food allowed for humans pursue occupations other than farmers, like artists, philosophers, scientists, and inventors. With new technology invented and new ideas thought, life as farmer because easier and more luxurious. Scientists found medicines to cure disease, and armies were made to dominate other places. The population growth that ensued within societies after the adoption of agriculture guaranteed the growth of industry, because non-farmers needed to purchase goods to survive. Early farmers paved the road for the way any modern society today functions.

If I could go back in time, to the instant when the first tribe had to choose between limiting population or farming, I would have made the same choice: to farm. If humans had gone down that second path, of limiting population, very little progress would have been made. Humans would have stayed on the communal path of nomadic movement, living off of the land like primitive beings. Who has time to read or write if life is solely about surviving until the next day? No advancements in science, art, literature, or any kind of knowledge would have been made. Would life be better as a hunter-gatherer? Perhaps, if one wants to live life concerned only with daily survival. However, I would much rather live in today’s modern society, where I reside in my air conditioned home, eat food bought at a store, attend school to acquire knowledge, and where I can even publish my midterm papers on the internet. By choosing agriculture, humans have ensured a life much better for themselves.