Hunting and foraging can be unreliable and definitely is to a modern human. Early humans hunted in packs which made them the most successful predators. They didn't have the stamina of a cheetah or the strength of a lion, but they could withstand the elements and chase and stalk their prey for days until it became exhausted. They could also mount very intricate surprise attacks. Overall, I think there was a heck of a lot of ingenuity that stemmed from the pack nature of these hunts and I think we'd be giving these ancient guys a bad rep if we didn't acknowledge it to some extent.

I think you mean speed of a cheetah? They/we definitely have the cheetah beat on stamina, as you describe.

That is kind of contradicted by the guy in the article, who claims hunter-gatherers kind of had things figured out and were able to get stuff at a steady pace. Although if that's true you have to wonder why most decided to become farmers instead.

I am under the impression it is much less that "most decided" and much more that agricultural based societies were incredibly effective at displacing hunter gatherer societies.

Some combination of much higher birth rates, ecological destruction, and centralized governments among other factors made agricultural societies more successful in the Darwinian sense.

You see this in the history of the Europeans vs Plains Indians. Very few military successes for the Europeans, but ultimately the Europeans displaced the original inhabitants of the Great Plains almost entirely. The Comanches never "chose" to become agricultural. They were forcefully pushed out over generations.

Agriculture was probably not done by choice. It is incredibly time intensive, and early farming societies had severe problems of malnutrition. BUT it led to population explosions, and was good for the elites, and agricultural societies displaced hunter-gatherers as a result. I wouldn't say "most decided" to become farmers though. More like "a few were forced to become farmers, and their descendants out-numbered and out-competed those who did not adapt."

I don't know whether this is a great source on this topic, but Jared Diamond wrote an interesting article which expands on what you pointed out. "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in...

Say what you will about modern life but I am in no hurry to go back to hunting wild animals and foraging. There are factors to consider besides how healthy the average person is (surely a skewed measure given the unlikelihood of your surviving if you are sickly or weak).

That piece also seems to be somewhat unspecific on what exactly "limiting the population" entails; after all, infanticide, a lack of medical care of any kind, and outright murder are no less available to a farming society, if you really are arguing for such a solution to inequality.

Yea, let's bring back that good old-time 15% homicide rate. That'll keep everyone equal.

While agriculture certainly did create social stratification, it's hard to imagine a couple guys in a society of egalitarian hunter-gatherers could force everybody else to go along with a scheme of agriculture. It seems more likely that the elites began to show up after agriculture was established than the other way around.

Yes that is basically what I was saying. It only took one regional climate/ecosystem change to initiate farming, and then one thug to centralize the proceeds of it.

What does that have to do with eating bugs?

I took your post to be claiming that early humans frequently were driven to desperation, and that therefore they must have eaten a lot of insects.

Humans still eat insects today, in some cultures this is even a delicacy.

That's also true, yes.