> Agriculture is a bad deal compared to hunting and gathering. Early agricultural societies had worse health and had harder lives than contemporary hunter gatherers.

I keep hearing this, and it's probably true in some sense.

But agriculture is also an incredibly good deal, in that it now supports 7000 million human lives. H&G only reached about 50 million.

So it becomes a philosophical question: Is it better to have a few happy people alive or a huge population of less happy ones?

I'm reminded of the old "explorer's fallacy", where you encounter a tribe in the jungle and marvel at how healthy everyone is. Not realizing that the sick and infirm aren't allowed to live there.

I don't know if it's a question of happiness, but instead it was probably one of necessity. H-G numbers were kept in check by available resources randomly dispersed in nature. Agriculture gave man the ability to manifest abundance without necessarily depending on nature to provide.

I think there are many studies on the overall health of hunter-gatherers as a result of diet and exercise and leisure time as demanded by the lifestyle. In early agricultural societies you have to work harder and longer and you're forced to eat a lot of bread, potatoes and corn and other low quality foods.

Of course, you can only study the diets of the living.

> H-G numbers were kept in check by available resources randomly dispersed in nature.

But... doesn't "numbers were kept in check" mean "surplus people starved to death"?

Yes, but that tended to happen in linear fashion. Whereas, after agriculture, growth could occur exponentially and then when a major multi-year drought would hit, you'd have huge devastating loss of life. The deaths of some H-G humans is not much different than the limits of growth modern predators hit today. Hunter-gatherer humans could also keep their numbers in check by breastfeeding longer (sometimes until their children were as old as 5), since breastfeeding delays ovulation. Agricultural societies, meanwhile, developed lactose tolerance for cow's milk, and could use that as a supplement for child nutrition. And women would spend more of their time on the work necessary to run a farm or home, which is more labor intensive than what nomadic H-G tribes did.

> doesn't "numbers were kept in check" mean "surplus people starved

Not so obviously. Would you argue this for (say) lions or eagles? Few adults starve, when times are lean there is less breeding, and fewer kids who survive, compared to times of plenty.

Whereas the collapse of an early agricultural society (perhaps due to pests, or just no rain) probably did result in lots of adults starving, if there were more of them than could be supported on gathered food.

> true in some sense.

In the sense that the diets & health of ordinary people were much worse under early agriculture. This appears to have been true for a long time, maybe until a few centuries ago.

People ran away if they could. Early agricultural societies seem more and more like attempts by warlords to enslave both animals and humans for their benefit. Capturing livestock & farmers seems to have been the main goal of warfare.

> also an incredibly good deal, in that it now supports 7000 million human lives

Sure, 21st century life is (for almost all of us) much better. It's not so clear that 19th C life was so (except for a few highly-developed places).

Nor is it clear how great 22nd century life will be.

Origin of the meme, I'm pretty sure: "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" Jared Diamond, 1987

http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/THOC/Readings/Diamond_Worst...

TL;DR: there are trade-offs.

edit: I forgot to mention, there may be a third way that combines the best of both worlds: "Redesigning Civilization with Permaculture" (video) http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/redesigning-civilization-with... sequel to "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Planet – But Not Civilization" http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/how-permaculture-can-save-hum...

Humans hunted the megafauna to extinction, which is probably why we invented agriculture:

https://theconversation.com/how-the-extinction-of-ice-age-ma...

Basically as the population grew, hunting and gathering became insufficient to feed the population.

Also bone analysis shows that the health effects you mentioned happened probably BEFORE widespread adoption of agriculture, possibly due to malnutrition.

This isn't far-fetched in an environment in which people are starving.

And with the adoption of agriculture it got a little worse before it got better. Height and life expectancy started going up again.

Basically we built better tools, we started diversifying the crops, we learned to cope with the nutritional deficiencies (for example we started eating dairy) and we eventually adapted, like we always do.

More to the point agriculture was risky. It allowed you to settle more people on an area of land than could be supported by pure hunter-gatherer behaviors. But this means if you have crop failure (and there are many reasons why this could happen, like weather, fire, warring hunter-gatherer tribes, blight, pestilence, etc...) then the people will starve. It's really no wonder religion became such a central part of people's lives, as they attempted to control the many factors in life that were otherwise uncontrollable at their technology level.

And of course without agriculture it's very hard to form a lasting society. People move around too much. Without society it's very hard to keep clever inventions from dying with their creator.

> More to the point agriculture was risky.

Relying on hunting and gathering was also risky: A harsh winter would decimate your prey, and then you would starve.

Which is why hunter-gatherers tried hard not to rely on a single source of food. The places which supported the highest densities of them, like river deltas, were places with many different ecosystems in close proximity.

I guess it's hard to have numbers, but early attempts at agricultural states (often in these same locations) seem much more fragile. Most collapsed within a few generations, to disease of humans or crops, or to weather, we can't know.

> Which is why hunter-gatherers tried hard not to rely on a single source of food.

Neither did early agriculturists.

> early attempts at agricultural states (often in these same locations) seem much more fragile

That's because there are no hunter-gatherer states. Hunter-gatherer cultures are much too fragile to support the societal structures needed for even primitive states.

Of course. Although I'd say it differently: pre-state people probably practiced some amount of farming, and niche-creation. But what we call a primitive state is precisely the superstructure needed to gather lots of them and make them farm for your benefit.

And to make sure it worked to your benefit (as the king) it was important that they farmed a limited number of things which were easy to keep track of, and easy to transport, and hence easy to tax. Like wheat or barley or rice, which you can inspect any time, and which ripens on a predictable date, on which your soldiers can show up to collect the rent. (And unlike potatoes.)

You appear to be alluding to James Scott’s "Against The Grain". I do not agree with the hypothesis of that book, for reasons I'm too lazy to write down here. Sorry :-(

If you have links to well-informed disagreements with that, I'd be interested to read them.

All I can offer you is the comments section of Scott Alexander's book review:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/14/book-review-against-th...

The comments there are generally of high quality, and you'll find some good counterpoints to the book's claims.

The good thing about being a hunter-gatherer is you don't have roots. If the local food sources are depleted you simply move on to someplace better. Agriculture roots you to the land, especially if you had to clear the land to make room for your plants and animals. Moving becomes expensive, which makes you more vulnerable to local disruptions to the environment.

> If the local food sources are depleted you simply move on to someplace better.

Counterpoint: "someplace better" might already be occupied by other humans. Besides, a harsh winter is not a local phenomenon, it affects entire regions. Good luck getting to "someplace better" if you're starving, don't have any transportation besides your feet, and don't even know where "someplace better" even is.

Then you just kill the humans in the better place and take their stuff.

What's your point? My point was that hunting & gathering is not less risky than agriculture. Your comment would support that statement.