Why have we settled while foragers used to be healthier instead?
score:8
Read the book Guns, Germs and Steel from Jared Diamond. He writes in 480 pages what I try to surmise in a few lines.
The trick is quantity over quality. A farmer has an (almost) guaranteed source of calories. Hunter-gatherers have not. The food sources of hunter-gatherers are more varied, and more healthy. But they can't store it long term. Farmers can.
Hunter-gatherers sometimes have a bountiful harvest of berries or a very successful hunt. All they can do is eat until they barf. Perhaps carry a few slaps of meat, or a basket with berries to the next camp, but no more. They couldn't store the meat or the berries for the next couple of months. They could carry it, but if they did, they would have to leave the same weight of utensils behind. A human can only carry so much.
Farmers build storage facilities where they stored their surplus. While waiting for better times, or the next planting season. Hunter-gatherers would suffer starvation.
As the food supply was more bountiful and more regular (at the cost of being less nutritious), farmers could father children every year. Hunter-gatherers could father children only when the youngest had learned to walk - which is about every 2-3 years.
That all gave farmers a real advantage over hunter-gatherers. Their food was of lesser quality, but far more regular and plentiful. Famines did happen, but far less often than it hurts hunter-gatherers.
Upvote:5
Peter Kropotkinβs now outdated but classic Mutual aid: a factor in human evolution discusses goods and population densities versus property forms and hierarchalisation. For the historical materialist historian a society's accumulation of social surplus under anything less than social control (ie: under anything less than direct democratic economics) encourages within society violence. Intrasocial violence produces a society more capable of intersocial violence. Gathering societies have fewer combatants and less developed intersocial violence techniques than husbandry, pastoral or agricultural societies.
English translation: Societies that make more food than they need for bare survival either get more organized to prevent fighting over the excess wealth, or they end up fighting over the excess wealth. The winners in the fights end up being the folks better at fighting. Add in that there are orders of magnitude more of these organized fighting folks than there are gatherers, and when they look your way, its a bad day to be a gatherer.
Upvote:10
Who are "we" in your question? Organization of society is not a result of some collective, democratic decision.
Farming societies are stronger for two reasons: a) they allow a greater population density, and b) farming is connected with stronger organization of society. This permits farming societies to win over hunter gatherers, take their territory, displace them etc.
More post
- π Is The King (2019) historically realistic?
- π How were the cities of Milan and Bruges spared by the Black Death?
- π Where was the ruling seat of East Francia located under Henry the Fowler?
- π How was reconnaissance performed in medieval warfare?
- π Nazis and Khazar Theory of Ashkenazi Jews
- π How much firepower did the British navy represent in 1940?
- π In Francoist Spain, what steps were required for non-Catholics to marry?
- π Where is Heinrich Martin Weber's grave located?
- π Was there social pressure among whites for slave owners to trade their slaves north in the 1850s?
- π Were there ever actual organizations of pirates?
- π Did Sultan Mehmet IV defeat a Persian champion in single combat?
- π When, and where, was the word 'Anglican' first used in the context of the Protestant Church of England?
- π Were communists opposed to Jews in France?
- π What class / type of ship was the "Dragon" from Rotterdam c. 1732?
- π Who originally described Attila as "Attila The Hun"
- π What was Justice Louis Brandeis's opinion on eugenics?
- π Is there any precedent to Duterte's "Shoot them dead" call for policy violators in a Democracy?
- π Is it true that George Washington was Offered Kingship?
- π Was there a fighter jet designed without cannons?
- π What happened to these buildings near the Seine?
- π Where on a modern map are these areas of Ptolemy's map?
- π Which ship sank and made the news for its chaotic evacuation around the year 1912?
- π Did anyone predict the death of the Sun before science?
- π What education path had to be followed to study law in 17th century Europe?
- π How was financial profit viewed in Medieval Europe?
- π Who was Chief Poking Fire?
- π When did private fighting become a capital offense in Japan?
- π What is the historical origin of the story of the Temptation of Christ?
- π Could someone help to identify this Japanese mon found on what appears to be a late Edo Period Jingasa?
- π What flag are the men in these photos flying?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- π Why have we settled while foragers used to be healthier instead?
- π Why exactly did telegraphs have to use "STOP" instead of a period and "QUOTE" instead of a quotation mark? (Or special codes.)
- π Why does US currency have a 25 cent piece and a 20 dollar bill instead of a 20 cent piece or 25 dollar bill?
- π Why was religion used as the basis of Turkey-Greece population exchange instead of language, ethnicity, etc.?
- π Why was whale oil used instead of petroleum?
- π Why did Native Americans die from European diseases while Europeans didn't catch serious diseases from the New World?
- π On 1941 Dec 7, could Japan have targeted the Panama Canal instead of Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack?
- π Why does the United States keep using "old" date representations and imperial system, while being in the minority?
- π Why were Navajo code talkers used during WW2?
- π Why didn't Roman emperors have harems?
- π Why did Columbus cross the mid-Atlantic instead of exploring from Greenland?
- π Why didn't Hitler have more submarines in the English channel?
- π Why didn't battleship Bismarck have more support?
- π If the Union Jack joins the flag of England and Scotland, why does it have a different shade of blue than the Scottish flag?
- π Why did English adopt Kamikaze (η₯ι’¨) as a loanword instead of Tokko (ηΉζ») during/after WWII?
- π Why did the Soviet Union have multiple airplane manufacturers?
- π In WW2, why did Germany sink allied supply convoys instead of capturing them?
- π Why does this London Underground poster from 1924 have a Star of David atop a Christmas tree?
- π Which countries (or comparable geographical units) have a lower population now than they used to at some point in history before 1950?
- π Why did Poland keep Warsaw as its capital instead of returning it to Krakow in the 20th century?
- π Why does Latin America have a higher number of surviving Native Americans than North America?
- π Why would graphite have been confused with lead?
- π Why did the USA invade Okinawa instead of one of the many other islands in southern Japan
- π Why did people have so many children in Victorian times?
- π Why did Roosevelt and Churchill use voice-based telecommunication, instead of simpler text-based options which were easier to encrypt?
- π Why do the horses on this vase have too many legs?
- π Why does Romanian culture have Latin influences?
- π Why weren't army snipers used at the Munich massacre?
- π Why didn't the Greeks or Romans have an Industrial Revolution?
- π Why did the term "Byzantine Empire" enter common usage instead of "Eastern Roman Empire" or "Roman Empire"