Agriculture: “The Worst Mistake In The History Of The Human Race”?

Jared Dia­mond:

Archae­ol­o­gists study­ing the rise of farm­ing have recon­structed a cru­cial stage at which we made the worst mis­take in human his­tory. Forced to choose between lim­it­ing pop­u­la­tion or try­ing to increase food pro­duc­tion, we chose the lat­ter and ended up with star­va­tion, war­fare, and tyranny.
Hunter-gatherers prac­ticed the most suc­cess­ful and longest last­ing lifestyle in human his­tory. In con­trast, we’re still strug­gling with the mess into which agri­cul­ture has tum­bled us, and it’s unclear whether we can solve it. Sup­pose that an archae­ol­o­gist who had vis­ited us from outer space were try­ing to explain human his­tory to his fel­low spacel­ings. He might illus­trate the results of his digs by a twenty-four hour clock on which one hour rep­re­sents 100,000 years of real past time. If the his­tory of the human race began at mid­night, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from mid­night through dawn, noon, and sun­set. Finally, at 11:54 p.m., we adopted agri­cul­ture. As our sec­ond mid­night approaches, will the plight of famine-stricken peas­ants grad­u­ally spread to engulf us all? Or will we some­how achieve those seduc­tive bless­ings that we imag­ine behind agriculture’s glit­ter­ing facade and that have so far eluded us?