"The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" Topic

"To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn't the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren't specially created by God but evolved along with millions of other species. Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.
At first, the evidence against this revisionist interpretation will strike twentieth century Americans as irrefutable. We're better off in almost every respect than people of the Middle Ages, who in turn had it easier than cavemen, who in turn were better off than apes. Just count our advantages. We enjoy the most abundant and varied foods, the best tools and material goods, some of the longest and healthiest lives, in history. Most of us are safe from starvation and predators. We get our energy from oil and machines, not from our sweat. What neo-Luddite among us would trade his life for that of a medieval peasant, a caveman, or an ape?

For most of our history we supported ourselves by hunting and gathering: we hunted wild animals and foraged for wild plants. It's a life that philosophers have traditionally regarded as nasty, brutish, and short. Since no food is grown and little is stored, there is (in this view) no respite from the struggle that starts anew each day to find wild foods and avoid starving. Our escape from this misery was facilitated only 10,000 years ago, when in different parts of the world people began to domesticate plants and animals. The agricultural revolution spread until today it's nearly universal and few tribes of hunter-gatherers survive…"

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Armand

A well written & thoughtful article.

I find it interesting that in my lifetime, the related bugbears of overpopulation & a starving global populace have receded.

We have the ability to feed everyone (though sadly, we don't always do this) & demographics point to a worrying trend of population decline.

Certainly, agricultural lifestyles exacerbated disease but also gave us the ability to create medicines to fight it.

It's a giant give-and-take, isn't it?

I think there's a question here about what we are trying to judge, the species or the individual? The latter is always going to die and is expendable from a species viewpoint. And, unless we can get off this planet the species will eventually end; I doubt we will spread to other worlds but I have no doubt that hunter gatherers won't.

Diamond wrote the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel," a NYT bestseller. It's about how some societies evolve, thrive and prosper while others simply do not. Highly readable.

Well, if you want to go back to living naked in the woods and eating worms and tree bark, have at it…! ;-)

Coming down out of the trees…

This theme is explored with great eloquence by Noah Harari in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

"Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans."

I thought the consensus was that the worst mistake in human history is starting a land war in Asia.

Joe Collins

Meh. Strong on opinion and weak on actual facts. "Appears", "suggests", "it seems" all the buzz words of opinion over facts.

The few sources cited all have assumptive errors.

If you are a Bible reader:
Abraham's wife being so mean to Ishmael and his mother after Isaac was born. Thereby giving their descendnats something to fight about for the next 5000 years.

Ha!….

Armand

Gurkhan, Love the reference.

The internal combustion engine.

After that, women. "Women… just gettin' in the way. Cherchez la femme." (Mick Jagger) (in "The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash")

Hahaha!!

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders – the most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" – but only slightly less well-known is this: "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line"!

Vizzini