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>The agricultural revolution was the biggest mistake in human history
Thoughts, /his/?
if you believe that you're fucking stupid
To clarify:
The author states that before the agricultural revolution humans and animals were at peace with nature. After we got trapped into settling down we started to accumulate diseases, hernias, arthritis and we became more violent. Not to mention we domesticated tons of animals and plans, and kept them in captivity.
The title is dramatic, but late hunter gatherers were better off than early farmers.
>>958746
Fuck off neo-Luddite
>>958752
This probably lasted until the 19th century or so. 99% of people were miserable peasants.
>>958750
Don't that complete the mass extintion that followed wherever hunter gatherer humans went?
>>958764
We're still driving animals to extinction just like we did back then. But in the past the marine life would be relatively untouched but now whales and sharks are getting killed off too.
Didn't Daniel Quinn make the exact same argument in the Ishmael trilogy like 20 years ago?
>evolutionism
Into the trash it goes.
>>958768
Is he using "relatively" whenwriting older humans were at peace with nature?
>muh Flintstone monkey myths
Atheists are hilarious.
>>958907
Does he ever make any claim on pre agricultural humans being far more peaceful with each other?
>>958897
Why does creatonists always use that? It shows two men struggling equally much to make the proof fit in their world view, ans creationists will usually make the claim it's self evident their version is true.
>>958912
He does actually with caution. He claims that agricultural humans are more dependent on their territory and are therefore more inclined to fight to the death. But he also said that it depends on culture and local circumstances a lot.
He talked about a momument built in Turkey (forgot the name) that was built in the stone age, requiring thousands of people working together. He concluded that it took a lot of cognitive thinking to make so many humans cooperate to achieve a goal.
>>958750
Thats false. There is evidence of violence between hunter gatherea
>>958933
Well yeah no shit.
The very reason the neolithic revolution occured was that humanity had gradually hunted all the megafauna into extinction. We were NEVER "at peace with nature".
We're the only species to ever do it, so it's kind of hard to tell.
>>958746
So in order to not be a massive hyprocite does he get out of agriculture society and live in a mud hut?
>>959196
Nah, just moan about how everything bad including sexism (seriosly?) came around with the rise of agriculture.
>>958922
Gobekli Tepi?
You have to remenber hunter/gatherers did have beer
>>959259
Didn't*
>>959244
Men are better farmers so women were quickly relegated to an underclass. Makes sense to me.
>>958746
>Letting giant machines that operate on GPS tracking and solar power raise and collect all of our food was a mistake
I really beg to differ
>>958746
People like this should have their toilet paper taken away
>>959291
Though the reason men became farmer was because the female body is adjusted to Squeezing out biological super computers.
Surely men should have been able to have the same power before the rise of agriculture, when they were the ones to hunt dangerous prey and when needed go to "war" to kill of other tribes that were foraging on your territory?
>>959815
Actually there were plenty of egalitarian or even matriarchal tribes. The physiological differences between men and women in practice have been blown up a little. Men and women both did hunting and foraging. It's not like women were pregnant for their whole lives.
>>959832
>Actually there were plenty of egalitarian or even matriarchal tribes.
Really?
"I think we'd all be happier if we ran around naked and lived off the land and cared for each other"
He may be right. But our species would be too vulnerable to various maladies.
Sure, if mankind hadn't developed agriculture, there'd be no large scale wars, no nuclear weapons, no global warming, whatever. But there'd also be no art, sciences, linguistics, diplomacy, any decent understanding of astrology, no industrialization or technology beyond 'me put stone on stick'.
>>959836
Yeah. Everyone would fuck everyone and the baby would be raised collectively by the tribe. Gender hierarchy (and hierarchy in general) is definitely a cultural thing rather than biological.
>>959845
Diseases started to develop when humans started to settle in one place and became disgusting and unhygienic, paired with a weakened immumesystem caused by malnutrition.
>>959900
Cool, that's based on observing still surviving hunter gatherer tribes then?
>>958746
>The agricultural revolution was the biggest mistake in human history
>implying there was history before agriculture
>implying agriculture wasn't invented in late prehistory
>>959903
It's very speculative, I'm not sure where they got the evidence from. There are some modern tribes in the amazones or some shit but they've been touched by modern society too much to be reliable.
Anyone on 4chan claiming to believe in creationism is either a troll or one of those mentally ill men in their 60s with nothing better to do with their time.
>>959915
Okay, because as I get it a lot of that is based on Feminists and Marxists bending the little archaeological evidence we got to make the prehistorical times look matriarchal (Which I think aligns with Marxist theory I think)
>>959927
It's true that there's little evidence and lots of people use it to serve their political agendas. Feminists and misogynists both. The truth is that there was probably a mix of everything. Some tribes were patriarchal, some matriarchal, some egalitarian. Some were violent and killed babies if they weren't born with hair (indicated weakness), some took care of the ill and injured. There were a fuckload of cultures.
And guess what? They were the exact same types of people as we are. Not great, not bad either. Just human. Anyone who tells you it's biology that men or women are better or blacks or whites are superior somehow is bullshitting you.
>>959935
I would like to know this too.
>>958750
Im no expert but i had heard that hunter gather lifestyle was far more violent then agricultural.
Is this not the case?
>>960015
Okay, I am gonna say it now that I am not well read about this, but I have generally gotten it that tribal societies are far more violent than more "civilized" ones.
If you want to read someone that really push the narrative off hunter gatherers you may be interested to read something by Steven Pinker.
http://stevenpinker.com/publications/better-angels-our-nature
And Chimps wage "wars" with each other, and they are pretty far from developing agriculture.
>>960062
I'm not so fond of percentages in such estimations. 50 million is 50 million and 500 is 500 no matter the size of the population. That's my opinion
The industrial revolution was a mistake.
>>960179
Well, it's a rather good measurement of how violent things are in general
I am ready to beat less people were murered in raw numbers during the viking ages than today, and they had a society where raw violence could do a lot in society (Like with holmgang)
>>960221
Although I'd disagree, this is actually a defensible POV.
Sapiens
A brief history of
HOMOS
>>959922
You'd be surprised at how stupid the average American can be
Our modern lives only exist because of the agricultural revolution. If you live in a developed country, you have a better life than almost all humans that have ever existed. Anyone that says other wise is an idiot.
>>960374
How?
I find the OP to be much more defensible than this. Up till the industrial revolution, your average human was either a peasant or a slave.
>>960430
The Industrial Revolution was important, but it wouldn't even be able to occur if it wasn't for the agricultural revolution.
>>960430
Now we're just willing peasants or willing slaves. Working for the idol that has even replaced a god: money.
>>958746
somebody watches too much Man vs. Wild
Obviously.
Where you have an agricultural society, you will have permanent settlements, a division of labour, thus a division in social classes, a division in gender roles with the man relegating the woman to a second class person status, a stratification of society where a caste of upper class people will appear and impose a number of unnatural, cuckening rules over the population (economics, religion, laws, tributes, a military composed of wage-cucks/servants to maintain the status-quo); the State. And with it slavery, alienation, crime, a general detachment from nature, population growth leading to more of the above in other settlements, in short; the destruction of a man's freedom.
>>958750
>The author states that before the agricultural revolution humans and animals were at peace with nature.
Humans are part of nature. And even if you find that a cop-out answer, nature is not a peaceful thing. It can be lovely and serene and beautiful, sure, but nature is just as much violent and uncaring and load and filthy and grotesque as anything 'artificial.'
I mean on a more general level the invention of agriculture allowed for surplus, which in turn led to what is called 'civilization' in places such as the Fertile Crescent. Personally I'm glad I don't have to hunt my own food.
>>958746
Being free to wander around looking for food 24/7 or having a secure food supply, and economy that allows for people to develop complex ideas, innovations and societies.
The agricultural revolution was humanity's biggest step forward, it wasn't a mistake.
>>960427
>Better life
>Browse memes all day and wank off
>Crappy job
>Unhappy
>>959935
>Native Americans
Are not a single group of people.
Anyway to answer your question to my knowledge all this 5 genders bullshit comes from well into the 19th century.
i.e not something pre-contact natives believed.
>>960519
>thus a division in social classes
This was the point where I realized you're a communist.
>>960549
>just because i am an utter failure it applies to everyone else as well
>>959869
>any decent understanding of astrology
>>960562
Do you honestly think people now are significantly happier than people back then? The only thing that's changed is that we have more possessions and more security.
>you will never hunt and scavenge for food with your lads
>you will never take a qt tribesgirl to the ugabuga boulder further up hill and take her virginity
>you will never have intimidate knowledge of your surroundings and other tribespeople, moreover a strong and agile body that's perfectly adapted to nature
Horseshit.
Look at amerindians, pacific islanders, or Abos.
Most didn't have any sort of agriculture. they still did all the same dumb shit europeans, asians, and africans did. except they were stuck in the stone age.
>>960594
But most amerindians and pacific islanders did have agriculture.
>>960607
barely.
most of civilizations with agriculture collapsed when their primitive farming caused crop failures.
only the potato eating mountain niggers in the Andes didn't raise and fall on over farming.
>>959836
The Scythians had female warriors.
>>960624
Yeah because mound cities of more than a hundred thousand in some cases is "barely". The time period when their agriculture collapsed is thought to corrsespond with a serious climatological anomaly.
>>960624
yes but the feast/famine cycle was a regular aspect of life for every under-regulated agrarian society.
More and more farms producing more and more food would drive down prices to the point where the more inefficient farmers were driven off their lands. However as time went on and more and more farmers were driven off their land, a larger and larger percentage of the food supply would be distributed by fewer and fewer plantation owners. Eventually the tipping point would be reached where prices have hit their floor, but such a large percentage of the population has been driven off their lands and into destitution that aggregate demand is simply too low for these massive plantations to maintain profitability and they collapse. With the food supply chain disrupted, most of the farmland had gone fallow, and nobody left with the skills or capital to run them. When that happens, famine ensued, and it would take a full generation before the next batch of farmers could produce more than what they needed for subsistence. And then the cycle would repeat itself over and over again until the modern era.
With proper regulation, such as what the Romans had, or what every modern state has. they can stave off famine for centuries. Unless of course they specifically doctor a famine, like Stalin did with Ukraine, but its usually a combination of human errors such as war, civil strife, corruption, and insufficient infrastructure.
>>960624
wtf are you babbling about
most of these ancient/neolithic or early-agricultural civilizations just picked up and moved when things got bad. early civilization wasn't like ours, where we build cities and never leave. lots of cities were abandoned, moved, or merged with neighbours after years of farming, then soil depletion, or el nino, or what have you. the best recorded examples are of places like china and japan, which relied on bamboo but caused a cycle of soil depletion, so the peasants would farm, grow, farm, grow, deplete, move somewhere else to work somewhere else, then move back in a few years after the soil had recovered.
this isn't civ5, bro. populations are dynamic within their geographies.
>>960624
>Ameridindians develop corn/maize
>Corn is second only to wheat in importance to the world's food consumption
Are you literally retarded or just pretending?
Tell me taking wild, uncultured corn and cultivating it into what corn is today is "barely" agriculture.
>>960575
What fucking sophistry. By all objective standards we have infinitely better lives than the hunter-gatherers of 15,000 years ago and before. "Happiness" is so fucking subjective that it's irrelevant. I have potable water readily available, supermarkets where I can get almost any food I want, zero health problems, zero chance of dying to a predator, near zero chance of dying to an illness or infection, infant mortality is a fraction of what it was, and I have a life expectancy of around 80 years. Are you honestly going to tell me that my life is worse than a hunter-gatherer that was on the precipice of death because I haven't had water if 3 days and can't find any food?
>>958750
Well, fuck nature long life humans then.
Fucking hippies.
>>960908
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mismatch_theory
>>960561
t. freedom hater
>>958746
Read it.
Don't know about each part specifically, but his assessment of science and scientific progress in the Middle Ages is so hilariously wrong I immediately dropped the book.
t. expert
>>958750
>nature
>"peaceful"
Nature is a horrible place to live. Nice to visit, though.
>>958888
Just become a namefag already.
>>959937
There is evidence by watching modern day tribes like Pygmies
>>960221
The agricultural revolution was a mistake.
>>958746
Well, it heavily enforced the system of patriarchy, so I would have to agree.
>all these fags not realizing the importance of space colonization to humanity and Earth life
>>960575
>>you will never hunt and scavenge for food with your lads
>you will never take a qt tribesgirl to the ugabuga boulder further up hill and take her virginity
>you will never have intimidate knowledge of your surroundings and other tribespeople, moreover a strong and agile body that's perfectly adapted to nature
sounds just like the life of a small-time gang member
>>964064
human civilization is currently the only way terrestrial life can survive the end of earth's biosphere
so as far as I'm concerned, as long as we ensure we keep our culture going, everything we do is a net positive to "nature"
>>958750
what did civilization ever do for us?
>>958746
I'd say the era between the advent of agriculture and the invention of the internet was the nadir of humanity. We stopped being fully fulfilled by our primal evolutionary imperatives, but didn't have anything better to replace it with (just mindless mass warfare, mindless work); arguably we've reached a point where the life of the mind can more than make up for what we've lost; having all the world's great accumulated knowledge a our fingertips is pretty mind-blowing - but that's really a matter of personal opinion. I'd say, for myself, I might just prefer the internet vs. stalking mammoth on the plain, but only just...
>>964165
This guy knows what's up.
Humanity is at absolute worst a necessary evil no matter how much of a tree hugger you are.
>>964165
But if we fuck up the ecosystem supporting us before we are ready to spread beyond the Earth, it won't really matter. We wouldn't be able to endure on a long term and die out.
We need the ecosystem to be around in the long term if we want humans to survive.
Or we could spread out prematurely and end up like the ocean-faring Polynesian societies: spreading from island to island and dying out because they exhausted themselves from over-extension and their individual islands could no longer support their inexhaustible lust for resources..
>>959291
Women invented farming, by teaching procreation to their daughters.
"Watch how this seed sprouts when u drive it into the ground with a dildo."
>>964613
What? Why is it necessary to keep maintain terrestrial life beyond the Earth's own lifespan?
I mean I'm not against it, but there's hardly any moral imperative to do so.
>>966329
kek
>Romanticizing prehistorical man and society
This is literally like fascists who romanticize the Roman Empire, e.g fucking retarded.
Going *back* in time does not work on a societal level, even if you wanted to. This is just delusional.
>>967943
Did anyone say that?
>>967945
>Did anyone say that?
No, but it is implied.
>WAHHH WAHHH THE PAST WAS SO MUCH BETTER WAHH WAHH
>>967987
Depends on what you value. People aren't really happier than they were back then.
>>968059
>People aren't really happier than they were back then.
And you know that how? Have you spoken to a caveman? A Roman plebeian? A Russian serf anno 1600?
No, you haven't, so please do not pretend this isn't romanticizing based complete conjectural bullshit.
>>968073
Do you really think happiness is about material possessions?
>>968087
Where did I say that?
>>968087
>He fell for the idealism meme
>>968096
You were implying people right now ARE happier. And the only difference between now and then is more possessions and more security really.
>>968105
I think people live better lives now than they did several hundred to thousand years ago.
Whether or not this makes people happy or not, is clearly on the individual, but yearning for a prehistoric society of hunter-gathering is clearly romantic delusion.
>>968129
Why is it delusional if someone knows the pros and cons of prehistoric society? Why isn't it just a matter of opinion?
>>968105
And, y'know, not dying in childhood due to disease.
>>968143
Okay. Let try that out then and lets see.
Do you think the Roman Empire was the perfect society and that everyone should emulate it? I'm going to assume you are going to say no.
However, the fascists did think so, and tried to reforge Italy into a modern day Roman Empire.
Now, ask yourself, is it merely a matter of opinion that the Roman Empire was a perfect utopia for humans, or were the Fascists delusional ideologues?
>>968154
Only happened post-agriculture
>>968160
There is no perfect, that's just another matter of opinion. And fascists did a poor job of recreating the roman empire. I never say we should revert back to hunting and gathering, that's silly and impossible. I'm just saying I wouldn't mind spending a few years as one.
>>968168
>Only happened post-agriculture
Delusional.
>>968172
Sorry. That MOSTLY happened post-agriculture, due to malnutrition and disease that was able to spread in permanent settlements.
>>958746
It certainly made human society more vulnerable. Current society is so complex that it'll be fucked really easily.
People have a vast problem dealing with the notion of the inequality of men. But that the only reason for this problem is envy and resentment is shown by the fact that when it comes to other species, not only is there no problem, but inequality is taken as a given and the mere implication that, for example, a dog may be equal to a man is treated by everyone as proof of madness and cause for internment in mental institutions (and this is indeed how it will eventually be with whoever keeps insisting on the equality of humans and subhumans). And yet a simple substitution is all it takes to reveal the sheer absurdity of the business. Change "men" to "lifeforms" and the deeply reactive nature of the equality lie, the massive incapacity to unblinkingly acknowledge the simple fact that some men are superior, and even vastly superior, to others, stands revealed. For in the end it all comes down to DNA, since species are ultimately fictitious. "All men are equal" means "all DNA is equal". And the only answer that can be given at this point is: O rly?
>>960793
Babylon tier ameridian farming versus late Renaissance European farming.
>>964206
>What about the ones living on new guinea?
More or less the same, children are raised in common.
>>968168
Childbirth has always been a difficult, traumatic affair for humans. The same thing that makes us amazing long distance bipedal walkers also makes it awkward for us to carry a baby, because it puts a huge amount of strain on the lower back (which was never designed for bipedalism and is instead an evolutionary adaption from our four legged ancestors) and trying to push a baby through those narrow walking hips carried a high probability of being a bloody, horrendously painful, and potentially lethal affair.
And the lack of sanitation until the modern era made it an equally high proposition that either/both the mother and infant would perish from a massive infection. There's a reason nobody wants to live like bushmen any more (and modern bushmen have it way better than ancient hunter gatherers)
>>968912
How are we still not made for walking upright when we've done so for a fucklong time? Did natural selection oversleep or something?
>>958746
>human populations are personal systems that know what they are doing and can be said to make mistakes
>>968934
No, it's just that the things which make for better bipedal walkers, like narrower hips, also make for inefficient baby-carriers, because its harder to push a baby through narrower hips, especially when that baby has a big ole noggin full of grey matter like what a human is born with.
That's why humans are unique among all the animals in the ecosystem for having painful, difficult childbirth. Have you ever seen a dog give birth? They make that shit look effortless by comparison.
>>958750
You haven't even read the fucking book, delete this shit thread.
>>968999
True. Also the reason why kids take so long to grow up. They're really small when they leave the womb, otherwise they can't pop out.
>>968912
Neanderthals were even less adapted for child birth as a bipedal species.
Part of the reason the Homo Sapiens managed to outproduce them.
>>970103
They were to smart for their own good.
>>966805
I don't understand. What do you have better to do than spread the complexity of life across the dead universe? Obviously it's the basest and most objective of imperatives.
>>958897
>evolutionist
Why is this a term? It's not an ideology. It's a scientific theory. It'd be like if I called myself a "Quantumist."
side note: Quantumist sounds cool as fuck
