After reading further, there are two things I take issue with.
1)
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.
This is taken out of context, so it sort of gives a false impression of what the author is saying. What I have a problem with is "in different parts of the world people began to domesticate plants and animals." That paints an inaccurate picture.
Agriculture was by no means a new thing at this time. We'd long since discovered the magic of how when we throw our seeds and such away in one place, some time after more of the same foods will be there. What changed was the
method of agriculture. It was part of a great cultural divide. Where before we may have said "I will put these seeds here, and in time food will come and I will return to eat it," now we were saying "This land belongs to me. I put my seeds into my ground, and my plants sprout and grow. Nothing else is allowed to touch my plants. Nothing but what I say is allowed onto my ground, and I will hunt down and kill anything I believe may try to come and take my plants." It was the idea that everything belongs to us. We are the chosen ones, and all other life is now in our command.
This also did not suddenly start happening in different parts of the world. It wasn't like our evolution suddenly put us in a place where we were predisposed to this way of life. This was born of a single culture (out of
thousands...we don't even comprehend what true difference of culture is since we are so far removed from it) over between the Tigris and Euphrates in modern-day Iraq. Not that there weren't other cultures that tried this way of life. The Anasazi (literally "enemy ancestor") of the southern U.S. did it. The ancient Maya did it. Many more did it. And they all have something in common. They mysteriously vanished. Their culture just dried up and POOF! into thin air. There are many theories about what happened to them all; some as wild as planetary alien encounters, some as sound as famine or drought. Though I believe they all came to the same fate. Their people said "no more." They said "you know what, this really sucks. We spend all our time working and working and we were much happier before when we could just take our food as we needed it. Screw this." And they walked away. I believe they were much smarter than the culture that spawned us.
2)
“I don’t think most hunger-gatherers farmed until they had to, and when they switched to farming they traded quality for quantity,” says Mark Cohen of the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, co-editor with Armelagos, of one of the seminal books in the field, Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture. “When I first started making that argument ten years ago, not many people agreed with me. Now it’s become a respectable, albeit controversial, side of the debate.”
I'll simply respond to this by taking a cue from
Daniel Quinn [newtribalventures.com].
One would no more respond to famine with agriculture (the "need" to change lifestyles) than one would respond to falling out of an airplane by knitting a parachute. It just doesn't work like that.
I believe the "had to" was simply their neighbors saying "Hey, you're on our land. Yup, it's ours now. You can join us, move off our land, or we'll kill you. Your choice." If you need proof of this happening, you need only look at modern American history. You know, there were people living here before it was the United States. Or the colonies for that matter.
The only places native people still live are the crappy places that nobody bothered to take from them (yet). Of course, they'll tell you it's a beautiful place and they are happy to be there.
userlame
