Brain size doesn't dictate brain power. There is obviously a loose connection. The cranial size doesn't tell us about how compact and interwoven the actual neural networks are. — I like sushi

There is that, as well, which is partially a function of evolution, and partially of usage. So true!

We talk about the leisure time afforded by agriculture, but the development of agriculture was purchased by the leisure time afforded by meat. Carnivores in the animal kingdom often lay around for days or weeks, burping, farting, swatting flies, fucking and socializing. Hell, that's just the mammals; snakes and gators go for months after a full belly. I figure when a group of people took down a mammoth they had some free time to process it, make cloths, etc. Cold storage stashes have been found in the Rocky Mountains and pemmican and smoking and other preservation methods made the meat last.

I understand the gatherers may have actually contributed the bulk of the diet, but even that was a maintenance program pending the big kill. So I'm not so sure the leisure time argument for ag holds water. I think ag was a response to population increases, territorial limitations and over-hunted meat animals.

Doesn't matter if you agree or not. A complex social strata doesn't necessarily have to have farming — I like sushi

You don't know that.

I guess provision of food and water too of course was a given, it is no accident I guess that most early populations of what were pre human ended up naturally along areas where food / water were readily accessible. I guess it is no accident that for most countries the major rivers tend to be the areas that develop bigger populations. The Fertile Crescent well named probably made agriculture easier but there are other developments like moving from the Stone Age to the Iron Age eg ploughing made food production much easier and later on the industrial revolution - these are much further down the track where I still thing the biggest early impact may have been increases in population which you assume made it inevitable it would attract more people. At some point too the concept of work to provide for yourself and maybe family too had to be one factor, after all land still in general needs some human agency to realise it’s potential- sure nature can produce a lot of food and in abundance with the right conditions but adding some direction and cultivation made the difference. It is still not clear if agriculture was inevitable. I assume most historians would argue it is. It is still fascinating that to think that this principal was discovered in different areas and at different times and different food stuffs that suited particular environments would arise. But we do reach a point where surplus was happening and maybe the biggest real impact of that was population expansion. The debate will probably always be was it too fast, too soon and agriculture surely has a pretty key role to play in that. It’s probably fair to say the bigger any system gets the more complex it becomes. Human ingenuity and innovation drives new discoveries, in some ways I don’t think we can help ourselves as a species in that regard, necessity I think will always be the mother of invention - another thread that would be useful to have people comment on.

How are modern day hunter gatherers faring these days?

How are modern day hunter gatherers faring these days? — Hanover

They were fine until the neighbors moved in. Now they fare as well as their prey base. Not so good. What, with all the clear cutting, strip mining, over-grazing, damming, paving, subdividing, developing and commodification of natural and human resources. It's not looking good for them, but it's not looking good for the culprits either.

They were fine until the neighbors moved in. Now they fare as well as their prey base. Not so good. What, with all the clear cutting, strip mining, over-grazing, damming, paving, subdividing, developing and commodification of natural and human resources. It's not looking good for them, but it's not looking good for the culprits either. — James Riley

I'm thinking the land demands per capita for hunter gatherers exceeds that of industrial societies by several hundred fold at least.

Hunter gatherers lost the Darwinian game. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/hunter-gatherer-culture/

I'm thinking the land demands per capita for hunter gatherers exceeds that of industrial societies by several hundred fold at least. — Hanover

No doubt. That's why cities are so awesome.

Sadly I don’t think they exist. There was a time when ‘undiscovered’ was just that. I do think a hunter / gatherer strategy would probably work, meaning the planet can provide what a family unit or small tribe would need, but, and it’s a big but - that lifestyle or general way of living has long since been crowded out. There is probably still the romantic possibility of living off the land and there are probably many that do - we would not classify them as hunter / gatherers though - the big issue is we are all pretty much consumers. People who still grow their own veg or fruit etc recognise the pleasure of doing so. But on one really hunt and gathers in this sense unless some army type exercise or artificial event. The romantic in me laments the loss of that. There is a multitude of reasons why the hunter / gatherer was never going to survive with its competition - in some ways the loss of that is maybe just the inevitable outcome of progress but there may be a lot that no one will ever appreciate was lost in that way of living in those early times - very much closer to how animals lived.

Hunter gatherers lost the Darwinian game. — Hanover

It's too early to tell. It's only been about 12k years or so. That won't make for a verdict. Side note digression: I always loved looking at Nat Geo but something about it made me uncomfortable. They seemed driven to see, explore and map every square inch of the planet. That gives me the creeps. As Leopold opined, "Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?"

I wonder if man, with all his intellect, has saved the indigenous hunter-gatherer wisdom/knowledge. You know, just in case. Leopold also said "The first sign of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the parts." I wonder what 12,021 will look like.

I wonder what 12,021 will look like. — James Riley

Duh.

:lol:

That reminds me, when I was a kid they said we'd all be buzzing around in our jet packs by now. WTF? I feel ripped off by history.

My argument though will be that it is through the surplus created by agriculture that wealth was generated and as a consequence the early beginnings of the idea that those with power (strength in the main but ideas too) created the very early beginnings of the class struggle and the haves and have nots. — David S

On the other hand, with just hunter gatherers, there basically wouldn't be culture as we know now. Would writing and more advanced mathematics even be needed?

Yes, we can yearn for the Noble Savage who hasn't been spoiled by civilization.

Well, that civilization is our culture, so...

I'm thinking the land demands per capita for hunter gatherers exceeds that of industrial societies by several hundred fold at least. — Hanover

This is a congruent approach to the situation I was considering when I said that,

I would hesitate, as well, to say that agriculture has been bad for humans in general. If anything, it along with advances in medicine and in technology generally, has resulted in our being too successful. We have overpopulated, and threaten the ecological status quo. — Michael Zwingli

The salient issue pertaining to this, is that if humans had remained dependent upon hunting and gathering their provender, then human populations would have been naturally restricted. People would yet have had many children, but all throughout history many more than do now would have died of starvation and other causes secondary to malnutrition. Such circumstances would not appear to have increased human happiness in general.

but it's not looking good for the culprits either. — James Riley

Very good point.

Hunter / gatherer methods worked for what... 200,000 years?

Agricultural-based societies did OK for what... 10,000 years?

industrial-based societies are only what... 300 years old, and we are facing the very real possibility of global catastrophe--for us and for many other creatures.

As a Taoist hunter / gatherer was closer to how animals naturally live and of course in tune with nature. There is no doubt about the benefits for health, longevity and and and … but I guess being able to buck nature and where we are in terms of climate change it is looking decidedly difficult. Intelligence will probably find answers but the dead trees and dinosaurs might have been better left where they are. At least renewables might provide a better longer term outcome but as all energy realistically is generated from the Sun the hunter / gatherers just followed instinct but yes intelligence too. It was man’s destiny to evolve and learn and in particular pass on knowledge so it could accumulate. It’s more than likely it will continue to evolve and survive but it feels some sort of reset a la extinction event or ice age may still have Mother Earth have the last word. For sure life on Earth will always exist in some form but maybe it will be beyond Earth but still man where a distant future where man has solved it happens.

That interesting! I hadn't heard of that.

From Wiki:

The site's original excavator, German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, described it as the "world's first temple": a sanctuary used by groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers from a wide area, with few or no permanent inhabitants. Other archaeologists challenged this interpretation, arguing that the evidence for a lack of agriculture and a resident population was far from conclusive. Recent research has also led the current excavators of Göbekli Tepe to revise or abandon many of the conclusions underpinning Schmidt's interpretation.

The above does seem to suggest that the points of controversy are concerning whether there were no or few permanent inhabitants and no agriculture, and whether there were many permanent inhabitants and agriculture. Apparently the site is far from any known sources of water, which if true would seem to make both agriculture and any permanent population unlikely.

But perhaps, to reference the other thread you addressed me in, as @Olivier5 would have it there is simply no fact of the matter as to whether there was agriculture and a permanent population or not. :wink:

I wanted to start with quite a controversial argument I imagine which is to suggest that the discovery of agriculture is one of civilisation’s biggest mistakes. — David S

This is not as controversial as you might think. Against the Grain has already been mentioned, fantastic book. After the Ice is another which explicitly makes detailed accounts of how the concept of private property arose in conjunction with exclusive agricultural ways of life. There are other works out there as well that question the common narrative of the agricultural revolution.

There was no "Agricultural Revolution", in the sense that suddenly humans discovered they could plant seeds and harvest crops; this was known for many centuries before the first city-states arose in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. What changed was the shift from using agriculture as a supplement to using it (as well as husbandry) exclusively.

If we accept that we had to do what we did to get that which have which we like, does that mean we have to keep doing it to keep it? It would seem to me that if we are all that intelligent and wise, we should be able to stop doing what we did and yet still keep what we got. We could have all the good things that the hunter-gatherers had without any of the bad that they had to suffer with.

When I say stop doing "what we did to get what we like" I just mean the bad stuff which threatens our enjoyment of what we got. We could continue doing the good or innocuous stuff.

Could we not have clean air, clean water, highly complex and extensive biodiversity, "wilderness", open space, etc? Can't we have our cake and eat it too?

Are they correct who say we must continue on our aggressive, desperate, competitive, polluting, exploitive, extinctive, winners/losers, rich/poor course in order to survive or maintain or improve?

We remind me of the movie quote when someone asked a rich man how much money he wanted and he simply said "more." Is that attitude required to maintain what we have? Is it required to get more? Or can we get more, more responsibly?

We could have all the good things that the hunter-gatherers had without any of the bad that they had to suffer with.

Could we not have clean air, clean water, highly complex and extensive biodiversity, "wilderness", open space, etc? Can't we have our cake and eat it too? — James Riley

An interesting question, something I have also wondered a lot about too :up:

Fundamentally, I believe it is an issue with technology, and not just this or that technology, but the overall technological drive to maximize efficiency - technique. A technologically-advanced society is a programmed society. It seems naive to me to think that humans can "control" technology; the most we can do is slow it down. At least as long as we continue to use it, which by this time seems pretty much guaranteed.

For all the things we seemed to have gained, there seems to be less attention paid to what we have lost, since we shrugged off the H&G mode of life. Indeed there seems to be quite a lot of fundamental things that we have lost, thanks to the luxury trap of civilization. Most of us have lost our ability to take care of ourselves without a complex social bureaucracy; most of us think freedom consists in being unique instead of being self-sufficient; most of us are completely at the whim of large corporations and militarized governments with powerful technologies which no person is capable of resisting alone; most of us are fed propaganda every single day and don't really own their thoughts; most of us live pointless lives working jobs that serve only to further cement the technological mode of life; most of us are completely disconnected from the natural world and only know about it through television or the occasional visit to a park; most of us are so addicted to our technological dope that it seems inconceivable to go back to a way of life that does not have it.

In the original 2000 Deus Ex video game, one of the final plot choices is to take out some kind of central global communications node, which doing so plunges the world into a technological Dark Age, but a Renaissance for human freedom. An interesting idea which has been raised by others as well.

:up: Sounds like the old saying "He who rides the tiger cannot dismount." I guess we aren't all that intelligent and wise or we'd be able to have the best of both worlds.

most of us are completely disconnected from the natural world and only know about it through television or the occasional visit to a park — darthbarracuda

That reminds me of a paper I wrote in the 80s that said "Next to the last few minutes with Charles Kuralt and a trip to the wilderness now and then, when do we ever do anything that is not absorbed in "us"?"

Last time I counted, the end of "Sunday Morning" was down to under 30 seconds. :roll:

The problem with comparisons of modern day hunter gatherer groups with prehistoric hunter gatherer groups could well be irrelevant.

They do okay. They live lives with ample free time, but not as much as before. The amount of effort some peoples have to put into basic sustaiance is quite high in some places though, plus if they’re cut off from the modern world they are commonly infested with all manner of parasites.

Note: In prehistory there was undoubtedly more interaction between groups whereas today such groups are more insular due to the encroachment of the ‘modern world’ and the reduction of fellow like groups.

This is surprisingly good.

I was talking about how ‘civilisation’ can and is defined within the fields of anthropology. I do know. There is not an absolute consensus.

It’s a bit like the ‘all swans are white’ point. We cannot state something with such certainty when there is scant evidence/history. Added to this we carry around numerous modern assumptions about ‘how humans live’ based purely on how we live now. We cannot really do much about this other than try and guard against and highlight what possible assumptions we may be making and such assumptions influences our perception of said matter.

You may find this interesting: https://blog.degruyter.com/ancient-ukrainian-megasites-might-have-been-the-worlds-first-cities/

Could we not have clean air, clean water, highly complex and extensive biodiversity, "wilderness", open space, etc? Can't we have our cake and eat it too? — James Riley

The problem is that would take a drastic reduction of human population. By one estimation earth cannot sustain a human population of more than 200,000,000 using organic farming techniques, not to mention returning to hunter gatherer life. Who knows what the real number is? But it seems obvious that it's much, much less than the present population.

So, the problem is how to effect such a reduction ourselves when the whole question seems to be taboo to most people. Nature may do it for us, or we may do it to ourselves in some unthinkable way, but neither of those are alternatives that many people would wish for.

This seems to be more supportive of your view:

https://sites.dartmouth.edu/aegean-prehistory/lessons/lesson-11-narrative/#l11d

For myself, anyone questioning Renfrew is putting themselves on the line as Renfrew is a very steady hand.

Also, even though this points more toward the 'elites' having more selfish goals it doesn't then make humanity worse only bring out into the open a natural tendency. I don't agree one way or the other but I do know that in the modern world many people assume wealth is a result of selfish ends rather than reciprical cooperation. Again I would not hold to such a simplistic view in a stand alone sense as such reciprocity would have to insular in some fashion rather than universal - intent aside!

The one positive outcome of the agricultural revolution was morality/ethics - as more and more people began to live together, it became necessary for some kind of rules/laws (read: moral codes) that provided the glue for harmonious coexistence. Morality, initially, served only one purpose - to dilute/eradicate homo homini lupus - but as time went by, the moral wilderness began attracting first, animals (animal rights movement), and now, even plants (ecological movement). The trend is as plain as the noses on our faces - morality/ethics encompasses, should do so, all life. Thus, humans become, despite our many qualitiies that contradict it, the guardians of life, the biosphere. We need to take this responsibility seriously and turn over a new leaf and right the wrongs we've inflicted on the living world.

On a lot of points I'm with @James Riley on this.

I'm a bit of a nature guy myself. At the very least I know that I have a tendency to get into bad habits if I'm surrounded by too much comfort. I've noticed it for myself: the more primal my conditions get the more functional I become as a person. Living in a jungle somewhere in Asia over a year in fact was the most profound and life changing experience I've made in my life.

I think generally we do two essential things as humans: Trying to survive and seeking stimulation. The first one is rather obvious for any living being, the second is to some degree uniquely human (some animals will do certain things to entertain themselves, none at the level which humans do though). I reckon our obession with any form of stimulation is caused by how trivial survival has become these days. With hunter-gathering, survival itself served as the stimulation. The amount of awareness necessary to be a succesful hunter is akin to the awareness a Buddhist teacher demands from his students. Agriculture in contrast is much less engaging. Tending to fields is a mindless task. It demands very little awareness and offers very little stimulation.

Our cultural evolution has always been like that. With a decrease in effort comes a surplus in time - but with a surplus of time comes an increased demand for stimulation. The evolutionary steps are entirely based on each other. The surplus we got with each step was necessary for the next step, though I'd say certain steps have more gravity than others.

Fire was essential but I don't think it changed our life style enormously. Basically it drastically increased our efficiency as hunter-gatherers. The middle-step between hunter-gathering and agriculture was much more impactful: The herding of animals. People still lived a nomadic lifestyle but the necessity to hunt fell flat. Instead, they were taking their herd from pasture to pasture and gathered along the way. The step to agriculture then probably was a direct consequence: The herders found certain spots that were especially favourable in supporting life. Instead of marching all over the land they localized to places where both herding and gathering was at it's best (this wasn't possible as hunter-gatherers because it didn't allow for good hunting). And then it went from there. Humans had a fixed routine with plenty of time to spare and began on their neverending quest to find something to do beyond survival.

Do I think agriculture was a mistake? Yes and no. It's obvious that agriculture was necessary for everything we have today. Surviving is an endless task - but we made the task trivial. In return, we were left with another endless task. Since most of us don't have to do anything RIGHT NOW to stay alive, it leaves us constantly planning what's next. This is like a maze with no end because from one moment to the next, there are endless possibilities to what can happen in the world.

Put it that way: Evolutionary agriculture makes perfect sense because we massively improved our survivability. On an individual level though, we opened up Pandora's box. Biologically we're meant to live in nature and do survival. We've left our natural habitat and it confuses us. This shows in the rise of mental health problems people struggle with today.

The problem is that would take a drastic reduction of human population. By one estimation earth cannot sustain a human population of more than 200,000,000 using organic farming techniques, not to mention returning to hunter gatherer life. Who knows what the real number is? But it seems obvious that it's much, much less than the present population.

So, the problem is how to effect such a reduction ourselves when the whole question seems to be taboo to most people. Nature may do it for us, or we may do it to ourselves in some unthinkable way, but neither of those are alternatives that many people would wish for. — Janus

I once did a back-of-the-napkin analysis and came up with 250-500k. I figured that at our current rate of consumption, as an apex predator, and based upon the richest, most consumptive person on the planet (I don't know who that is) we would need what we had as hunter-gatherers. I figure 10k square miles of temperate zone land per 35 people would be about right. (Fewer as we go closer to the poles and the equator.) That's a block 100 X 100 miles. The center of that is about 50 miles to any border of the next group's area. That is a reasonable distance to travel once a year to party, diversify the gene pool, trade lithic knowledge, etc. and yet still be able to slaughter mammoths, bison, fish, etc. without really harming biodiversity. Of course they could go different directions, seasonally, to link up with other groups, maybe four times per year.

As modern homo sapiens, we would not want all 500k living in and around the same city because that would present a danger from a localized catastrophe, not to mention disease. So we'd spread out but maintain travel and communications. Ideally those 500k would be made up of as much genetic diversity as we could cram into 500k. In this way, we could maintain the current highest standard of living of the richest, most consumptive person on Earth, without jeopardizing maximum complexity and biodiversity of the planet.

Not that anyone would want more people, but if we decided that we wanted more people, we could easily do that with lowered consumption. Anyway, if human beings are as smart as we think we are, we should be able to automate extraction of resources and the production of all the food and luxuries we want, speed around and off the planet, reserve all knowledge gained thus far, continue to gain it, and generally leave the planet whole.

How do we get there? Well, if we're so fucking smart, then it shouldn't be a problem. And we should be able to do it without killing billions of individuals before their normal time would be up. But we are not as smart as we think we are, and we are no different than any other species on this planet. We certainly are not humble. Rather, we are desperate, insecure, over-compensating, fearful little creatures scurrying around the pizza, grabbing slices because we don't think there will be enough. And we are right, because we are scurrying around the pizza grabbing slices because we don't think there will be enough. We are who we are, and no better. And we could never agree on who should stop the grabbing. So we'll just let the pizza run out. Earth can only make so much pizza.