Just the other day I stumbled across an article by the very over-rated historian Jared Diamond in which he championed the notion that the development of agriculture had been one of the worst mistakes in human history.
Instead he praises the pre-farming hunter-gatherer lifestyle. This is the sort of farking idiocy that debases modern academia.
Yes, he admits, agriculture boosted the population. And why was the population so much lower in a hunter-gatherer society? Was it because those noble savages knew the long lost ancient art of turning deer-guts into condoms? No, it was because of near universal starvation and death by wildlife.
"Natural" (whatever that is), often isn't what it's cracked up to be. Bitsofnews.com Giving you the latest bits.
Sure, the agriculturalists outbred the hunter-gatherers. But the skeletal record implies that the latter were better nourished as individuals than contemporary farmers (and probably better nourished than your average African smallholder today).
Seen from a global ecological perspective, it might have been better for the planet if we had remained within the hunter-gatherer niche (although none of us would be here today). We certainly would not have "overgrazed" the available resources to the present extent.
But we're already on this bus, so that point's moot. "Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease." - Kurt Vonnegut
