Worst Mistake

The decision to increase food production over limiting population did have many negative connotations for the physical well-being of humans. When considering human nature, it also seems inevitable.

Jared Diamond is correct in asserting the security of having a large quantity of food to harvest was offset by many negative factors. The restricted variety of foods in farmers’ diets does not provide the vitamins, minerals and nutrients that the hunter-gatherer’s diet does and leads to stunted growth. This is evidenced by the decrease in height of the Greek and Turkish male, from 5’9” at the end of the Ice Age (and during the hunter-gatherer era) to 5’3” by the year 3000 BC (after the adoption of agriculture). The most significant change is the lives of these males during this time period is going from a hunting-gathering society to an agricultural society. Diamond also notes other important findings, such as research done on 800 Indian skeletal remains found in burial mounds in the Ohio and Illinois river valleys. Compared to their hunter-gatherer ancestors, the early Indian farmers who practiced intensive maize farming techniques had increased indicators of malnutrition, anemia, infectious disease, and degenerative spine conditions. Again, the most significant change in their society was the move from hunting-gathering to farming. The incentive to farm was to provide food for ever-increasing numbers of population. This in turn led to an increase in disease and parasites because of crowded conditions. These diseases and parasites never had a chance to take foothold and spread among the small groups (around 30 members) of hunter-gatherers that were constantly on the move. One other pitfall of farming was the reliance of one main crop for a food source. Drought and insect infestations could nearly wipe out entire communities.

The shift to farming was inevitable because humans as a whole covet power and possessions. With farming, land ownership came to a chosen few, and with land ownership came wealth and power. Large families provided a greater source of personal economic power – the more bodies in a family, the more work that can be done. It is also in human nature to want to see the “family tree” continued into the future, and farming gave early families a better chance to fulfill that desire.