The worst mistake in human history

I believe it was Jared Diamond who applied the title of this post to the so-called neolithic revolution. Beginning about 12,000 years ago in the Levant - the region where the Bible stories we are reading are set -- and occurring at various later times around the world, people started cultivating crops. This meant abandoning the nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and living in permanent settlements. Exactly why this happened, and why it happened so universally even in very distant places, is a matter of much dispute, and I won ' t get into that here. Now you might think this happened because agriculture makes people healthier, more prosperous, and more secure. But you would be wrong. Archaeological evidence shows convincingly that when people abandoned hunting and gathering in favor of agriculture, they became much less healthy. Average stature fell from something like 5 ' 10 " for men and 5 ' 6 " for women to 5 ' 5 " and 5 ' 1 " . It took until the 20th Century for people to regain the adult stature typical of 10,000 BC. Life expectancy fell, and people were plagued by nutritional deficiency and infectious diseases that were very uncommon in the earlier epoch.However, cultivating cereals and other crops did mean that the population density could be much higher, because there were a lot more calories available. How, you may ask, did hunter-gatherers maintain their low population density? Ah, that ' s the dark side of Eden. They apparently had means of contraception, but f...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs