How in the sweet name of everything holy did we ever come to live in a world where such a thing can even be created? And how is it possible that those 490 calories can be served to me for—assuming I make the federal minimum wage here in the United States— And most importantly, should I be delighted or alarmed to live in this strange world of relative abundance? Well, this may not strictly be history, since we don’t have much of a written record, but thanks to archaeology and paleobiology, we do have some idea of the prehistoric world. let’s go to the thought bubble. 15,000 years ago, humans were foragers and hunters. Foraging meant gathering fruits, nuts, and also wild grains and grasses. Hunting allowed for a protein-rich diet, so long as you could find something with meat to kill. By far the best hunting gig in the prehistoric world was fishing, which is one of the reasons that, if you look at the history of people populating the planet, we tended to run for the coasts and stay there. Marine life was A. abundant, and B. relatively unlikely to eat you. While we tend to think that the lives of foragers (hunter/gatherers) was pretty bad, fossil evidence suggests that they actually had it pretty good. Their bones and teeth are healthier than those of agriculturalists, and anthropologists who have studied the remaining forager peoples have noted that they actually work a lot fewer hours than the rest of us, and spend more time on art, music, storytelling—and It’s important to note that cultivation of crops seems to have arisen independently over the course of millennia in a number of places, from Africa to China to the Americas. Using crops that naturally grew nearby—rice in Southeast Asia, maize in Mexico, potatoes in the Andes, wheat in the fertile crescent, yams in West Africa —people around the world began to abandon their foraging for agriculture. Since so many communities made this choice independently, it must have been a good choice, right, even though it meant less music and ? Thanks, Thought Bubble. Okay, to answer that question, let’s first take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of agrictulture. Advantage: Controllable food supply. You might have droughts or floods but if you’re growing the crops and breeding them to be healthier and heartier, you get a bit more say in whether you starve.
How in the sweet name of everything holy did we ever come to live in a world where such a thing can even be created? And how is it possible that those 490 calories can be served to me for—assuming I make the federal minimum wage here in the United States— And most importantly, should I be delighted or alarmed to live in this strange world of relative abundance? Well, this may not strictly be history, since we don’t have much of a written record, but thanks to archaeology and paleobiology, we do have some idea of the prehistoric world. let’s go to the thought bubble. 15,000 years ago, humans were foragers and hunters. Foraging meant gathering fruits, nuts, and also wild grains and grasses. Hunting allowed for a protein-rich diet, so long as you could find something with meat to kill. By far the best hunting gig in the prehistoric world was fishing, which is one of the reasons that, if you look at the history of people populating the planet, we tended to run for the coasts and stay there. Marine life was A. abundant, and B. relatively unlikely to eat you. While we tend to think that the lives of foragers (hunter/gatherers) was pretty bad, fossil evidence suggests that they actually had it pretty good. Their bones and teeth are healthier than those of agriculturalists, and anthropologists who have studied the remaining forager peoples have noted that they actually work a lot fewer hours than the rest of us, and spend more time on art, music, storytelling—and It’s important to note that cultivation of crops seems to have arisen independently over the course of millennia in a number of places, from Africa to China to the Americas. Using crops that naturally grew nearby—rice in Southeast Asia, maize in Mexico, potatoes in the Andes, wheat in the fertile crescent, yams in West Africa —people around the world began to abandon their foraging for agriculture. Since so many communities made this choice independently, it must have been a good choice, right, even though it meant less music and ? Thanks, Thought Bubble. Okay, to answer that question, let’s first take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of agrictulture. Advantage: Controllable food supply. You might have droughts or floods but if you’re growing the crops and breeding them to be healthier and heartier, you get a bit more say in whether you starve.
aarg._revolution.docx