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Jared Diamond

The Worst Mistakein the History

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Article 15

Jared Diamond teaches physiology atUCLA Medical School.

Toscience we awe dramatic changes inour smugself image. Astronomy taughtus that our earth isn't the center of theuniverse but merely one of billions ofheavenly bodies. From biology welearned thatweweren'tspecially createdby God but evolved alongwith millionsof other species. Now archaeology isdemolishing another sacred belief: thathuman history over the past millionyears has been a long tale of progress.In particular, recent discoveries suggestthatthe adoptionof agriculture, suppos­edly our most decisive step toward abetter life, was in many ways a catas­trophe from whichwe haveneverrecov­ered, With agriculture came the grosssocialand sexual inequality, the diseaseand despotism, thatcurseour existence.

At first, the evidence againstthis revi­sionist interpretation will strike twen­tieth century Americans as irrefutable.We'rebetter off in almost every respectthan people of the MiddlerAges, whoin tum had it easier thancavemen, whoin tum were better off than apes. Justcount our advantages. We enjoy themost abundant and varied foods, thebest tools and material goods, some ofthe longest and healthiest lives, in his­tory. Most of us are safe from starva­tion and predators. Weget our energy

from oil and machines, not from oursweat. What neo-Luddite among uswould trade his life for that of amedieval peasant, a caveman, or an ape?

For most of our history we support­ed ourselves by hunting and gathering:we hunted wild animalsand foraged forwild plants. It's a life that philosophershave traditionally regarded as nasty,brutish, and short. Since no food isgrown and little is stored, there is (in'this view) no respite from the strugglethat starts anew each day to find wildfoods and avoid starving. Our escapefrom this misery was facilitated only10,000 years ago, when in different partsof the world people began to domesti­cate plantsand animals.The agriculturalrevolution gradually spread until todayit's nearly universal and few tribes ofhunter-gatherers survive.

From the progressivistperspective onwhich I was brought up, to ask "Whydid almost all our hunter-gatherer an­cestors adopt agriculture?" is silly. Ofcourse they adopted it because agricul­ture is an efficient way to get more foodfor less work. Planted crops yield farmore tons per acre than roots and ber­ries. Just imagine a band of savages;exhausted from searching for nuts orchasing wild animals, suddenly gazingfor the first time at a fruit-laden orchardor a pasture full of sheep. Haw manymillisecondsdo you think it wouldtakethem to appreciate the advantages ofagriculture?

The progressivist party line some­times even goes so far as to creditagriculture with the remarkable flower­ing of art that has taken place over thepast few thousand years. Since cropscan be stored, and since it takes lesstime to pick food from a garden thanto find it in the wild, agriculture gaveus free time that hunter-gatherers neverhad. Thus it was agriculture that en­

.abled us to build the Parthenon andcompse the B-minor Mass.

While the case for the progressivistview seems overwhelming, it's hard toprove. How do you shaw that the livesof people 10,000 years ago got betterwhen they abandoned hunting andgathering for farming? Until recently,archaeologists had to resort to indirecttests, whose results (surprisingly) failedto-support the progressivist view. Here'sone example of an indirect test: Aretwentieth century hunter-gatherers real­ly worse off than farmers? Scatteredthroughout the world, several dozengroups of so-called primitive people,like the Kalahari Bushman, continue tosupportthemselves that way. It tums outthat these people haveplenty of leisuretime, sleep a good deal, and work lesshard than their farming neighbors. Forinstance, the average time devoted eachweekto obtaining food is only 12to 19hours for one group of Bushmen, 14hours or less for the Hadza nomads ofTanzania. One Bushman, when askedwhy he hadn't emulated neighboring

From D/$caver, May 1987.pp. 64-66. Copyright @ 1987 by Family Media. Reprinted by permiSSion. 91

3. THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY AND CULTURE

tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, available for study are skeletons, but"Why should we, when there are so they permit a surprising number ofmany mongongo nuts in the world?" deductions. To begin with, a skeleton

While fanners concentrate on high- reveals its owner's sex, weight, and ap-carbohydrate crops like rice and pota- proximate age. In the few cases wheretoes, the mix of wild plants and animals there are many skeletons, one can con-in the dietsof surviving hunter-gatherers struct mortality tables like the ones lifeprovides more protein and a better insurance companies use to calculatebalanceof other nutrients. In one study, expected life span and risk of death atthe Bushmen'saverage daily food intake any given age. Paleopathologists can(during a month when food was plenti- also calculate growth rates by rneasur-ful) was 2,140calories and 93 grams of ing bones of people of different ages,protein, considerably greater than the examine teeth for enamel defects (signsrecommended daily allowance for peo- of childhood malnutrition), and recog-pIe of their size. It's almost inconceiv- nize scars left on bones by anemia,able that Bushmen, who eat 75 or so tuberculosis, leprosy, and other diseases.wild plants, could die of starvation the One straightforwardexample of whatway hundreds of thousands of Irish paleopathologists have learned fromfarmers and their families did during the skeletons concerns historical changes inpotato famine of the 1840s. height. Skeletons from Greece and Tur-

So the lives of at least the surviving key show that the average height ofhunter-gatherers aren't nasty and brut- hunter-gatherers toward the end of theish, even though farmers have pushed ice ages was a generous 5 '9" for men,them into some of the world's worst real 5'5" for women. With the adoption ofestate. But modem hunter-gatherer so- agriculture, heightcrashed, and by 3000cieties that have rubbed shoulders with B.C. had reached a low of only 5'3" forfanning societies for thousands of years men, 5 ' for women. By classical timesdon't tell us about conditions before the heights were very slowly on the riseagricultural revolution. The progres- again, but modern Greeks and Turkssivist view is really making a claim havestill not regained the averageheightabout the distant past: that the lives of of their distant ancestors.primitive people improved when they Another example of paleopathologyswitched from gathering to farming. at work is the study of Indian skeletonsArchaeologists can date that switch by from burial mounds in the Illinois anddistinguishing remains of wild plants Ohio river valleys. At Dickson Mounds,and animals from those of domesticat- located near the confluence of theed ones in prehistoric garbage dumps. Spoon and illinois rivers, archaeologists

Howcan one deduce the health of the have excavated some 800 skeletons thatprehistoric garbage makers, and there- paint a picture' of health changes thatby directly test the progressivist view? occurred when a.hunter-gatherercultureThat question has become answerable gaye"way to intensive maize farmingonly in recent years, in part through the, around A.D.USO. Studies by Georgenewly emerging techniques of paleo- Annelagos and his colleagues then atpathology, the study of signs of disease the University of Massachusetts showin the remains of ancient peoples. that these early farmers paid a price for

Iq some lucky situations, the paleo- their new-found livelihood. Comparedpathologist has almost as much inaterial to the hunter-gatherers who precededto study as a pathologist today. For ex- them, the farmers had a nearly 50 perample, archaeologists in the Chilean cent increase in enamel defects indica-deserts found well preserved mummies tive of malnutrition, a fourfold increasewhose medical conditions at time of in iron-deficiency anemia (evidenced bydeath could be determined by autopsy a bone condition called porotic hyper-(DISCOVER, October). And feces of ostosis), a threefoldrise in bone lesionslong-dead Indians who lived in dry reflecting infectious disease in gener-caves in Nevadaremain sufficientlywell al, and an increase in degenerative con-preserved to be examinedfor hookworm ditions of the spine, probably reflect-and other parasites. ing a lot of hard physical labor. "Life

Usually the only human remains expectancy at birth in the pre-agri-

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cultural community was about twenty­six years," says Armelagos, "but in thepost-agricultural community it wasnineteen years. So these episodes ofnutritional stress and infectious diseasewere seriously affecting their ability tosurvive."

The evidencesuggests that the Indiansat Dickson Mounds, like many otherprimitive peoples, took up farming notby choice but from necessity in orderto feed their constantly growing num­bers. "I don't think most hunter-gath­erers farmed until they had to, and whenthey switched to farming they tradedquality for quantity," saysMark Cohenof the State University of New YorkatPlattsburgh, co-editor, with Armelagos,of one of the seminal books in the field,Paleopathology at the Origins ofAgriculture. "When I first started mak­ing that argument ten years ago, notmany people agreed with me. Now it'sbecome a respectable, albeit controver­sial, side of the debate."

There are at least three setsof reasonsto explain the findings that agriculturewas bad for health. First, hunter-gath­erers enjoyed a varied diet, while ear­ly farmers obtained most of their foodfrom one or a few starchy crops. Thefarmers gainedcheap caloriesat thecostof poor nutrition. (Today just three high­carbohydrate plants-wheat, rice, andcorn-provide the bulk of the caloriesconsumed by the human species, yeteach one is deficient in certain vitaminsor amino acids essential to life.)Second,because of dependence on a limitednumber of crops, farmers ran the riskof starvation if one crop failed. Final­ly, the mere fact that agriculture en­couraged people to clump together incrowded societies, many of which thencarried on trade with other crowded so­cieties, led to the spreadof parasites andinfectious disease. (Somearchaeologiststhink it was crowding, rather thanagriculture, that promoted disease, but ,this is a chicken-and-egg argument, be­cause crowding encourages agricultureand vice versa.) Epidemics couldn'ttakehold when populations were scatteredin small bands that constantly shiftedcamp. Tuberculosis and diarrheal dis­ease had to await the rise of farming,measles and bubonic plaguethe appear­ance of large cities.

J~idCS malnutrition, starvation, andepidemic diseases, tanning helped bringanother curse upon" humanity: deep:\i;SS divisions. Hunter-gatherers havel/tle or no stored food, and no concen­trated food sources, like an orchard ora herd of cows: they live off the wildpl llI1ts and animals they obtain each day.Therefore, there can be no kings, noclass of social parasites who grow fatem food seized from others. Only in afarming population could a healthy,non-producing elite set itself above thedsease-ridden masses. Skeletons fromCreek tombs at Mycenae c. 1500 B.C.

suggest that royals enjoyed a better dietthan commoners, since the royal skele­tons were two or three inches taller andhad better teeth (on the average, one in­stead of six cavities or missing teeth).Among Chilean mummies from c. A.D.

1000, the elite were distinguished notonly by ornaments' and gold hair clipsbut also by a fourfold lower rate of bonelesions caused by disease.

Similar contrasts in nutrition andhealth persist on a global scale today.To people in rich countries likethe U.S.,il sounds ridiculous to extol the virtuesof hunting and gathering. But Ameri­cans are an elite, dependent on oil andminerals that must often be importedtrom countries with poorer health andnutrition. Ifone could choose betweenbeing a peasant farmer in Ethiopia ora Bushman gatherer in the Kalahari,which do you think would be the bet­ter choice?

Farming may have encouraged in­equality between the sexes, as well.Freed from the need to transport theirbabies during a nomadic existence, andunder pressure to produce more handsto till the fields, farming women tend­ed to have more frequent pregnanciesthan their hunter-gatherer counter­parts-with consequent drains on theirhealth. Among the Chilean mummies,for example, more wommen than men

,. had bone lesions from- infectiousIt>+ disease.,'" Women in agricultural societies were

sometimes made beasts of burden. InNew Guinea farming communities to­day I often see women staggering un­der loads of vegetables and firewood

,I While the men walk empty-handed.Once while on a field trip there study-

ing birds, I offered to pay some villagersto carry supplies from an airstrip to mymountain camp. The heaviest item wasa nO-pound bag of rice, which I lashedto a pole and assigned to a team of fourmen to shoulder together. When I even­tually caught up with the villagers, themen were carrying light loads, whileone small womanweighing less than thebag of rice wasbent under it, support­ing its weight by a cord across hertemples.

As for the claim that agricultureencouraged the flowering of art byproviding us with leisure time, modem "hunter-gatherers have at least as mush ,"free time as do farmers. The wholet:ern­phasis on leisure time as a critical fac­tor seems to me misguided. Gorillashave had ample free time to build theirown Parthenon, had they wanted to.While post-agricultural technologicaladvances did make" new art forms pos­sible and preservation ofart easier, greatpaintings and sculptures were alreadybeing produced by hunter-gatherers15,000 years ago, and were still beingproduced as recently as the last centuryby such hunter-gatherers as some Es­kimos and the Indians of the PacificNorthwest.

Thus with the advent of agriculturean elite became better off, but most pe0­

ple became worse off. Instead of swal­lowing the progressivist party line thatwe chose agriculture because it wasgood for us, we must ask how we gottrapped by it despite its pitfalls.

One answer boils down to the adage"Might makes right." Farming couldsupport many more people than hunt­ing, albeit with a poorer quality of life.(Population densities ofhunter-gatherersare rarely over one person per tensquare miles, while tanners average 100times that.) Partly, this is becausea fieldplanted entirely in edible crops lets onefeed far more mouths thana forest withscattered edible plants. Partly, too, it'sbecause nomadic hunter-gatherers haveto keep their children spaced at four­year intervals by infanticide and othermeans, since a mother must carry hertoddler until it'sold enough to keep upwith the adults. Because farm womendon't have that burden, they can andoften do bear a child every two years.

As population densities of hunter-

15. The Worst Mistake

gatherers slowly rose at the end of theice ages, bands had to choose betweenfeeding more mouths by taking the firststeps toward agriculture, or else find­ing ways to limit growth. Some bandschose the former solution, unable to an­ticipate the evils of fanning, andseduced by the transient abundance theyenjoyed until population growth caughtup with increased food production.Such bands outbred and then drove offor killed the bands that chose to remainhunter-gatherers, because a hundredmalnourished farmers can still outfight

>. one healthy hunter. It's not that hunter­gatherers abandoned their life style, butthat those sensible enough not to aban­don it were forced out of all areas ex­cept the ones farmers didn't want.

At this point it's instructive to recallthe common complaint that archaeolo­gy is a luxury, concerned with the re­mote past, and offering no lessons forthe present. Archaeologists studying therise of farminghave reconstructed a cru­cial stage at which we made the worstmistake in human history. Forced tochoose between limiting population ortrying to increase food production, wechose the latter and ended up withstarvation, warfare, and tyranny.

Hunter-gatherers practiced the mostsuccessful and longest-lasting life stylein human, history. In contrast, we're stillstruggling with the mess into whichagriculture has tumbled us, and it's un­clear whether we can solve it. Supposethat an archaeologist who had visitedus from outer space were trying to ex­plain human history to his fellow space­lings. He might illustrate the results ofhis digs by a 24-hour clock on whichone hour represents 100,000 years ofreal past time. If the history of the hu­man race began at midnight, then wewould now be almost at the end of ourfirst day. We lived as hunter-gatherersfor nearly the whole of that day, frommidnight through dawn, noon, and sun­set. Finally, at 11:54 p.m., we adoptedagriculture. As our second midnight ap­proaches, will the plight of famine­stricken peasants gradually spread toengulf us all? Or will we somehowachieve those seductive blessings thatwe imagine behind agriculture's glitter­ing facade, and that have so far eludedus?

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