Agricultural Devolution [1]

The Agricultural Revolution, beginning about 10,000 – 12,000 years ago, is often considered to be one of the greatest inventions or innovations of human history. Where would we be today if it were not for the Agricultural Revolution?

Well, that is a very good question.

Most of us would probably answer that we would be a lot worse off without agriculture. We would still be having to forage for food and hunt out prey just to eat and survive, or so the thinking goes. We would still be living in caves or crude shelters the common understanding tells us.

The Agricultural Revolution has enabled us to progress and distinguishes us from a primitive and crude existence, doesn’t it?

At least that is the story that most of us have grown up with and learnt from history books, from our parents and teachers. Agriculture is what we see every time we enter a supermarket; walking the aisles  and reaching for items off the shelf confirms our belief in the superiority of an agriculturally based society.

It is a nice and comforting story. But, it is based more on fairytale than on reality.

Agriculture just may be the most unhealthy innovation in our history. How so, I hear you ask.

The science of paleopathology has been very helpful in enabling us to gain a greater understanding of the lives of our ancestors before the advent of agriculture. From the mid-20^th century onwards paleopathology (the study of ancient disease and injury) has vastly increased our knowledge of ancient societies and their health or unhealth.

At the end of the last Ice Age (roughly 11,700 years ago) the average height of a male hunter-gatherer in Europe was 1.78 metres and 1.68 metres for the average female hunter-gatherer. The Agricultural Revolution swept from the Fertile Crescent through Europe between about 10,000 years ago and 6,000 years ago (when it reached Britain.) In that period, the average height of human beings (now agriculturalists) dropped, respectively, down to 1.60 metres for men, and 1.55 metres for women.^2,3 That is a significant decrease.

The average height of men and women in Europe has only in the past century or so returned to that of pre-Agricultural Revolution times.

Dental health also showed a decline post-Agricultural Revolution. Cavities and enamel defects appear far more frequently in the population following the take up of agriculture.

The Agricultural Revolution included the domestication of animals for the first time (apart from a few animals kept as pets previously.) This domestication became a breeding ground for a number of diseases and plagues, such as smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, and cholera. These diseases entered humans from their domesticated farm animals, and were exacerbated by human and animal densities brought about by the rise of large settlements and cities.^2,3

How did this happen?

Whereas hunter-gatherers had previously enjoyed a wide variety of food sources, agriculture focussed very much on starchy crops, e.g. corn, rice, wheat. Jared Diamond refers to this as ‘the farmers gaining cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition.’⁴

Not only was agriculture a poor substitute, it also was prone to drought, floods, fire, locusts, and other disasters likely to wipe out a whole year’s crop. Starvation became more likely following the Agricultural Revolution, not less.

Ah, but all that is behind us now, we have got over the worst of it, and now agriculture is of benefit in feeding us, isn’t it? We are now more healthy than we have ever been, we are living longer and better, are we not?

Yes, and no!

Those same three crops – corn, rice, wheat – still provide more than 50% of the calories consumed by humans.

Tuberculosis, cholera, and measles still curse the people in many countries of the world. It is sobering to note, too, that some diseases are now greater than ever before – especially those related to eating, food, and – agriculture. Obesity rates in most westernised nations have been trending upwards for many decades. Diabetes too, hardly heard of in hunter-gatherer societies, has been trending upwards – rising at a faster rate than many other chronic diseases.

But, we are living longer, are we not? Yes, we are. Life expectancy has been increasing. For many, life expectancy has doubled over the past couple of centuries. Is this longer than it was for our hunter-gatherer ancestors? Again, the answer is yes and no!

Paleopathology informs us that the life expectancy, at birth, for those living prior to the Agricultural Revolution was about 30 years – roughly the same as for Europeans two centuries ago. However, the life expectancy of hunter-gatherers is skewed towards the shorter end of the continuum because of high infant and childhood mortality. Once childhood had been surpassed, the average hunter-gatherer could expect to live for around 70 to 80 years – approximately that of today’s humans on average.

Two more questions need to be asked.

First, are we really living longer, or are we, in reality, dying longer? In other words, have we extended our life, or have we extended our death, as Stephen Jenkinson would claim.⁵ For many the last decade or two of life is actually a lengthy dying process.

Second, is it agriculture that has enabled us to live longer, or is it improvements and innovations in medical interventions? If we ponder this question, we must admit that most of our increased longevity has been because of innovations in medical knowledge and practice. Many diseases that once plagued us have declined, or been totally eradicated, not because of better nutrition and agriculture, but through medical knowledge.

Finally, let me quote Jared Diamond again. He claims that the ‘advent of agriculture…(was) the worst mistake in the history of the human race.’⁶

The history of agriculture suggests that he may be right.

Notes:

1. Devolution has two meanings. One is the transfer or delegation of power from a higher body to a lower one (e.g. from central government to local government). The second meaning is a descent to a worse state. It is the second of these meanings that is used here.

2. Jeremy Lent, The Patterning Instinct: A cultural history of humanity’s search for meaning, Prometheus Books, Maryland, USA, 2017

3. Jared Diamond, The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee, Vintage Books, London, 2002

4. Ibid. p169

5. Stephen Jenkinson, Die Wise, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 2015

6. https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race