Is Hunting and Gathering Really Better Than Agriculture?
Popcorn Overlook, Lake Burton, Georgia
Answering the question of the title of this entry, an article first published 37 years ago written by Jared Diamond says, “YES!”
Comprehending precisely why civilization is unsustainable requires a rather extensive knowledge of the technology of agriculture. But it isn’t enough to simply understand agriculture in and of itself, one must also comprehend how ALL technology use reduces and/or removes negative feedbacks which once used to keep our numbers in check with the rest of nature. Agriculture may have started this process in earnest, but it also provided for innovation in many other fields (pun intended) as I wrote about in this article. Language (both oral speech and written material such as this article) and fire and simple technologies preceded agriculture and were formative innovations. Just like everything else in this blog, these innovations were all seen to be good things by most people until we “lifted the hood to see what’s underneath.”
That’s the one true thing about this blog – that I keep finding more and more items which we were all conditioned to believe are good things which in reality have very dark sides to them. Agriculture, technology, civilization, and quite literally many more subjects (those three main topics cover a LOT of ground!) ALL have dark sides making them unsustainable. So, to be honest, we’ve been running down the road to extinction for a very long time. We just didn’t really know it, and for most people, The Limits to Growth study was probably the first time such a concept even entered one’s mind. William Catton, Jr. brought a reminder to us in 1980 in Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
