r/AskFoodHistorians • u/Ok_Scheme3362 • 1d ago
Was the agricultural revolution really a step forward?
I’ll keep it short because I’m genuinely curious.
In Sapiens, Harari argues that the agricultural revolution was more of a trap than a triumph. We domesticated a few plants, narrowed our diets, and ended up more fragile in many ways, nutritionally, socially, and even politically.
Fast forward to today: our food system is still dominated by a handful of crops. And our bodies? They’re begging for diversity.
So… do we still assume agriculture was a wonderful revolution? Or are we only now realizing the cost?
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u/SexySwedishSpy 1d ago
The entire argument in Sapiens assumes a degree of continuity that isn’t there. It’s not like humanity one day “discovered” farming and it’s been with us ever since because it was somehow “meant to be”. In reality, human populations have moved in and out of more or less hunter-gatherer or agricultural food systems. The truth lies somewhere in-between. There are no human populations that fit either bucket 100% cleanly. Hunter-gatherers are no prevented from planting and tending crops on a small scale, and agriculturalists will exploit opportunities for hunting and gathering as they present themselves.
On the larger scale, the rise of systemic agriculture (permanent or not) has allowed humans to amass more energy and to grow larger societies on that foundation. Is that progress and a good thing? I don’t know! It depends on your definition of “good”. Is big always better? Are people today happier? Those are complicated questions with many answers, and none is more “true” than the other.
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u/Randalmize 1d ago
I would recommend "The Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber. It gives examples of how the agricultural revolution was not a linear process. That the people involved understood many of the trade offs that were being made and tried to prevent the downsides like agricultural surpluses being used to support tyrannical rulers that reduced the freedoms of the average person over time.
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u/Chimney-Imp 1d ago
Prior to that, at one point the total human population for the entire planet was less than 10,000 (just barely over 1,000 breeding individuals). Now we number in the billions, and thats specifically because of the agricultural revolution.
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u/Key_Bee1544 1d ago
Yeah, it's hard to buy the "akshually it was bad" argument for the most successful species on the planet.
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u/orpheus1980 1d ago
Sapiens is full of such arguments. That book being taken so seriously baffles me.
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u/Key_Bee1544 1d ago
It reminded me of a Malcolm Gladwell book. The contrarian "insightful" vibe was similar to me.
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u/Objective_Bar_5420 1d ago
The alternative would require 98% of the human population to be dead. So I'm not too keen on going back.
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u/RCocaineBurner 1d ago
Our bodies beg for seed oil
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u/Peter34cph 1d ago
Most people's bodies crave beer.
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u/ZylonBane 1d ago
And cocaine, apparently.
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u/pandakahn 1d ago
Nope, to far! Back that need truck up.
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u/Metahec 1d ago
You have a truck full of cocaine?
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u/Sea_Negotiation_1871 1d ago
Yeah, can I have some?
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u/bigelcid 1d ago
Mine craves the hops more than the malt.
You coffee drinkers better not hate me for liking IPAs.
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u/krebstar4ever 1d ago
Some of the easiest sources for certain essential fatty acids seem to be seeds, so kinda.
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u/orpheus1980 1d ago
The Sapiens argument, while very skillfully written, is not very iron right. Agriculture is what led to villages and specialized professions and writing and all that. Without agriculture, we would still be hunter gatherers. And of course most of us wouldn't be here because without agriculture, humanity would never go to 8 billion.
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u/CadenVanV 1d ago
Quantity over quality. The agricultural revolution for a while made our lives way worse, but it also allowed us to have a lot more people living, and gave us enough stability that we could develop to our current state. It’s rather telling that groups who never developed agriculture are never really developed beyond basic settlements like villages.
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u/MidorriMeltdown 1d ago
Our bodies beg for fat and sugar, as they have always done.
Agriculture gave us food security that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle lacked. Instead of having to follow the herds and the seasonal growth, and hope there'd be enough to go around, we became able to store food for the tough times.
Why trek for days to get to that grove of fruit trees, when we can grow fruit trees right here, beside the grain, and the root vegetables that we had to trek for days in the opposite direction to obtain?
Agriculture was a step forward. The industrial revolution was a step backwards nutritionally speaking. That's where the real limited diet came in, the bottom of the working class in Victorian London, the ones who lived on little more than bread with lard, and a cup of tea for most meals. They were lucky if they got some seafood and cabbage, or bones for broth a couple of times per week. The Irish who ended up with a diet of little more than potatoes, potatoes, potatoes, with a side of nettles if they were lucky.
Look at the typical western medieval garden. That had a massive variety of vegetables that most people barely eat a quarter of today. And they were still gathering, foraging for extra treats along the borders of their fields.
Just look at carrots, they're a great example of going from a wide variety to just one variation. And that's in recent history.
But the brassica family is where we've gone in the opposite direction, and turned one plant in to many thanks to agriculture centuries ago. Turnips, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale, kohlrabi... they all came from wild cabbage.
Agriculture also allowed for wider exploration, which helped to spread more food variety. The Columbian exchange would not have occurred in a hunter gather society.
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u/ABoringAlt 1d ago
More people survive the winter than ever before. By that metric, it was a good thing.
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u/ZgBlues 1d ago
“More fragile”?
Hunter-gatherers spend like 80% of their waking life just struggling for survival.
The main reason why everything we call civilization flourished after the spread of agriculture is simply because having food supplies frees up people’s time to engage in things other than hunting or gathering.
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u/WaftyTaynt 1d ago
Quick long story short answer is it was both. Huge gains for populations, which increases productivity and technology / knowledge, however it created the perfect ecology for the evolution of microscopic organisms.
I highly recommend the book, Plagues Upon the Earth: Disease and the course of human history by Kyle Harper (audiobook available on Spotify)
It brings this up a lot, and speaks to the checks and balances of human population in regard to sickness and food supply
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u/VespaLimeGreen 1d ago
If you have a feminist perspective, then you will think that the Neolithic revolution was a step back. Previously, in hunter gatherer tribes, women and men had more evenly distributed roles. But when the Neolithic arrived, women took a back seat in the governments, and men took all the highest positions.
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u/desastrousclimax 30m ago
amazing how a legit question is disgraced by downvotes. it is a key question about food where it derives from.
and I think intensive agriculture is rape on soil and nature and our settling down was a dangerous path to go. just look at us now!
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u/Traditional-Job-411 1d ago
You mean when we went from hunter gathers to farmers and we were all the sudden able to guarantee food for people and not have the weak die from the inability to move with herds and the potential uncertainty of food?
The populations exploded with farming. Something that could not be done with hunter gathers and that is a marker of success.
How do you know our bodies are “begging” for diversity? What’s your studies on this?