-----Original Message-----
From: Tor Forde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Eva Durant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; list futurework
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wednesday, August 12, 1998 8:07 PM
Subject: Re: chimpanzeehood
>Ed Weick wrote, etc.:
Tor,
It wasn't me that wrote that the human population was similar in number to
the ape population prior to agriculture, or that agriculture visited some
kind of
catastophe on the world. I don't know about the first, and don't believe
the second.
The only important point I tried to make about agriculture is that its
invention permitted people to accumulate a surplus that would permit
survival in difficult times and would, once the surplus was sufficiently
large, permit population to grow and the detachment of part of that
population from food production. In "The Economy of Cities" Jane Jacobs
suggests that urban development was the driving force in the development of
agriculture - i.e., the fact that people began concentrating in cities and
could not produce their own food meant that a system had to be developed
to produce food for them. Perhaps this was so.
I don't know why someone would suggest that health deteriorated with the
development of agriculture. It may have in some cases. For example, the
Indian population of the Caribbean was undoubtedly healthier before
Europeans
converted the islands to sugar plantations. By the time the sugar
plantations were well advanced, the native population was not only
unhealthy, it was largely dead. However, in much of early Europe, it's
probable that the transition to agriculture led to a healthier population.
Of course, climate played a very important role in agricultural productivity
and the ability of agriculture to sustain a population. A large
agriculturally-based population was vulnerable to adverse changes in
climate, but then so was a hunting and gathering population, even a small
one. An
agricultural population was also on something of a treadmill even during
normal times. Agriculture could stimulate rapid population growth, but to
feed a growing population you needed more agriculture. Population had to
either move out from the center as it probably did in much of early Europe
or raise more productive crops as it probably did in much of China, or both.
If none of these things were possible, people would certainly become less
healthy and would die off.
Except perhaps in some tropical areas, where there was an abundance of wild
food, hunting and gathering populations were typically more vulnerable than
agricultural populations. Hunters and gatherers in colder climates could
produce little by way of a surplus - some dried meat and fish, some berries,
to help tide them over the winter, but that's about it.
Ed Weick
