# Any cultures give up on agriculture? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 9, 2015, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cultures-give-up-on-agriculture/727348 "2015-08-09T01:08:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cultures-give-up-on-agriculture/727348/41 "2015-08-09T15:22:52Z")
A minor point perhaps. But it seems to me there is a BIG difference between knowing “hey, you can grow shit and eat it” and “here’s all the details you need to succesfully grow shit to eat”. The loss of knowledge of the latter seems pretty easy. The lose of the former not so much. But if you don’t know the later, then knowledge of the former doesn’t do much for you. Hell, I’m 21st century man. With the internet. And disposable income. And modern seed and plants and insecticides. With lots of free time on my side. In a moderate climate. The best I every did was grow some $100 tomatoes and some hot peppers. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cultures-give-up-on-agriculture/727348/42 "2015-08-09T17:28:33Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I can think of one culture that was forced to abandoned agriculture and lost all knowledge of it: Jewish culture. For many centuries, Jews were forbidden from owning land or working it as serfs, and it was only in the early 20th Century did Jews start farming again in any considerable numbers. > > Jews never became hunter-gatherers, though. But they didn’t lose the knowledge it existed, which is part of what John Clay wants. They were a subsector of larger cultures in which they were restricted from that particular kind of job, but that’s like saying that in many locations women had no knowledge of blacksmithing. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cultures-give-up-on-agriculture/727348/43 "2015-08-09T18:16:25Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > What is your source that most of the Amerindians became hunter-gatherers? When the English began settling in North America in the 1600s, most of the native population were farmers. Hunter-gatherers would be widely dispersed in small groups, but all up and down the Eastern part of what is now the US there were settlements of farmers. Agreed about the 1600s. They were almost all farmers at that point, that’s in the canonical pilgrims at Plymouth Rock story. Even in the early 1800s most Indians on the east cost were still farmers. Then along came Andrew Jackson. > [@JohnClay](#): > > The reason I’m asking is to do with the Bible. I think Adam and Cain were farmers while Abel domesticated animals. I wonder if it is reasonable to believe some of their descendants lost this knowledge. Any more examples would be appreciated In the stories in Genesis, Cain was a farmer while Abel was a herder. Except we’re talking about Antediluvian cultures here, which would have been completely wiped out except for Noah and his family. And what did Noah do after the flood? > [@NIV](#): > > Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. So Noah and his descendants had agriculture. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cultures-give-up-on-agriculture/727348/44 "2015-08-09T18:26:12Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Agreed about the 1600s. They were almost all farmers at that point, that’s in the canonical pilgrims at Plymouth Rock story. Even in the early 1800s most Indians on the east cost were still farmers. But is there any evidence that any time before then, but after 1491 “most” Indians were hunter-gatherers? I don’t think so. > [@](#): > > Then along came Andrew Jackson. He did not turn farmers into hunter-gatherers. He relocated farmers to other areas where they farmed, or lived dependent on government provisions. At least the ones who survived did. ---
**Author:** ![JohnClay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c37758/32.png) [@JohnClay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnClay)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cultures-give-up-on-agriculture/727348/45 "2015-08-09T22:08:52Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > A minor point perhaps. > > But it seems to me there is a BIG difference between knowing “hey, you can grow shit and eat it” and “here’s all the details you need to succesfully grow shit to eat”. > > The loss of knowledge of the latter seems pretty easy. The lose of the former not so much. But if you don’t know the later, then knowledge of the former doesn’t do much for you. > > Hell, I’m 21st century man. With the internet. And disposable income. And modern seed and plants and insecticides. With lots of free time on my side. In a moderate climate. The best I every did was grow some $100 tomatoes and some hot peppers. The people could grow crops of what they usually “gather” ---
**Author:** ![Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b487fb/32.png) [@Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walken_After_Midnight)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cultures-give-up-on-agriculture/727348/46 "2015-08-09T23:11:19Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > And how many of those groups would be unaware of the existence of agriculture? I doubt that any would be. The paper I linked to lists only two examples of probable or certain instances of agriculturalists reverting to hunter-gatherers - the Mlabri of Thailand and the Moriori of the Chatham Islands. If one is to add the the qualifier that such peoples are “not even aware of the possibility of agriculture” then I would imagine that the probability is close to zero. One could add a follow-up question: are there any people in the world today that are unaware of agriculture? I suspect that the number would be miniscule if any. The world is a vanishingly small place. One could also ask what is “knowledge of agriculture”? All it takes is a hunter-gatherer group to gather some fruit or vegetables from one place, carry them to another place to eat, consequently discarding the seeds and other inedible parts. Then the next year the hunter-gatherer group returns to the same location and sees fruit or vegetables are growing where the seeds were dumped the previous year. Humans have been hunter-gatherers for tens of thousands of years with brains pretty much identical to our own, so I would think the connection between seeds and new food growing has been made many times. Many existing hunter-gatherers are “semi-agricultural” in that they return to places where previous generations, distant ancestors even, have “semi-cultivated” by, for example, planting the seeds of the fruit they’ve just gathered and eaten before moving on. Then the big follow-up question. Research has shown that hunter-gatherers tend to have better health while working less to get the calorie intake of agriculturalists. So why did we as, effectively, just another animal species in the World start settling down into fixed locations and developing culture, technology and so on - that which “separates us from the animals”. That’s still a matter for debate so better suited for Great Debates! ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cultures-give-up-on-agriculture/727348/47 "2015-08-09T23:16:56Z")
I knew a professor back in the day. He claimed people went from hunter/gatherer to farmers so they could grow stuff to make wine/beer. ---
**Author:** ![Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b487fb/32.png) [@Walken\_After\_Midnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walken_After_Midnight)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cultures-give-up-on-agriculture/727348/48 "2015-08-09T23:39:26Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > I knew a professor back in the day. He claimed people went from hunter/gatherer to farmers so they could grow stuff to make wine/beer. I’ve read similar, and that can be expanded from wine and beer to any drug or mind-altering substance. It’s certainly _one_ theory that the reason we, as humans, settled down is to have a constant supply of our fix. Looking at humans today, it’s not an unreasonable hypothesis! ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cultures-give-up-on-agriculture/727348/49 "2015-08-10T09:56:42Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I can think of one culture that was forced to abandoned agriculture and lost all knowledge of it: Jewish culture. For many centuries, Jews were forbidden from owning land or working it as serfs, and it was only in the early 20th Century did Jews start farming again in any considerable numbers. > . It seemed to me Jews could be farmers in the Holy Roman Empire and in Poland. What about the Ottoman empire? And they obviously didn’t lost knowledge of it, thzey just had to open their eyes to see how farming was done. ---
**Author:** ![Crazier\_Catlady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Crazier\_Catlady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazier_Catlady)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cultures-give-up-on-agriculture/727348/50 "2015-08-10T11:26:33Z")
Lots of city kids today think milk and bread are made in factories. You could say they don’t know about the existence of agriculture… ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cultures-give-up-on-agriculture/727348/51 "2015-08-10T15:11:02Z")
> [@Walken\_After\_Midnight](#): > > Then the big follow-up question. Research has shown that hunter-gatherers tend to have better health while working less to get the calorie intake of agriculturalists. So why did we as, effectively, just another animal species in the World start settling down into fixed locations and developing culture, technology and so on - that which “separates us from the animals”. That’s still a matter for debate so better suited for Great Debates! H/G groups are more prone to being completely wiped out by one bad season. Farming communities thrive because they can store food for longer times and feed more people per unit area. > [@billfish678](#): > > I knew a professor back in the day. He claimed people went from hunter/gatherer to farmers so they could grow stuff to make wine/beer. It’s a question of what was the first agricultural product. Traditionally, it was thought to be bread (or something like it), but it could have been beer. Wine, maybe, but more likely beer. That assumes, of course, that there was one, singular “first” agricultural product. That may be so in any given settled area, but let’s keep in mind that agriculture was “discovered” at least 3 separate times in human history. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cultures-give-up-on-agriculture/727348/52 "2015-08-10T16:12:02Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I can think of one culture that was forced to abandoned agriculture and lost all knowledge of it: Jewish culture. For many centuries, Jews were forbidden from owning land or working it as serfs, and it was only in the early 20th Century did Jews start farming again in any considerable numbers. > > Jews never became hunter-gatherers, though. Was that only true of Europe/Russia or was it also true for Jews in the Middle East & North Africa? I also don’t really think that counts as ‘losing knowledge’ of it. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cultures-give-up-on-agriculture/727348/53 "2015-08-10T16:29:30Z")
> [@Grim\_Render](#): > > The Amazon rainforest appears to have contained vast, heavily farmed landscapes in 1491. I dont know how many Amazon tribes continued small scale farming, but I dont think it is impossible that some reverted to a total hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Most Amazon tribes remained agriculturalists - not on the scale the _terra preta_ would indicate, but not HGs (although there were a few of those) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-cultures-give-up-on-agriculture/727348.md?page=2)