Yeah, “mainly”.
I made a casual comment about some of the OT posts and was asked to explain it and I did.
I had no intention or desire to reduce “every conversation about the relative efficiency of various social and lifestyle constructs to some linear discussion about the evolutionary goals of the human genome”. That is being a bit presumptuous.
Long threads often have asides without derailing anything.
That’s the question anthropologists have been both asking themselves and trying to answer since they started paying attention to the fairly abundant evidence that an agrarian lifestyle is a pretty poor one in some ways. The advantages have mostly been pointed out in this thread already: higher population and higher population density, which give advantages in warfare and provide a chance for greater specialization. People on this board often refer to Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, for good reason: it’s a pretty easy read, it gives sources for more reading, and it does a good job of explaining and connecting a lot of ideas that have been around in the field for a while. Since I’m not an expert, just someone who has read about this subject a bit, I recommend you start there for more and better information than I could possibly provide.
Blake, both of my assumptions are true. More species you can immediately use for food means less chance of starving because one of them suddenly gets scarce. If your diet is very dependent on one crop, and that crop fails, you’re going to be hurting a lot more than someone who has several other species to choose from, some of which might even be completely unaffected. That’s actually related to a point you made earlier, that the problem is one of volume. We have access to thousands of different foods, but we only use a few because the yields are high enough, and in many areas there is one crop that provides the majority of the calories. It is a non-trivial problem to switch to another staple crop, and the alternate crop isn’t just growing in the field, waiting for us to harvest it. It takes time and a commitment to, in some cases, vastly different growing techniques to switch crops. This is very different from the hunter-gatherer option of switching to a previously under-utilized source of food that already exists and is immediately ready to exploit.
Agriculturalists can’t possibly make up the difference in their diets with wild food because there are too damn many of them. Your idea of Englishmen gathering acorns is absurd. Where in a city are you going to hunt game and gather plants? Are people going to start eating their pet dogs and cats or something? Calling that an assumption is just silly.
In addition, you’re assuming that it’s easy to trade for food. In the past, that wasn’t necessarily the case. Massive upheaval and war are almost always connected with a famine. Sometimes war is the cause, sometimes it is an effect. What saves us from starving now is our huge trade network and a history of peaceful trade. Modern agriculture is vastly different from the past in that we can move massive amounts of goods from one place to another very quickly and relatively easily.
Using something I’m familiar with for an example, between 40% and 60% of the calories in the Japanese diet come from rice, some of which isn’t even grown locally. Without a modern trade network, the failure of the rice crop in Japan would lead to about half the people starving for a couple of years, assuming they didn’t eat the seed grain out of desperation, which would prolong and worsen the famine. They don’t starve because they can buy rice from other countries, but I guarantee that Japan does not have the capacity to feed its population without trade. The trade system still breaks down occasionally. One of the major causes of WWII was economics. More recently, north Africa has provided plenty of examples of what happens when the trade networks break down.
You earlier pointed out some mechanisms that hunter-gatherers use to keep their population under the carrying capacity of the area, but you later make some statements that make me question whether you understand what’s going on here. Staying under the carrying capacity means that there isn’t going to be starvation and huge hardship precisely because the population is already at the level it should be for the conditions. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be a big party when conditions suck, but they sure aren’t going to be suffering anywhere near as much as people who depend on agriculture. You’ve made the claim for hardship every 5-15 years a few times; I’d like to see a source for that now, because I think you’re overstating the case.
Something else I’d like to point out is that most of our information about hunter-gatherers comes from people living in very marginal areas. Deserts and arctic areas are completely unlivable for agricultural and industrial people without massive technological support. Bad times for those areas are almost certainly much worse for anyone who has to live off the land than they would be in areas with access to more and more varied sources of food.
I know a few people who are considered lazy screw ups at work that are great hunters and fishermen. They don’t consider it a job, but as a natural part of thier human existance. OTOH, I can’t imagine Bill Gates being a great hunter. He most likely would have been excluded from the hunt due to his poor eyesight and may have been viewed as a screw up. Perhaps he would have tried to create and corner the tool making or fur trade markets. Thus bringing an end to the noble Garden of Eden type Hunter Gathering existance we seem to be painting here.
Now that I think of it, BIll does kind of look a snake . . . 
Well if it’s true then provide a reference to support it. If you can’t then it’s not true, it’s baseless opinion.
A person who loses 75% of their calories because 1 crop fails is no more hurting than someone who loses 75% of their calories because 25 crops fail.
If the problem is lack of diversity then the problem is lack of diversity. If the problem is overpopulation then the problem is overpopulation. You are trying to argue two completely unrelated issues.
20 agriculturalists are not going to have any more trouble making up a deficiency with alternative crops than 20 HGs. And 200 HGs aren’t going to have it any easier than 200 agriculturalists.
Once again, you are attempting to argue two totally unrelated points simultaneously.
Where in a city do you think people going to grow enough food to support themselves? Cities are food sinks, not food production areas. It doesn’t matter how the food is produced or how many crops go into that production, cities simply don’t; produce food. As such the inability of cities to produce food is irrelevant to the relative merits of different food production methods.
No, I never made any such assumption.
Precisely. It has nothing to do with the diversity of food available, it’s got to do with the gross amount of nutrient per capita. It doesn’t matter whether those nutrients come from one species or 1000. If a HG group stays under the carrying capacity of 1000 food species they won’t starve, and if they stay under the carrying capacity of 1 food species they still won’t starve.
I’m glad we agree that it’s staying below carrying capacity that enables HGs to avoid starvation and nothing at all to do with diversity of food sources.
Sure, what areas of the world would you like covered?
Australia, Brazil, Southern Africa and India: “The length of the ENSO cycle is remarkably variable, ranging from two to eight years… IN Australia the situation brought about by El Nino is the reverse… evaporation and cloud formation is decreased….droughts, sometimes of years duration, bushfires reign unchecked, winds strip the ground of soil and plant life withers. Effects are felt as far away as India where the monsoon is delayed. Brazil, Central America and Southern Africa an also experience drought.” Flannery, T. “The Future Eaters” Reed New Holland.
India: “Prior to 1920 drought and famine could be counted on to strike India on the average once every 8.5 years.” van Aandel, T. A History of
Global Change. Cambridge University Press
Europe: “The mean number … by grid cell… of extreme…European drought events, on a time scale of 12 months, is 6 ± 2…during the 20th century” LLOYD-HUGHES, B “A Drought Climatology For Europe” Intl. J. Climat. 22
And so on and so forth. I’ve never heard anyone actually claim that extreme conditions occurred at anything other than 5-15 years anywhere in the world. Perhaps now you might show us some figures that contradict this accepted wisdom?
Can we please see a reference to support this claim. You are arguing form assertion here. You assert that more varied food sources leads to less starvation and then use that assertion as evidence that desert areas must be harder to live in.
Why would bad times be harder in desert areas than in areas other areas.
To give you some idea why this doesn’t stand to reason I would point out that you can find more species of plants or birds in a hectare of many desert areas in Australia or Southern Africa then you will find in the whole of western Europe. So what evidence do you have that desert areas provide less varied food supplies than other areas? Logic says that many deserts will provide more food sources.
I’ve just about had enough of this debate. I feel like I’m beating my head against a brick wall.
I’m not trying to say that hunter-gatherers never go hungry, I’m not trying to say that agriculturalists are doomed to starvation, I’m not trying to say that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is the end-all and be-all of existence. I’ve been putting information out that is well supported and available to the layman. I am a layman, not an expert, so I don’t even have any esoteric knowledge to bring to the discussion.
You have got to be kidding me. Have you even paid attention to anything I said in my last post? History provides plenty of examples of why relying on a single crop for most of your food is dangerous. Do the incidents of the Irish Potato Famine or the Dust Bowl in the US ring any bells?
With hunter-gatherers, we are not talking about crops, and the situation is fundamentally different. I’ll say it again, farmers cannot simply switch to something else. If they weren’t able to grow something a year ahead of time and they weren’t able to store enough food to last until a new harvest comes in, they’re going to starve. Hunter-gatherers have unexploited, under-utilized food sources all around them. Those food sources may not be abundant enough to live on full time without being in danger of overuse, but they can be used to support the population temporarily, and they are immediately available.
They are not unrelated. As I said before, greater diversity in your food sources means that there is less of a chance of a single problem affecting all of your food sources. Some species are more resistant to drought, a disease that strikes one will leave any other species that are not part of its life cycle almost entirely unaffected. As long as there are other species that you can use to maintain your calorie intake, your population should not be affected if one or a few species are temporarily troubled.
Yes, they are, for the reasons I gave in my previous post. It takes time to grow alternative crops. If you’re lucky and you planned well, you have enough food to last until the alternative can be harvested. If not, you’re starving. Hunter-gatherers are not guaranteed to have an easy time of it, but it seems that even in times of hardship while they may go hungry, they rarely starve.
No, once again you are ignoring almost everything I wrote. How many acorns do you have to gather to feed people who used to rely on acres worth of wheat? How reasonable is the expectation that you can make up the difference with wild species? The whole reason certain species were chosen for domestication is because it’s possible to feed lots of people with them. It’s not a simple thing to say, “We’ll make up our beef shortage by raising rabbits.”
I’ll concede this point, since it’s true that cities are consumers, not producers of food. I will also note that you seem not to understand facetiousness.
It’s pretty obvious that you did. You say that agriculturalists have 10,000 species available to them. Really? All in one place? That’s amazing. How do you get 10,000 species except through trade? They cannot possibly be raised in one spot, since the conditions for at least half of those species probably cannot be met at a particular latitude.
Yes, we agree on this point. My problem is that you agree here but then disagree with me on the diversity issue. The two are connected.
You have done nothing to show that these conditions adversely affect hunter-gatherers. That was the citation I wanted you to provide, in part because I’m curious about it. I know about climate change, I want to know how you think it causes problems for hunter-gatherers. From what I know of the issue, hunter-gatherers are much less affected by climate change than are agriculturalists.
Those areas are already marginal with fewer resources to exploit than more temperate climates. You are, yet again, misinterpreting my argument. It is not just the sheer number of different species, it is the number of species that can be used for food. Unless I’m greatly mistaken, we were talking about food, not about the number of different cricket species you can find in a square km of land.
You cannot compare Europe to someplace like Australia for the simple reason that humans have drastically changed Europe over millennia of extensive occupation. In contrast, Australia is relatively unchanged, in part because it’s hard to make a living there unless you follow a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. If you’d like to assert that it’s easier to find food in desert or arctic tundra conditions than in temperate climes, go ahead. It’ll be interesting watching you try to prove it.
Scratch that, it won’t really be interesting because, as I said above, I’ve tired of this. I have a feeling that you win a lot of debates by wearing out your opponent. I don’t have enough ego tied up in this issue to warrant spending any more time arguing with someone as recalcitrant as you. If you feel like providing a citation for how climate change affects hunter-gatherers, so that I can learn something from this, I’d appreciate it. I’ll bow out from this point except to thank you for the cite should it be provided.
And I feel like you’re making shit up. I keep asking for evidence for your wild claims and you keep failing to present any. This is GQ, not IMHO. Either cite or get off the pot.
Well if it’s so well supported why can’t you show us any of this support? The trouble is that you haven’t been putting out any facts. This is GQ, the place for factual answers. All we have seen form you is totally unsupported opinion. You have been unable to present even a single fact.
But you never said that relying on one crop is dangerous. You said that relying on one crop is relying on one crop is more dangerous than relying on several. Now can you support that contention or can you not?
I don’t want examples of where people relying on one crop died. I can call up far more examples of where people relying on a multitude of crops died and where HGs died. I am asking for proof of your claim that the more food plants people have access to the less likely they are to starve. Can you support that claim with anything at all?
You seem to have an ignorant belief that the farmers of the Midwest relied on a single crop. That was not the case. Midwestern farmers had access to and grew numerous crops as well as raising domestic animals. Whatever makes you think they relied on one crop? Can you present evidence to support this claim.
And I’ll say it again, you have absolutely no evidence to support that claim. You are making shit up. Simply repeating an opinion numerous times doesn’t make it a fact. I’ve asked for evidence for this claim several times now.
And I’ll say it again, you have absolutely no evidence to support that claim. You are making shit up. Simply repeating an opinion numerous times doesn’t make it a fact. I’ve asked for evidence for this claim several times now.
And I’ll say it again, you have absolutely no evidence to support that claim. You are making shit up. Simply repeating an opinion numerous times doesn’t make it a fact. I’ve asked for evidence for this claim several times now.
And I’ll say it again, you have absolutely no evidence to support that claim. You are making shit up. Simply repeating an opinion numerous times doesn’t make it a fact. I’ve asked for evidence for this claim several times now.
Right. So now all you need to do is present evidence to support your claim that agriculturalists have access to fewer plant species than HGS. Simply repeating an opinion numerous times doesn’t make it a fact. I’ve asked for evidence for this claim several times now.
Right. And if you don’t grow crops at all then it takes forever to grow alternative crops. So whereas HGs and agriculturalists both have access to the same diversity of wild species HGs don’t have access to any domestic species. Thus they have access to less food.
Nobody is disputing that HGs rarely starve. What is being disputed is your claim that HGs starve less because of the diversity of food they have available. And I’ll say it again, you have absolutely no evidence to support that claim. You are making shit up. Simply repeating an opinion numerous times doesn’t make it a fact. I’ve asked for evidence for this claim several times now.
It doesn’t matter how many acres of wheat the people were fed on, what matter does how many people there are. You can feed exactly the same number of HGs as agriculturalists with a given number of acorns.
And nobody disputes that. What is being disputed is your claim that HGs starve less because of the diversity of food they have available. And I’ll say it again, you have absolutely no evidence to support that claim. Simply repeating an opinion numerous times doesn’t make it a fact. I’ve asked for evidence for this claim several times now.
And once more you have totally confused two distinct issues. HGs are able to avoid starvation by maintaining low populations even during the lean times. This is quite unrelated to the diversity of food sources utilised.
Can we please see some evidence that HGs who utilised a narrow variety of food sources maintained les dense population, or that Agriculturalists who utilised a wide variety of food sources maintained higher populations? Can we see any evidence at al of this oft-claimed correlation between food diversity and productivity?
Perhaps not but I do understand facts. You don’t; have any.
Yes, really.
I’m glad you are amazed. That’s what facts do for you.
Do you really believe that the people of England traded for oak trees, chestnuts, dendelion and so forth? Or that the people of New York traded for acorns and grapes? Good grief, no, that isn’t the case at all. Those plants are native to those regions.
Once more, a statement of opinion presented as fact. Please provide your evidence to back up this claim.
And I’ll say it again, you have absolutely no evidence to support that claim. You are making shit up. Simply repeating an opinion numerous times doesn’t make it a fact. I’ve asked for evidence for this claim several times now.
So let me get this straight, you want references that say that HGs have less food avialable in droughts? I am quite easily able to do so, but before I do I just want to make it quite clear that you are ignorant of this fact and dispute that HGs are adversely affected by droughts?
Knowing the level of igniorant of the person you are tryong to provide facts to is important in trying to get them to understand. This seems to be extremely high level ignorance.
Given that so far you have been unable to establish that you know anything as opposed to simply believing I won’t credit that too much.
Well of course they are. But that wasn’t what I asked. You said that those marginal areas presented less diversity of food sources. You stated that as a fact. Do you in fact have any evidence at all to support this claim?
What we are talking about is your claim that “Bad times for those areas deserts and arctic areas] are almost certainly much worse for anyone who has to live off the land than they would be in areas with access to more and more varied sources of food.” Emphasis mine.
I don’t give a shit if the food sources are crickets or cape buffalo. I want to know if you have any evidence to support your claim that those areas have less varied sources of food.
You don’t do you? This is just another of along string of baseless claims you have presented as fact in this thread.
Even if this is true so freakin’ what? How does it in any way support your claim that desert areas have less food species than European climates?
And it isn’t true BTW, Europe has an impoverished biota because of the effectof the ice ages, Almost European wildlife has only migrate din within the last 10, 00 years. There has simply not been time for numerous niche species to develop. Even before people arrived western Europe was still impoverished compared a small area of many desert regions.
But WTF, while I’m asking for evidence I know you can not provide, how about a a reference to support your claim that the Euorpean biota is impoverished because “simple reason that humans have drastically changed Europe over millennia of extensive occupation” and that before human intervention it was in any way comparable to tropical regions in diversity?
Of course since I never made any such assertion I don’t nee dot support it.
You however did claim that HGs in desert areas would have access to less varied sources of food. You are required to support that claim. Can you do so, or did youjust make it up?
Translation: I made a lot of stupid claims that I thought ‘stood to reason’ despite being totally ignorant of the topic. Someone has asked me for references for those claims multiple times. I can’t possible keep weaselling and pretending I don’t understand the requests.
Yes, I can see how me asking for references for shit you clearly made up would wear you out. It must be hard ducking and weaving like that.
Sleel you have a history of this behaviour in GQ. You show no evidence of ever learning anything.
The best I can do is correct your erroneous and ignorant statements and provide you with the facts. The best outcome I can hope for is that you stop posting ignorant tripe in this forum. The place for your baseless opinion is GQ. If you have any facts then by all means present them. I’ve requested numerous facts from you so far, you can start with any of them
Blake, I will not respond point by point. Anything I claimed is easily found by doing a search on Google or by looking in a basic anthropology book or reference. I have no secret information and I see no need to provide a citation for things that are readily available. Many of the ideas I presented are from Guns, Germs, and Steel, which everybody and their brother has cited on this board, and which I cited earlier in the thread. In fact, a quick search for Diamond’s name turns up this essay which, although brief, supports most of the things I was talking about earlier.
You asked me for cites while ignoring my request for yours. What cites you did provide were inapplicable to the case. You have become belligerent and insulting, repeatedly saying that I’m “full of shit” while I notice you have provided no more information than I have. Actually, I’d say you’ve provided less since you’ve confused the issue and haven’t provided any good citations for your contentions. You have spouted at least as much “unfounded opinion” and you’ve been less civil to boot.
You noted earlier that this is General Questions. Is your language or your behavior appropriate to the forum? I don’t think so. I’m sorry to spoil your fun, but I will not respond in kind.
