# Is modern civilization a mistake? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 3, 2017, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978 "2017-06-03T03:25:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2017, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/161 "2017-06-15T13:18:50Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > Unfortunately try as I might I am not able to look at things critically. I just end up digging a deepe hole for myself. > > But the author also says those needs are the social aspect, that civilization isolates us from each other, that mate selection is more like a peacock ritual, that we are cutoff from nature. That there are plenty who suffer but we don’t help them, the poor and middle class work only ends up benefiting the rich, that the civilization we have is not sustainable in the slightest, also overpopulation. Plenty of individuals suffer at the hands of the system we create and they are unable to do anything about it, unlike the ancestors who had the skills to surivive at least the people are dependent on a system that doesn’t help them. > > I don’t know how to refute that when it sounds pretty accurate. It’s hard to find the good in civilization after all that. > > I mean how is stuff like this not true? > > “I’m going to be blunt: any individual that prizes material possessions as much as the average American does has a malfunctioning brain, and is suffering from a kind of disease. Any individual who values material possessions as useful, but does not center his life around thinking about them constantly, is doing a little better, probably. The whole thing is totally disgusting. We exist in an economy that is extremely materialistic because it has to be in order to function – the buying and selling of goods is paramount to the maintenance of society itself. So, from a very early age people who exist inside of such an economy are conditioned to base their lives around accruing possessions, and being grateful for the opportunities to do so. Essentially, people in our culture are taught very early on to love “stuff,” and so they do, happily and unquestioningly. Like I said, this is pathological and not okay. But it is ubiquitous, and we are living in a virtual nightmare because of it.” > > I’m wondering if people read the same thing I did. So … Is it true that civilization by its nature cuts us off from each other, or does it by its nature _require_ interaction? It seems a bit of a contradictory complaint when also bemoaning the fact that civilization diminishes the ability of an individual to exist independent of anyone else, that it requires interdependency. No question we have social needs and within civilizations we have a wide variety of means to meet them. What I’ll grant is that it is more possible to be socially isolated if one does not choose to engage. Mate selection as a peacock ritual is not a function of civilization; it is a function of evolution and sexual selection before civilization, before HGs, and well, before peacocks. Not sure that communing with nature, however much I enjoy a good hike, is a psychological need. Did HG help more others who are suffering more than we do? Let’s compare. They did pretty good looking out as best as they could (which was not much) for the members of their immediate group of maybe 30 or so individuals. Yeah they had to kill of a few babies but my understanding is that other than that they either all ate enough or none ate enough, and often the latter. Meanwhile when other groups were suffering did they help them? Not too often. More often they skirmished with them when resources got particularly tight. Now today we also do a pretty good job in our immediate extended family units and beyond that civilization has processes to aid and assist others outside of our immediate kinship and clan circles. The level to which modern humans help others who they do not have an immediate kinship/clan relationship with today is in fact vastly vastly greater than was ever even possible or perhaps imaginable in HG times. Dayum, just immunizations alone were one smallish group (and the scale of the planet) doing something that have helped save many millions of lives and prevented many times more of suffering, across the globe, to extremely unrelated individuals. So on … I’ll be blunt. I cannot take seriously any bit that includes the claim: “any individual that prizes material possessions as much as the average American does has a malfunctioning brain, and is suffering from a kind of disease” as anything other than something to laugh at. It’s a rant and a poor one. I will concur with your position that civilization come part and parcel with inequalities and that the magnitude of those inequalities is extremely problematic. Now the question is how to address that problem. No, there never was an ideal noble savage gan eden, and civilization was no mistake. Neither is civilization without major room to improve. Civilization does allow for decreased inequity. We can, by way of further developing civilization and its tools, do better at taking care of each other, increasing our connectedness, and increasing our mutual happiness. Whether or not we choose to develop our civilization in that direction or not is not the fault of civilization. It is on heads what we do with the tools we have. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2017, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/162 "2017-06-15T13:23:29Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > As noted above, do not forget that these are H-G that have been pushed out of the better areas into a desert. > > Prehistoric people would have had easier access to more kinds of food. **Latro** , what do you think kept HG bands to within certain population limited sizes? ---
**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:** [June 15, 2017, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/163 "2017-06-15T13:43:41Z")
Why is it that the better fed, physically and psychologically healthier, and more cooperative hunter gatherers were pushed out of the good.land in the first place? Why didn’t they kick the assessment of the starving stunted selfish twisted farmers? ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2017, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/164 "2017-06-15T15:07:18Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > **Latro** , what do you think kept HG bands to within certain population limited sizes? Well, there is of course infant mortality but also the fact that when human groups get too big they tend to split and a new group goes off to do it their way. You see this still today with a lot of recreational, social groups. Splitters! How else do you think we spread across the globe? ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2017, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/165 "2017-06-15T15:29:51Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Why is it that the better fed, physically and psychologically healthier, and more cooperative hunter gatherers were pushed out of the good.land in the first place? Why didn’t they kick the assessment of the starving stunted selfish twisted farmers? Who said they were more cooperative? They needn’t have been as organised as the Indian nations, being able to field large warparties. I presume the smaller bands of roaming H-G would have difficulty in attacking a fortified village manned by a larger group of people. Probably there were confrontations but on the whole they would rather have avoided confrontation and just take a different route than they were used to taking. Thus being pushed back further and further with every new farming community that encroached on their ‘hunting fields’. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2017, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/166 "2017-06-15T16:13:09Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > Well, there is of course infant mortality but also the fact that when human groups get too big they tend to split and a new group goes off to do it their way. … And why did they need to split off taking the risks of traveling to parts unknown, when they had such easy access to many kinds of food where they were? What exactly happened as an individual HG group exceeded a certain population density that constrained it? Do you think that HG groups made a conscious choice that population size not exceeding X is what we want and practiced effective birth control or abstinance, other than by infanticide? Yes prolonged nursing contributed to typical birth spacing of roughly 3.5 years but why was it a relatively impactful practice on spacing then but is pretty much ineffectual as a birth control practice now? Because it was pretty malnourished women who were often also carrying their three year old children on their backs breastfeeding. Also contributing to keeping population down was the high rate of women dying during and immediately after childbirth, and the fact that during lean times (defined by more population than available resources can support) there were more deaths of young adult males over resources with neighboring groups. But yes, pretty much all of the group became malnourished then and kids and breastfeeding mothers being at most risk most often were then pushed over the edge by parasites and diseases. And more babies, in particular female infants, were killed. This was not the exception but the rule. Population did not exceed a certain density because exceeding it was self-corrective - people became malnourished and people died. Fantasies of a consistent land-o-plenty not withstanding that was how population size was constrained. There was no magic involved. You may find [this 2006 article](https://courses.washington.edu/evpsych/Hiwi-hunter-gatherers-JHE2007.pdf) of interest. It directly addesses the pre vs post contact issue you raise. (Bolding mine.) > [@](#): > > … Because the Hiwi’s home range was drastically curtailed in the late twentieth century, malnutrition and associated diseases were commonly observed, and the health profile of the population was rather poor during the study and data-collection period … Despite this rather bleak situation, we discovered, through systematic interviews, that **mortality rates had been even higher in the precontact period.** … > > … Here, we compare mortality among the precontact > Hiwi, precontact Ache, precontact Agta, the !Kung born before > 1950 (minimal acculturation), and the Hadza from 1985-1995. > Cause of death among the groups differs considerably. Disease > is an important cause of death in all groups, but represents > only ~20% of deaths in the precontact Ache, ~45% among > the precontact Hiwi, and about 75-85% of all Hadza, > !Kung, and Agta deaths. Respiratory disease is the main killer > of the Ache, whereas gastrointestinal pathogens are most > important among the Hiwi and probably Hadza. Among the > !Kung, respiratory and gut infections are about equally important. > Violence is the major cause of death among the precontact > Ache (~55% of all deaths) and very important among the > Hiwi (~30% of all deaths), but notably less important in the > two African societies and the Agta (3-7% of all deaths). Indeed, > the crude homicide/warfare death rates per year lived > are more than ten times higher among the Hiwi and Ache > than among the Hadza or !Kung (~1/100 and 1/200 per > year for precontact Hiwi and Ache, respectively, vs. 1/2500 > and 1/3000 for the Hadza and !Kung, respectively). Blurton > Jones et al. (2002) suggested that this may be due to the > more pervasive effects of colonial governments in Africa > and the reduction of intertribal warfare. Even so, within-group > homicide and infanticide rates are also much lower among > African foragers, suggesting real cultural differences in violence > rates. … > > … several observations > about the Hiwi are important. First, conspecific violence > was a prominent part of the demographic profile, > accounting for many deaths in all age and sex categories. > Most of the adult killings were due to either competition > over women, reprisals by jealous husbands (on both their > wives and their wives’ lovers), or reprisals for past killings. > The criollo-caused killings were motivated by territorial conquest. > Moreover, infanticide (especially on females) constituted > the highest mortality rate component of all Hiwi > conspecific violence. … > > … This suggests an adaptive landscape in > which success in social relations, competitive violence, and > disease resistance are paramount. This may partially explain > why many of the genes that appear to have been under strong > selection in the past 50,000 years affect either disease resistance > or cognitive function (Wang et al., 2006), presumably related > to success in an atmosphere of frequent violent social > competition. … ---
**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:** [June 15, 2017, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/167 "2017-06-15T16:36:12Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > Who said they were more cooperative? They needn’t have been as organised as the Indian nations, being able to field large warparties. > > I presume the smaller bands of roaming H-G would have difficulty in attacking a fortified village manned by a larger group of people. > Probably there were confrontations but on the whole they would rather have avoided confrontation and just take a different route than they were used to taking. > > Thus being pushed back further and further with every new farming community that encroached on their ‘hunting fields’. Emphasis added. A perfect example of a “just so story”. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2017, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/168 "2017-06-15T18:09:03Z")
Well Dûh! We are talking pre-history. There are no records, except what we find in the ground, and all that shows is that the farmers spread at the expense of the H-G. It is all speculation, including the idea that farming meant an increase in life quality. ---
**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:** [June 15, 2017, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/169 "2017-06-15T19:41:58Z")
You are using the word “we” rather loosely. ---
**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:** [June 15, 2017, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/170 "2017-06-15T20:56:37Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > Who said they were more cooperative? They needn’t have been as organised as the Indian nations, being able to field large warparties. > > I presume the smaller bands of roaming H-G would have difficulty in attacking a fortified village manned by a larger group of people. > Probably there were confrontations but on the whole they would rather have avoided confrontation and just take a different route than they were used to taking. > > Thus being pushed back further and further with every new farming community that encroached on their ‘hunting fields’. OK, but why don’t the hunter gatherers have a fortified village? Why do the farmers have larger groups of people, if farming is such a worse lifestyle? Why exactly are the farmers more organized than the hunter gatherers? Isn’t “more organized” a synonym for “more cooperative”? I thought the hunter gatherers cooperated more? And let’s be clear, a lot of the “stone age” tribal societies that still existed in the 20th century mostly weren’t hunter gatherers at all, but horticulturalists. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2017, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/171 "2017-06-16T02:44:04Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > Well Dûh! > We are talking pre-history. There are no records, except what we find in the ground, and all that shows is that the farmers spread at the expense of the H-G. > It is all speculation, including the idea that farming meant an increase in life quality. Some speculation is more backed by evidence than other. Yes some of the evidence is archeological, and some is by DNA traces. And in any case, no that is not all it shows. The evidence is pretty solid that HGs did not avoid early farming communities, by taking other routes or otherwise. [They interacted.](https://phys.org/news/2017-05-ancient-dna-evidence-hunter-gatherers-farmers.html) They got stuff from each other, for example HGs getting [pigs](http://www.upi.com/Study-Early-European-hunter-gatherers-got-pigs-from-farming-neighbors/27461377634406/). They even, gasp, screwed around together. > [@](#): > > The DNA revealed that the Romanian genomes from thousands of years ago had significant ancestry from Western hunter-gatherers. However, they also had a lesser but still sizeable contribution from Anatolian farmers, suggesting multiple admixture events between hunter-gatherers and farmers. An analysis of the bones also showed they ate a varied diet, with a combination of terrestrial and aquatic sources. > “Our study shows that such contacts between hunter-gatherers and farmers went beyond the exchange of food and artefacts,” Hofreiter says. “As data from different regions accumulate, we see a gradient across Europe, with increasing mixing of hunter-gatherers and farmers as we go east and north. Whilst we still do not know the drivers of this gradient, we can speculate that, as farmers encountered more challenging climatic conditions, they started interacting more with local hunter-gatherers. These increased contacts, which are also evident in the archaeological record, led to genetic mixing, implying a high level of integration between very different people.” > > The findings are a reminder that the relationships within and among people in different places and at different times aren’t simple. It’s often said that farmers moved in and outcompeted hunter-gatherers with little interaction between the two. But the truth is surely much richer and more varied than that. In some places, as the new evidence shows, incoming farmers and local hunter-gatherers interacted and mixed to a great extent. They lived together, despite large cultural differences Recent DNA analysis also documents how [different groups began to farm at the same time](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/worlds-first-farmers-were-surprisingly-diverse), maybe learning from each other, maybe independently inventing it. ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2017, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/172 "2017-06-16T03:10:03Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > So … > > Is it true that civilization by its nature cuts us off from each other, or does it by its nature _require_ interaction? It seems a bit of a contradictory complaint when also bemoaning the fact that civilization diminishes the ability of an individual to exist independent of anyone else, that it requires interdependency. No question we have social needs and within civilizations we have a wide variety of means to meet them. What I’ll grant is that it is more possible to be socially isolated if one does not choose to engage. > > Mate selection as a peacock ritual is not a function of civilization; it is a function of evolution and sexual selection before civilization, before HGs, and well, before peacocks. > > Not sure that communing with nature, however much I enjoy a good hike, is a psychological need. > > Did HG help more others who are suffering more than we do? Let’s compare. They did pretty good looking out as best as they could (which was not much) for the members of their immediate group of maybe 30 or so individuals. Yeah they had to kill of a few babies but my understanding is that other than that they either all ate enough or none ate enough, and often the latter. Meanwhile when other groups were suffering did they help them? Not too often. More often they skirmished with them when resources got particularly tight. Now today we also do a pretty good job in our immediate extended family units and beyond that civilization has processes to aid and assist others outside of our immediate kinship and clan circles. The level to which modern humans help others who they do not have an immediate kinship/clan relationship with today is in fact vastly vastly greater than was ever even possible or perhaps imaginable in HG times. Dayum, just immunizations alone were one smallish group (and the scale of the planet) doing something that have helped save many millions of lives and prevented many times more of suffering, across the globe, to extremely unrelated individuals. > > So on … > > I’ll be blunt. I cannot take seriously any bit that includes the claim: “any individual that prizes material possessions as much as the average American does has a malfunctioning brain, and is suffering from a kind of disease” as anything other than something to laugh at. It’s a rant and a poor one. > > I will concur with your position that civilization come part and parcel with inequalities and that the magnitude of those inequalities is extremely problematic. Now the question is how to address that problem. No, there never was an ideal noble savage gan eden, and civilization was no mistake. Neither is civilization without major room to improve. Civilization does allow for decreased inequity. We can, by way of further developing civilization and its tools, do better at taking care of each other, increasing our connectedness, and increasing our mutual happiness. Whether or not we choose to develop our civilization in that direction or not is not the fault of civilization. It is on heads what we do with the tools we have. Are you sure about that? The (non black and white page) seems to have a lot of sources in the bibliography to support it. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2017, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/173 "2017-06-16T03:25:23Z")
> [@Machinaforce](#): > > Are you sure about that? Yes. ---
**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:** [June 16, 2017, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/174 "2017-06-16T10:55:17Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > As noted above, do not forget that these are H-G that have been pushed out of the better areas into a desert. > > Prehistoric people would have had easier access to more kinds of food. …and needed more time to prepare it, and more tools to process it. My point stands. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2017, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/175 "2017-06-16T11:50:27Z")
> [@](#): > > Living in the moment as part of a community of human beings, hunting when you’re hungry and doing what you want otherwise Why would this be OK “so long as it doesn’t involve technology”? I mean, given that apparently our OP has a problem with modern folk spending time doing “stuff that’s not directly linked to survival”. Is jai-alai using a wooden paddle ok, but tennis with a carbon-fiber paddle not ok? Is letting the sun warm your old bones fine, so long as you’re not using sunscreen? I fail to see where is technology a problem there. ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2017, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/176 "2017-06-16T23:08:13Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Why would this be OK “so long as it doesn’t involve technology”? I mean, given that apparently our OP has a problem with modern folk spending time doing “stuff that’s not directly linked to survival”. > > Is jai-alai using a wooden paddle ok, but tennis with a carbon-fiber paddle not ok? Is letting the sun warm your old bones fine, so long as you’re not using sunscreen? I fail to see where is technology a problem there. Based on the data from this thread, the quoted comment seems rather reductionist and also pure fantasy, ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2017, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/177 "2017-06-16T23:20:40Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Yes. I don’t know. He might have a point about society. You are forced into working a job for hours a week, you cannot do anything without money. It seems rather restrictive. They reference culture as well, how it restricts our freedom and self expression. ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2017, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/178 "2017-06-17T01:41:50Z")
I also don’t think anyone addressed the extensive bibliography on the page I linked. ---
**Author:** ![Machinaforce](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/aeb1de/32.png) [@Machinaforce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machinaforce)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2017, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/179 "2017-06-17T02:11:33Z")
Sorry about this post, it says I cannot edit after 5 minutes. There’s also the bit about psychology here: [http://9-1.huntergatherers.org/](http://9-1.huntergatherers.org/) ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2017, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978/180 "2017-06-17T02:12:28Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Some speculation is more backed by evidence than other. Yes some of the evidence is archeological, and some is by DNA traces. And in any case, no that is not all it shows. > > The evidence is pretty solid that HGs did not avoid early farming communities, by taking other routes or otherwise. [They interacted.](https://phys.org/news/2017-05-ancient-dna-evidence-hunter-gatherers-farmers.html) They got stuff from each other, for example HGs getting [pigs](http://www.upi.com/Study-Early-European-hunter-gatherers-got-pigs-from-farming-neighbors/27461377634406/). They even, gasp, screwed around together. The evidence that is solid is that the prevalent haplogroup, from the paleo-lithicum up into the neo-lithicum, namely C1a2, is now nearly completely extinct in Europe. > [@](#): > > Recent DNA analysis also documents how [different groups began to farm at the same time](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/worlds-first-farmers-were-surprisingly-diverse), maybe learning from each other, maybe independently inventing it. Yes, so? That article is about the absolute first farmers, in Asia, it says nothing of the spread through Europe and the rest of Asia. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-modern-civilization-a-mistake/787978.md?page=10)