# Was the Agricultural Revolution a mistake? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 21, 2021, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740 "2021-11-21T22:54:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/81 "2021-11-24T16:47:58Z")
> [@InfraBlue](#): > > There is a point, however, that holds that the domestication of livestock animals, which is specifically what I am referring to, was a concatenated development with agriculture. Sometimes. Not always. North America had thousands of years of agricultural systems in which the only domesticated animals were dogs, whose domestication long predated the agricultural systems. The point people are trying to make is not that the growing of crops and the raising of livestock animals never went together, but that it’s not essential for them to go together; which is pretty well proved by the existence of each of them separately. ---
**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:** [November 24, 2021, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/82 "2021-11-24T16:48:19Z")
> [@InfraBlue](#): > > The consumption of dog meat, in regard to the domestication of the Pleistocene Wolf that would become _Canis lupus familiaris_ was practiced some time after the fact, however. Given that it was practiced all the way down from Asia before migration, through North America to Mesoamerica, you can’t blithely state that as a fact. It’s just as likely it was one reason the dog was brought over (since that happened millennia _after_ the first human migration, it’s possible a different culture brought them - one that valued them as food - which may be speculative, but at least has some [scientific backing](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/science/08dogs.html)) > [@InfraBlue](#): > > The passage you quote is muddled in that it conflates the consumption of dog meat with the consumption of white-tailed deer. No, it clearly distinguishes them, to highlight that dogs were not the primary meat animal, the only conflation seems to be your own reading of it. I highlighted the part about deer to refute your assertion that urban Mesoamericans had abandoned hunting (unless you’re suggesting they domesticated the deer). ---
**Author:** ![InfraBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infrablue/32/6366_2.png) [@InfraBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InfraBlue)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/83 "2021-11-24T17:23:19Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > No, it doesn’tseem muddled. It suggests that people were eating a diet that consisted both of domesticated animals (dogs) and hunted animals (deer). > > You are nitpicking details, but do you continue to hold that the advent of domesticated animals inevitably leads to hunting becoming irrelevant? It’s muddled when it appears under the subheading, “Dogs as food.” I didn’t say that, “the advent of domesticated animals inevitably leads to hunting becoming irrelevant.” I said that the domestication of animal species that would become livestock came with the advent of agriculture making hunting obsolete in those early agricultural societies. To clarify, I meant obsolete, i.e. “supplanted,” superseded" in the context of sustaining the populations that agriculture, i.e. “the science, art, and business of cultivating soil, producing crops, and _raising livestock_; farming.” ( \*American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition [2011]) enabled for those early agricultural societies that hunting, and gathering for that matter, could not. ---
**Author:** ![InfraBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infrablue/32/6366_2.png) [@InfraBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InfraBlue)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/84 "2021-11-24T17:30:43Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > [@InfraBlue](#): > > > > There is a point, however, that holds that the domestication of livestock animals, which is specifically what I am referring to, was a concatenated development with agriculture. > > Sometimes. Not always. > > North America had thousands of years of agricultural systems in which the only domesticated animals were dogs, whose domestication long predated the agricultural systems. > > The point people are trying to make is not that the growing of crops and the raising of livestock animals never went together, but that it’s not essential for them to go together; which is pretty well proved by the existence of each of them separately Point taken. I didn’t say that it’s essential for them to go together, however. ---
**Author:** ![InfraBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infrablue/32/6366_2.png) [@InfraBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InfraBlue)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/85 "2021-11-24T17:44:15Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > No, it clearly distinguishes them, to highlight that dogs were not the primary meat animal, the only conflation seems to be your own reading of it. > > I highlighted the part about deer to refute your assertion that urban Mesoamericans had abandoned hunting (unless you’re suggesting they domesticated the deer). When the passage appears under the subheading “Dogs as food,” it’s conflated. I didn’t assert that urban Mesoamericans had abandoned hunting. The reference to the amounts of white-tailed-deer was revelatory, thank you. Perhaps given more time white-tailed-deed would have become at least semi-domesticated, e.g. reindeer, as they seem to have been herded as well. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/86 "2021-11-24T17:45:15Z")
> [@InfraBlue](#): > > I said that the domestication of animal species that would become livestock came with the advent of agriculture making hunting obsolete in those early agricultural societies. Hunting (and fishing and gathering) continued to be an essential contribution to food supplies for thousands of years in some societies after the beginnings of agriculture. > [@InfraBlue](#): > > Point taken. I didn’t say that it’s essential for them to go together, however. Are you saying only that there were some specific societies in which taking up agriculture happened along with ceasing or nearly ceasing to hunt and gather? It read to me as if you were saying this was what generally happened. Do we know that in those societies what happened was that the development of agriculture rendered hunting obsolete, as opposed to a difficulty developing in those areas of continuing to move to follow good hunting and the natural ripening of food plants, thereby rendering agriculture necessary? ---
**Author:** ![InfraBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infrablue/32/6366_2.png) [@InfraBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InfraBlue)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/88 "2021-11-24T17:59:06Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > [@InfraBlue](#): > > > > I said that the domestication of animal species that would become livestock came with the advent of agriculture making hunting obsolete in those early agricultural societies. > > Hunting (and fishing and gathering) continued to be an essential contribution to food supplies for thousands of years in some societies after the beginnings of agriculture. > > > [@InfraBlue](#): > > > > Point taken. I didn’t say that it’s essential for them to go together, however. > > Are you saying only that there were some specific societies in which taking up agriculture happened along with ceasing or nearly ceasing to hunt and gather? It read to me as if you were saying this was what generally happened. > > Do we know that in those societies what happened was that the development of agriculture rendered hunting obsolete, as opposed to a difficulty developing in those areas of continuing to move to follow good hunting and the natural ripening of food plants, thereby rendering agriculture necessary? To clarify, I meant obsolete, i.e. “supplanted,” superseded" in the context of sustaining the populations that agriculture enabled for those early agricultural societies that solely hunting and gathering could not. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/89 "2021-11-24T18:10:50Z")
> [@InfraBlue](#): > > To clarify, I meant obsolete, i.e. “supplanted,” superseded" in the context of sustaining the populations that agriculture enabled for those early agricultural societies that solely hunting and gathering could not. Again, farming and hunting/gathering are not, and have never been, mutually exclusive. They have always coexisted to some extent. For thousands of years there was part-time agriculture among people who were mainly hunter-gatherers. For thousands of years up to modern times, people who were mainly farmers also did some hunting and gathering. Extracts from _The Dawn of Everything_: > It will by now be increasingly obvious to any reader that almost nothing about this established narrative matches the available evidence. … Clearly, it no longer makes any sense to use phrases like ‘the Agricultural Revolution’ when dealing with processes of such inordinate length and complexity. > What is easy to forget, with hindsight, is that farmers entered into this whole new world very much as the cultural underdogs. Their earliest expansions were about as far removed as one could imagine from the _missions civilisatrices_ of modern agrarian empires. Mostly, as we’ll see, they filled in the territorial gaps left behind by foragers: geographical spaces either too remote, inaccessible or simply undesirable to attract the sustained attention of hunters, fishers and gatherers. > > Even in such locations, these outlier economies of the Holocene would have decidedly mixed fortunes. Nowhere is this more dramatically illustrated than in the Early Neolithic period of central Europe, where farming endured one of its first and most conspicuous failures. > [‘Play farming’] describes the proclivity of human societies to move (freely) in and out of farming; to farm without fully becoming farmers; raise crops and animals without surrendering too much of one’s existence to the logistical rigours of agriculture; and retain a food web sufficiently broad as to prevent cultivation from becoming a matter of life and death. It is just this sort of ecological flexibility that tends to be excluded from conventional narratives of world history, which present the planting of a single seed as a point of no return. > > Moving freely in and out of farming in this way, or hovering on its threshold, turns out to be something our species has done successfully for a large part of its past. Such fluid ecological arrangements – combining garden cultivation, flood-retreat farming on the margins of lakes or springs, small-scale landscape management (e.g. by burning, pruning and terracing) and the corralling or keeping of animals in semi-wild states, combined with a spectrum of hunting, fishing and collecting activities – were once typical of human societies in many parts of the world. Often these activities were sustained for thousands of years, and not infrequently supported large populations. > > As we’ll see, they may also have been crucial to the survival of those first human populations to incorporate domesticated plants and animals. Biodiversity – not bio-power – was the initial key to the growth of Neolithic food production. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/90 "2021-11-24T18:22:17Z")
> [@InfraBlue](#): > > I didn’t assert that urban Mesoamericans had abandoned hunting. The reference to the amounts of white-tailed-deer was revelatory, thank you. Perhaps given more time white-tailed-deed would have become at least semi-domesticated, e.g. reindeer, as they seem to have been herded as well. But thesesorts of arrangements persisted for centuries, millenia even, without developing into the “next phase”. In rich areas (coastal areas, especially) they created enough surplus to support dense, permanent populations. ---
**Author:** ![InfraBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infrablue/32/6366_2.png) [@InfraBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InfraBlue)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/91 "2021-11-24T18:33:17Z")
You’re flailing at a straw man argument of your own creation seeing as how I never said that farming and hunting/gathering are mutually exclusive. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/92 "2021-11-24T18:33:20Z")
> [@InfraBlue](#): > > To clarify, I meant obsolete, i.e. “supplanted,” superseded" in the context of sustaining the populations that agriculture enabled for those early agricultural societies that solely hunting and gathering could not. For many of them, solely agriculture couldn’t, either. Both were needed. > [@GreenWyvern](#): > > [‘Play farming’] describes the proclivity of human societies to move (freely) in and out of farming; to farm without fully becoming farmers; raise crops and animals without surrendering too much of one’s existence to the logistical rigours of agriculture – note that’s quoted by GreenWyvern. It seems to me that the command in Exodus 23 to cease farming in every seventh year and let the land lie fallow, only gathering from it what grows there on its own, is probably the remains of this in that society. It’s true it would let the soil recover to some extent; but that’s much better done by resting individual fields somewhat more frequently than by abandoning farming entirely one year in seven. (Abandoning one’s vineyards for a year is going to make it significantly harder to prune them the next year, in particular, and is going to mess up the crop for a couple of years.) I’ve suspected for a long time that this is a requirement written by people who weren’t at all sure that they wanted to go into farming full time, and decided to keep an occasional year without doing any so they could remember what it was like. ---
**Author:** ![InfraBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infrablue/32/6366_2.png) [@InfraBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InfraBlue)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/93 "2021-11-24T18:35:07Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > > [@InfraBlue](#): > > > > I didn’t assert that urban Mesoamericans had abandoned hunting. The reference to the amounts of white-tailed-deer was revelatory, thank you. Perhaps given more time white-tailed-deed would have become at least semi-domesticated, e.g. reindeer, as they seem to have been herded as well. > > But thesesorts of arrangements persisted for centuries, millenia even, without developing into the “next phase”. In rich areas (coastal areas, especially) they created enough surplus to support dense, permanent populations What are the sorts of arrangements that you’re referring to, exactly? What is the “next phase”? ---
**Author:** ![InfraBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infrablue/32/6366_2.png) [@InfraBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InfraBlue)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/94 "2021-11-24T18:42:01Z")
Absolutely. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/95 "2021-11-24T18:57:01Z")
> [@InfraBlue](#): > > You’re flailing at a straw man argument of your own creation seeing as how I never said that farming and hunting/gathering are mutually exclusive. 🤨   You implied it: > [@InfraBlue](#): > > The domestication of animal species that would become livestock came with the advent of agriculture **making hunting obsolete** in those early agricultural societies. Then you rowed that back a bit: > [@InfraBlue](#): > > To clarify, I meant obsolete, i.e. “supplanted,” superseded" in the context of sustaining the populations that agriculture enabled for those early agricultural societies that solely hunting and gathering could not. But ‘obsolete’ implies that hunting and gathering was not used, or was not a significant factor. That certainly implies a dichotomy between them. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/96 "2021-11-24T19:03:59Z")
“Domesticating” the deer they relied on. Your own speculation suggested you feel that’s an expected progression. ---
**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:** [November 24, 2021, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/97 "2021-11-24T19:53:11Z")
> [@InfraBlue](#): > > When the passage appears under the subheading “Dogs as food,” it’s conflated. When it’s to say that dogs weren’t the primary meat, then that’s illustration, not conflation. > [@InfraBlue](#): > > Perhaps given more time white-tailed-deed would have become at least semi-domesticated Perhaps. Or then again, perhaps not. And if it happened, it would have been the result of measured decisions by the Mesoamericans, not some inevitable step. That’s one the big points of _TDoE_. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/98 "2021-11-24T20:21:42Z")
> [@InfraBlue](#): > > Perhaps given more time white-tailed-deed would have become at least semi-domesticated How many thousands of years would suffice, do you think? Humans and deer coexisted in North America for at least 30,000 years. Yet the only domestic animal outside of South America was the dog, which they brought with them over the land bridge. In places where hunting provides a lot of the protein, people tend to eat a vastly larger array of animal species than we think of as game. Of these many hundreds of species, one has to wonder why so very few were domesticated. So few that ten fingers is sufficient to name almost all of them. I feel confident it was not because our ancestors were not adventurous, intelligent, and ever-hungry. ---
**Author:** ![InfraBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infrablue/32/6366_2.png) [@InfraBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InfraBlue)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/99 "2021-11-24T21:39:01Z")
You’re reading an implication in my argument that hunting/gathering and farming are mutually exclusive that is not there seeing as how my argument was completely misquoted by MandaJo—which prompted me to elaborate on what I had written—and thorny\_locust asked for clarification of my response to MandaJo, which prompted further elaboration of my argument. ---
**Author:** ![InfraBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infrablue/32/6366_2.png) [@InfraBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InfraBlue)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/100 "2021-11-24T21:40:04Z")
Or at least semi-domestication, sure. ---
**Author:** ![InfraBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infrablue/32/6366_2.png) [@InfraBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InfraBlue)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2021, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740/101 "2021-11-24T22:13:45Z")
The passage states that dogs were not the primary meat supply throughout the Preclassic period in the Yucatán region with the exception of the Maya in whose diet dogs were a substantial part, according to archaeological evidence, and immediately follows with the sentence, “In fact, at the Colha site, white-tailed deer accounted for up to fifty percent of the Maya meat source.” One would think that the passage would follow with the percentage of dog consumption in the Mayan diet seeing as how it was substantial. Yeah, the writing is muddled. I would think that the Mesoamericans would have taken those measured decisions. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-agricultural-revolution-a-mistake/954740.md?page=6)