[irv]

So was agriculture “the worst mistake in the history of the human race”, as Jared Diamond, evolutionary biologist and professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, once called it?

I read one of Diamond's books for a class a couple years ago and remember thinking at the time that there had to be something wrong with his reasoning. If agriculture was really so much less healthy a lifestyle, then people would have tried it for a while then the survivors would have gone back to the old ways.

This article gives a plausible explanation for what really happened. Once people recognized that more of their children were surviving than used to, they would put up with a lot of other problems rather than go back.

[MetaThought]

Or... if you’re starving, and grains are all there is to eat, that’s what you will eat.