[rellimpank]

-bflr-

[hellbender]

The early agriculturalists had another advantage: cereal grains are easier to store and preserve than wild hunter-gatherer foods, therefore providing protection against famine. Also, the article neglects a whole life style: pastoralism, and the benefits of domesticated livestock. It’s a lot easier to get protein if one has milk and meat produced right in the village, requiring no hunting. Domestic oxen provided power far beyond that of human beings, and horses gave mobility, making it easier to migrate in times of famine.

[LibFreeOrDie]

More here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1946604/posts

[Matchett-PI]

The last sentence is the most laughable.

[Fractal Trader]

I really get tired of full posts from The Economist. I pay $125 for my subscription. I don’t appreciate this copyright infringement,

[MainFrame65]

==> “When we eventually reverse the build-up in carbon dioxide, there will be another issue waiting for us.” <==

Reducing atmospheric CO2 will reduce food crop production, which may finally induce the masses of humanity to eat the environmentalists, which is all that they are good for.

[metmom]

Geez, where do they get this stuff?

[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.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Note: this topic is from 1/01/2008. Thanks billorites. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[bert]

“War is normality. Peace is anomaly, the interlude between wars.” Bert