In a review of a book on the foundations of early states titled “Why Did We Start Farming?” at the London Review of Books, Steven Mithen writes:
Fire changed humans as well as the world. Eating cooked food transformed our bodies; we developed a much shorter digestive tract, meaning that more metabolic energy was available to grow our brains. At the same time, Homo sapiens became domesticated by its dependence on fire for warmth, protection and fuel. If this was the start of human progress towards ‘civilisation’, then – according to the conventional narrative – the next step was the invention of agriculture around ten thousand years ago. Farming, it is said, saved us from a dreary nomadic Stone Age hunter-gatherer existence by allowing us to settle down, build towns and develop the city-states that were the centres of early civilisations. People flocked to them for the security, leisure and economic opportunities gained from living within thick city walls. The story continues with the collapse of the city-states and barbarian insurgency, plunging civilised worlds – ancient Mesopotamia, China, Mesoamerica – into their dark ages. Thus civilisations rise and fall. Or so we are told.
The perfectly formed city-state is the ideal, deeply ingrained in the Western psyche, on which our notion of the nation-state is founded, ultimately inspiring Donald Trump’s notion of a ‘city’ wall to keep out the barbarian Mexican horde, and Brexiters’ desire to ‘take back control’ from insurgent European bureaucrats. But what if the conventional narrative is entirely wrong? What if ancient ruins testify to an aberration in the normal state of human affairs rather than a glorious and ancient past to whose achievements we should once again aspire? What if the origin of farming wasn’t a moment of liberation but of entrapment? Scott offers an alternative to the conventional narrative that is altogether more fascinating, not least in the way it omits any self-congratulation about human achievement. His account of the deep past doesn’t purport to be definitive, but it is surely more accurate than the one we’re used to, and it implicitly exposes the flaws in contemporary political ideas that ultimately rest on a narrative of human progress and on the ideal of the city/nation-state.
There are so many handicaps in a sedentary agrarian society by comparison with a hunter-gatherer society it makes one wonder why anyone would adopt one. On average members of hunter-gatherer societies are healthier, live longer, and don’t work as hard as those who live in agrarian societies. Let me provide several explanations for why one would go from something that is better to something that is worse.
First and possibly most importantly, hunter-gatherers can’t brew beer. There actually is some evidence that sedentary habits were adopted specifically to allow people to brew beer.
Second, hunter-gatherer societies don’t respond well to environmental change or success. Success can cause populations to grow beyond the environment’s carrying capacity. Hunter-gather societies commonly impose restrictions on reproduction for just that reason. That itself could be a reason to adopt an agrarian economy. And the one thing we can say with some confidence about the environment is that it will change. The species on which you depend for food may die. You may exhaust the resources of flint, obsidian, etc. on which you depend and your neighbors might not appreciate your encroaching into their territories for them.
The ability to store surpluses is quite limited. You may come across a bumper crop of berries in your wanderings. You must eat them now because you can’t carry them with you.
Finally, it may be that “we” didn’t adopt an agrarian economy, it was forced upon us. Agriculturalists, because of their ability to store surpluses, can afford to specialize and that means agrarian societies can have armies. And armies can compel erstwhile hunter-gatherers to adopt an agrarian economy.
