In New Guinea Agriculture

Decent Essays
The author believes that agriculture is the worst mistake in human history. The first point he stated was the adoption agriculture decreased height “Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average height of hunger-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was a generous 5' 9'' for men, 5' 5'' for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, and by 3000 B. C. had reached a low of only 5' 3'' for men, 5'0 for women”. The author believes agriculture is bad for the health considering “farmers gained cheap calories at the cost of farming” Since we depended on limited crops there is a risk of starvation if one failed. “Farming helped bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions.” he claimed that in the farming population …show more content…
For example he said that “In New Guinea farming communities today I often see women staggering under loads of vegetables and firewood while the men walk empty-handed.” The author acknowledges farming can support more people but it can takes a toll on women seeing that they have children every two years so they can eventually help with planting. Meanwhile in a hunting gathering society a women haves children every four years so the toddler can keep up with they can follow the group. From reading this article I found it very intriguing that human beings were able to find ways to survive during the retreat of the last glacier marked at the end of the Pleistocene age dating back approximately 10,000 years ago. But also from reading this I did wonder whether the human race better off without agriculture. Agriculture did dramatically change the course of the human race. There are some things about agriculture that I hate. But to call it a mistake? I wouldn't go so far to say that. Without the agricultural revolution, we wouldn’t be able to have the industrial revolution. In a hunter gather society most of us would be dead in a view of that of us would not survive. We would probably die getting killed by animal while out

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