Yeah, its like none of these people have ever watched the series “Alone”. Hunter gathering is hard AF. There is a reason there was a population explosion when farming was invented, its WAY easier to survive.
“Easier” isn’t quite the word. It’s generally accepted that subsistence farming takes more labor per day per person to survive. Reliable is more the draw - if you have a choice between working 10 hours a day, but with a 10% chance of starving every year; or 14 hours a day with a 2% chance of starving every year, most people will choose the 14 hours a day - and the 14 hours a day choice will end up with an exponentially larger population after a dozen generations.
It probably has a lot more to do with farming supporting more people, which results in being able to support non-farmers who are either “nobility” of some kind, and/or warriors who will defend the farming territory and/or fight for better farming territory. In addition, I get the impression that once farming becomes possible, the “nobility” / “warrior” types stop forbidding hunting and gathering because hunter-gatherers are nomadic and they can’t easily be controlled and taxed. Some hunter-gatherers still exist on the fringes of society, but it’s normally not an option for most people. And, when the hunter-gatherers have one of those periods where they’re not able to successfully hunt or gather, in desperation I would bet that they often become raiders, raiding the farmers. So, it’s not like individual people are choosing between being hunter-gatherers or farmers. It’s that there’s a breakthrough in the ability to farm, and everybody nearby is converted into farmers.
Nobility forbidding hunting and gathering is really more of a medieval phenomenon, and has much more to do with the nobility themselves becoming a large population and enjoying the hunt (and the meat that comes from it). If they didn’t forbid it, it would be overhunted, and then those filthy poors would be enjoying the meat that rightly belongs to the bluebloods!
There’s often, in early farming societies, a great deal of ‘fluidity’ between subsistence farming, raiding, and hunting-gathering. Subsistence farming dominates because of the aforementioned advantages, but a tribe engaging in subsistence farming might up and burn all their houses down and go on the warpath, or leave the fields unsown for a few years while ranging the local woods. The early Germanic tribes are a great example of this, both in the variation from tribe-to-tribe, and in the way they could swiftly change from one mode of life to the other. The demarcation is not all that ‘strict’ compared to later ‘civilized’ societies which are, themselves, mostly surrounded by other subsistence farmers (or pastoralists).
While farmer vs. hunter-gatherer has much more to do with the community choice than the individual choice, even in the most settled sedentary premodern villages hunters and gatherers both remain as viable - and often specialized - ways of life.
But yes, generally the success of the sedentary farmers is not so much conversion (though there is that) as out-competing the hunter-gatherers.
I wonder how much of them shift had to do with weather patterns and rain/drought.
Or it even could have been to let fields recover, while foraging was good/easy.
Both of those are definite contributors - even ancient peoples understood that leaving land ‘fallow’ for a year or two led to better yields than plowing and planting every year.
It’s speculated by some, even, that climate change drove the entire ‘migration period’ which led Germanic tribes to overrun the Late Roman Empire, as their own lands became colder and less hospitable.
You’d have the entire weight, knowledge and land maintenance and management of generations of your ancestors to help.
A random bunch of modern Americans with guns being dropped in the middle of nowhere is not the same thing at all…
Like “before agriculture”, which we are learning more and more makes little sense, people still managed plants in large scales. The woods around your village would be kept clean, and edible plants would be incentivized to grow. Hunting trails kept and traps set. Chances are there would be robust fishing with nets, as most humans lived near water.
And also, even “before agriculture”, there was horticulture. People grew and kept small gardens in their villages with edible plants. Many fruits and perennial edible vegetables were ‘domesticated’ “before agriculture”.
Chances are, if you weren’t born in a time of wild weather events, and you lived around 30o up or down the equator, you’d be fine food wise. You’d help with food, some people might be specialized in it, and your diets are diverse and healthy. You’d do other stuff with your time, make ceremonial clothes and instruments, weave, make baskets, make stone tools, make art, train children in crafts and arts, maybe you’d be the woodsman keeping the woods clean, safe, and teeming with edible plants.
Life obviously wouldn’t be easy, because even simple disease or injury could kill the average person. And with small numbers (100-150 is more realistic), it’s easy to reach numbers too small to maintain society with one or two disasters.
But on a day to day basis, life is for sure much easier and calm than a typical “post-agriculture” society.
iirc, around the advent of agriculture, the average agriculturalist was significantly worse off than the average hunter-gatherer. They suffered from more malnutrition/nutritional deficiencies, had stunted growth, showed various signs of enduring backbreaking labor, and died younger if they lived past childhood. But the rate at which agriculturalist women got pregnant was 0.1% greater than that of hunter gatherer women, so… here we are.
Yeah, its like none of these people have ever watched the series “Alone”. Hunter gathering is hard AF. There is a reason there was a population explosion when farming was invented, its WAY easier to survive.
“Easier” isn’t quite the word. It’s generally accepted that subsistence farming takes more labor per day per person to survive. Reliable is more the draw - if you have a choice between working 10 hours a day, but with a 10% chance of starving every year; or 14 hours a day with a 2% chance of starving every year, most people will choose the 14 hours a day - and the 14 hours a day choice will end up with an exponentially larger population after a dozen generations.
It probably has a lot more to do with farming supporting more people, which results in being able to support non-farmers who are either “nobility” of some kind, and/or warriors who will defend the farming territory and/or fight for better farming territory. In addition, I get the impression that once farming becomes possible, the “nobility” / “warrior” types stop forbidding hunting and gathering because hunter-gatherers are nomadic and they can’t easily be controlled and taxed. Some hunter-gatherers still exist on the fringes of society, but it’s normally not an option for most people. And, when the hunter-gatherers have one of those periods where they’re not able to successfully hunt or gather, in desperation I would bet that they often become raiders, raiding the farmers. So, it’s not like individual people are choosing between being hunter-gatherers or farmers. It’s that there’s a breakthrough in the ability to farm, and everybody nearby is converted into farmers.
Nobility forbidding hunting and gathering is really more of a medieval phenomenon, and has much more to do with the nobility themselves becoming a large population and enjoying the hunt (and the meat that comes from it). If they didn’t forbid it, it would be overhunted, and then those filthy poors would be enjoying the meat that rightly belongs to the bluebloods!
There’s often, in early farming societies, a great deal of ‘fluidity’ between subsistence farming, raiding, and hunting-gathering. Subsistence farming dominates because of the aforementioned advantages, but a tribe engaging in subsistence farming might up and burn all their houses down and go on the warpath, or leave the fields unsown for a few years while ranging the local woods. The early Germanic tribes are a great example of this, both in the variation from tribe-to-tribe, and in the way they could swiftly change from one mode of life to the other. The demarcation is not all that ‘strict’ compared to later ‘civilized’ societies which are, themselves, mostly surrounded by other subsistence farmers (or pastoralists).
While farmer vs. hunter-gatherer has much more to do with the community choice than the individual choice, even in the most settled sedentary premodern villages hunters and gatherers both remain as viable - and often specialized - ways of life.
But yes, generally the success of the sedentary farmers is not so much conversion (though there is that) as out-competing the hunter-gatherers.
I wonder how much of them shift had to do with weather patterns and rain/drought.
Or it even could have been to let fields recover, while foraging was good/easy.
Or just early ADHD?
Both of those are definite contributors - even ancient peoples understood that leaving land ‘fallow’ for a year or two led to better yields than plowing and planting every year.
It’s speculated by some, even, that climate change drove the entire ‘migration period’ which led Germanic tribes to overrun the Late Roman Empire, as their own lands became colder and less hospitable.
Not really a great comparison though.
You’d have the entire weight, knowledge and land maintenance and management of generations of your ancestors to help.
A random bunch of modern Americans with guns being dropped in the middle of nowhere is not the same thing at all…
Like “before agriculture”, which we are learning more and more makes little sense, people still managed plants in large scales. The woods around your village would be kept clean, and edible plants would be incentivized to grow. Hunting trails kept and traps set. Chances are there would be robust fishing with nets, as most humans lived near water.
And also, even “before agriculture”, there was horticulture. People grew and kept small gardens in their villages with edible plants. Many fruits and perennial edible vegetables were ‘domesticated’ “before agriculture”.
Chances are, if you weren’t born in a time of wild weather events, and you lived around 30o up or down the equator, you’d be fine food wise. You’d help with food, some people might be specialized in it, and your diets are diverse and healthy. You’d do other stuff with your time, make ceremonial clothes and instruments, weave, make baskets, make stone tools, make art, train children in crafts and arts, maybe you’d be the woodsman keeping the woods clean, safe, and teeming with edible plants.
Life obviously wouldn’t be easy, because even simple disease or injury could kill the average person. And with small numbers (100-150 is more realistic), it’s easy to reach numbers too small to maintain society with one or two disasters.
But on a day to day basis, life is for sure much easier and calm than a typical “post-agriculture” society.
iirc, around the advent of agriculture, the average agriculturalist was significantly worse off than the average hunter-gatherer. They suffered from more malnutrition/nutritional deficiencies, had stunted growth, showed various signs of enduring backbreaking labor, and died younger if they lived past childhood. But the rate at which agriculturalist women got pregnant was 0.1% greater than that of hunter gatherer women, so… here we are.