The Worst Mistake?
Farming made individual human lives measurably worse, yet it is the most consequential thing our species ever did.
| Measure | The Skeletons Show |
|---|---|
| Height | Early farmers are shorter (>10 cm) than foragers |
| Teeth | Cavities and abscesses from starch-heavy diets |
| Bones | Anaemia, arthritis, and spinal damage from grinding |
| Disease | Smallpox, flu, and TB from living near animals |
| Hours | Foragers worked fewer hours for better diets |
| Risk | Crop failure means famine; wild foraging is diverse |
So why did anyone keep doing it? The answer is arithmetic, not preference.
The Ratchet Effect
Farming makes people worse off and more numerous. Cereals wean babies early, shrinking birth intervals. Populations grow until they cannot be fed by returning to foraging.
Domestication is evolution under human selection. Wild wheat shatters to spread seeds, but sickles select for intact mutants. Wheat did to us what we did to wheat.
It happened independently at least seven times: Fertile Crescent, China, Mesoamerica, Andes, New Guinea, West Africa, and eastern North America. The trigger was global: the end of the Ice Age.