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this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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Practically every single tribe on the planet decided that the odds for farming was better than rolling the dice every year.
I think it's more likely that it was better odds, and those that continued nomadic life died off at a much higher rate.
I think both of you are not considering two major aspects:
Farming can feed more people on a given fertile area than hunting and gathering can.
Farming is area exclusive, e.g. there is a set amount of people farming in one area and considering this area to be theirs, excluding everyone else from usage.
It is very much possible, that in terms of providing food for the existing population both are equally viable. But with farming you could create larger more densely packed populations, which in turn provided means to exclude others by force. So while hunting and gathering was not necessarily a bad way of life, it did not allow for imperialism and was subsequently diminished by the imperialists.
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about
Man's never heard of the Mongols, Turks, Huns, etc etc etc.
Whose lifestyles only worked because they could trade for food and goods from farming communities btw
And they existed about 2000-1000 years ago. Humans started settling and farming as far back as 10.000-12.000 years ago.
Of course by then populations have increased tremendously. But in the spirit of the meme that probably wasn't the best overall course of action, was it?
We can ignore all the other nomadic tribes doing just as much evil shit as city dwellers throughout history the moment they have the opportunity and means, sure.
Several mass extinctions have been caused by evolution creating a lifeform that is too successful. The difference between humans and them is that we can recognize we are the problem and consciously adapt.
Some of us, anyways.
Regardless, that adaptation won't be by abandoning agriculture.
Hunting and gathering wasn't peace and love. There were wars and resources access problems already. Farming is simply much more efficient. Hunting can only feed people until you reach the natural reproduction of the animals. Same for gathering and plants. Domestication and farming is the process of increasing the volume of food you can have access too. Thus you can feed more people more reliably and with less space.
Human population on earth is directly linked to food access.
I totally agree. Thats why i made the argument "for an existing population". In order to support a growing population changing to farming was the right choice. But not all populations had the ambition or necessity to grow, as we see with many indigenous people that survived quite well until being met with expanding settler societies.
So hunting and gathering wasnt necessarily an inferior lifestyle in terms of running a stable society. Qnd in the long haul it is very much possible that humanities growth leads to its downfall so severely, that a nomadic lifestyle will reemerge as it tends to be more environmentally sustainable.
Have you seen nowadays how they fish? They destroy whole huge areas leaving no fish behind. This is a type of imperialism. The problem is capitalism in its nature
And for that kind of fishing you need large vessels, built in stationary warfts, using stationary ports. The materials are made in stationary complex apparatusses to extract and shape metals from ore and the ore is mined in stationary mines.
All of this is only possible as a result of settling
Sure. So your idea is that people should be mandated to travel and change places every X years? Or what? I don't get it.
Isn't the problem the disproportionate accumulation of goods, resources and money? AKA capitalism? I mean theoretically, if you restrict these, you can also settle in one place without taking advantage and destroying everything around it.
I said none of this.
The thesis was that people settled because it was superior in terms of supplying the population back then. All i was saying is that at the time that mustnt have been the case. It was more effective in the capitlaist/imperialist/expansionist mindset that is fucking is over now.
Of course with the current 8 billion people living on earth a nomadic lifestyle is not viable. But that is a very different question from the question if it was viable 10.000 years ago, when there were maybe a few hundred thousand to a few million humans on earthin total.
I don't disagree with you. I'm just asking (theoretically) how could such system regulate itself? Would the travel be mandated?
Farming is like a memetic prion disease. Every other food production method it touches turns into farming.
That and hunter-gatherer tribes tend to get genocided.