From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Tue Apr 02 2002 - 21:28:44 MST
In a message dated 4/2/02 20:15:44, oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au writes:
>Humanity has a history of these leaps. Hunter-gatherers became
>horticulturalists, horticulturalists became agriculturalists, who became
>industrialised, and on to now. At each stage, we are told that people traded
>a lower average standard of living for an order of magnitude increase in
>population (except note that there is evidence to suggest that average
>standards of living have increased in the last century, bucking the trend).
Oh, it's much older than that. You really have to stretch things to say
standards of living haven't been improving in England since at least the
late 1600's. If you're going worldwide, yes, as
industrialization/commercialization
has really only gotten to the majority of the world's population in the last
half-century.
With agriculture, there's evidence of a deterioration in living standards.
But as Diamond himself points out in Guns, Germs, and Steel, the
deterioration almost certainly preceded agriculture and agriculture
was a method to get things partway back up. I've never heard any
claims that horticulture (management of wild plant resources) was
associated with anything bad; those are held up as the "good"
predecessors to agriculture. For pre-horticulture you've probably
got to a low plant food diet and that's not good for people. We need
too much water-soluble vitamins.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:13:12 MST