Humans were practicing agriculture for four to five thousand years prior to the emergence of the first city states in ancient Mesopotamia. Agriculture was but one of many different methods that humans used to get their food. Generally agriculture takes far more effort than other methods of obtaining food though, so it was practiced on-and-off, whenever the situation called for it.

Probably environmental shifts and the gradual decline in the fauna due to over-hunting led to mass gatherings near floodplains, like the Tigris and Euphrates. Over time, small, short-lived city states popped up here and there, completely dependent on agriculture as a means of sustenance. This was a very risky gamble, because with this came things like deadly epidemics, malnourishment, oppressive chattel slavery and raids from opportunistic nomads.

These early states had to constantly replenish their populations not just from those who died but also from those who ran away. Wars were fought not really for land as much as for people to enslave, and women were incentivized to have many children.

Generally speaking the nomadic life was superior in almost every respect to the civilized life. Because of all this, early states frequently came and went. They were little anomalies in specific environmental conditions, based on a unstable source of food and brutal social oppression.

So to react to your original post, early agricultural states were not based on an anxiety about the future and risk-aversion. Complete dependence on agriculture increased the risk of starvation. There was no good reason for anyone working the fields to be doing that, apart from coercion by the state.

I think this is on the right track. And further, I think that that kind of anxiety about the possibility of failure, the realization that everything won't necessarily be all right but could go horribly horribly wrong if we're not careful, is at the root of all philosophizing, in the broad sense of the quest for wisdom, where wisdom is the ability to discern true from false, good from bad, etc. And furthermore, that the realization of the need for such wisdom is the loss of "innocence" in the religious sense of the word.

I cannot say with any reliability that this was the intended meaning, but I think a plausible interpretation of the moral of the Abrahamic story of "original sin", where the progenitors of humanity Adam and Eve lived in paradise and "did not know death" until they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, is not that they were immortal and faced no other hardships, but that they literally did not know about death, or any of the other horrors of reality, and so lived in blissful ignorance; and that by gaining knowledge, being able to differentiate good from evil, to recognize evil when they saw it coming instead of being ignorant of it, they lost the bliss of their former ignorance and so were metaphorically ejected from their previous state of paradise.

That is to say, that story may be a metaphor for how the origin of suffering is not just having desires, as the Buddhists teach, but also realizing that they might not be fulfilled; for wanting for things and ignorantly assuming that they are coming to you eventually is no suffering compared to the realization that you may never have them. In this story, the state of the protagonists before gaining knowledge of good and evil is described not as ignorance, but rather as innocence, so perhaps the popular idiom would be better and less controversially phrased as "innocence is bliss".

At least, until your life is suddenly and unexpectedly wrecked by things you could have prevented if you had thought ahead about them.

The impetus for agriculture comes from a lack of faith in the eternal abundance of nature. — Welkin Rogue

Arguably, you’re talking about The Fall.

Arguably, you’re talking about The Fall. — Wayfarer

I think that that kind of anxiety about the possibility of failure, the realization that everything won't necessarily be all right but could go horribly horribly wrong if we're not careful, is at the root of all philosophizing, in the broad sense of the quest for wisdom, where wisdom is the ability to discern true from false, good from bad, etc. And furthermore, that the realization of the need for such wisdom is the loss of "innocence" in the religious sense of the word. — Pfhorrest

That's an interesting connection you both make to the idea of the Fall. I'll say something about it in a moment.

So to react to your original post, early agricultural states were not based on an anxiety about the future and risk-aversion. Complete dependence on agriculture increased the risk of starvation. There was no good reason for anyone working the fields to be doing that, apart from coercion by the state. — darthbarracuda

There seems to be a tension in what you say. On the one hand, you affirm the hypothesis that agriculture is spawned in moments of desperation. On the other, that it increased desperation.

But I take the point that resource constraints were a big factor in motivating the agricultural way of life. This is actually consistent with the thought that it was about risk-aversion, but adds that such anxiety was well-grounded.

Which takes me to the Fall. Other creatures in similar circumstances presumably would have moved on from the area and/or endured forced population reductions. Humans, with an extended range of foresight and ingenuity, decided to fight nature, but thereby increased their burdens, their anxiety, their suffering.

I think anxiety may more likely be part of human nature. For a long time we were very vulnerable creatures. We had very little to protect ourselves with except our evolving minds. It seems to me that it was an agricultural way of life that gave us our greatest opportunity to consolidate.

Complete dependence on agriculture increased the risk of starvation. There was no good reason for anyone working the fields to be doing that, apart from coercion by the state. — darthbarracuda

I don’t think complete dependence on agriculture increased the risk of starvation. I would say the opposite, otherwise it wouldn’t have thrived. Mismanagement might contribute to starvation.

I would think there were very good reasons to be working in the fields. For one you could store grain away for the future. Your idea about coercion seems to me to making a big leap from one era to another. There would be a long period of successful agriculture before people would be coerced by the state, and the state could only exist because of the great success of agriculture.

Which takes me to the Fall. Other creatures in similar circumstances presumably would have moved on from the area and/or endured forced population reductions. Humans, with an extended range of foresight and ingenuity, decided to fight nature, but thereby increased their burdens, their anxiety, their suffering. — Welkin Rogue

Right, this exactly. Humans are adapted to an environment that doesn't exist anymore: the savanna of eastern Africa as it was during the Pleistocene for hundreds of thousands of years. Around 12,000 years ago that environment disappeared, and by all normal rights humans would have disappeared with it, except that we had the unique cognitive ability to figure out how to adapt our memes -- in the Dawkins sense of units of learned behavior -- instead of just adapting our genes. And now we are masters of pretty much every environment on the planet, most of which were are terribly adapted for on a genetic level, but we make up for it on the memetic level. That memetic adaptation being: think about all the ways that things could go wrong, and act to minimize them, even if everything is fine right now.

I think it's more that an agricultural lifestyle enabled state coercion than that state coercion created the agricultural lifestyle. If you didn't need agriculture, if you could just walk away from an abusive society and live comfortably in the wilderness with no loss to yourself, the state would be powerless over you. The state has to have something you need, and that's control of the capital you require to make a living. A true post-scarcity world would dissolve the impetus for capital and state alike, and likewise, a pre-scarcity world (like the Pleistocene environment we're adapted to) would have no impetus for them either. It's only when times get hard and people have to band together and figure out how to make the most out of scarce resources or else die that the strong men who can horde those resources to themselves unless you do what they say have any power.

Right, this exactly. Humans are adapted to an environment that doesn't exist anymore: the savanna of eastern Africa as it was during the Pleistocene for hundreds of thousands of years. Around 12,000 years ago that environment disappeared, and by all normal rights humans would have disappeared with it, except that we had the unique cognitive ability to figure out how to adapt our memes -- in the Dawkins sense of units of learned behavior -- instead of just adapting our genes. And now we are masters of pretty much every environment on the planet, most of which were are terribly adapted for on a genetic level, but we make up for it on the memetic level. That memetic adaptation being: think about all the ways that things could go wrong, and act to minimize them, even if everything is fine right now. — Pfhorrest

Nice.

↪darthbarracuda I think it's more that an agricultural lifestyle enabled state coercion than that state coercion created the agricultural lifestyle. If you didn't need agriculture, if you could just walk away from an abusive society and live comfortably in the wilderness with no loss to yourself, the state would be powerless over you. The state has to have something you need, and that's control of the capital you require to make a living. A true post-scarcity world would dissolve the impetus for capital and state alike, and likewise, a pre-scarcity world (like the Pleistocene environment we're adapted to) would have no impetus for them either. It's only when times get hard and people have to band together and figure out how to make the most out of scarce resources or else die that the strong men who can horde those resources to themselves unless you do what they say have any power. — Pfhorrest

I think I agree I just want to clarify something.

Let's accept the hypothesis suggested by darthbarracuda that it was resource scarcity that caused humans to switch to the agricultural mode of production.

Now I think more accurately we can say that it is scarcity plus agriculture that enables state coercion.

So scarcity triggers agriculture out of necessity (as the alternative to starvation). Now, participation in agricultural society - with production and allocation controlled hierarchically - represents a relative improvement in prospects for survival for individuals. This changes the incentive structure, since exit from the community is now more costly (potentially fatal). So far, there is no need for coercion. Everyone can rationally accept the burdens of this new way of life.

But as darthbarracuda says, there was (and is) coercion in post-agricultural society. Coercion involves force; when you coerce someone, you force them to do something against their will. So I suppose we must say that either (1) those who are coerced have an irrational will (because exit has lower expected utility), or (2) at some point, the deal for those at the bottom of the hierarchy got significantly worse.

Regarding (2), this is most likely the result of enslavement. Once you have an agricultural society, it becomes rational (?) for those with power to capture, enslave and coerce those weaker than them to do the work at the 'bottom' of the division of labour (which did not exist much before, except along gender lines). This is because there is simply a lot more work to be done (simple hunter-gatherer societies could get by on around 15 hours a week), and now there is surplus to be collected.

This suggests a further question, however. Why is it rational for those at the top to coerce those at the bottom? I think it is because this aforementioned surplus is something people now wish to acquire in greater and greater amounts. So it seems like the possibility of acquiring surplus triggered something like human greed... as though greed were a latent psychological inclination among humans that was waiting for the right conditions. I would suggest that such greed is closely related to risk aversion and anxiety. The background conditions of scarcity which compound such anxiety are then also the background conditions of greed - the perception of scarcity, whether or not it remains real, might then lie behind persisting greed and the coercion it inspires.

Regarding (2), this is most likely the result of enslavement. Once you have an agricultural society, it becomes rational (?) for those with power to capture, enslave and coerce those weaker than them to do the work at the 'bottom' of the division of labour (which did not exist much before, except along gender lines). This is because there is simply a lot more work to be done (simple hunter-gatherer societies could get by on around 15 hours a week), and now there is surplus to be collected.

This suggests a further question, however. Why is it rational for those at the top to coerce those at the bottom? I think it is because this aforementioned surplus is something people now wish to acquire in greater and greater amounts. So it seems like the possibility of acquiring surplus triggered something like human greed... as though greed were a latent psychological inclination among humans that was waiting for the right conditions. I would suggest that such greed is closely related to risk aversion and anxiety. The background conditions of scarcity which compound such anxiety are then also the background conditions of greed - the perception of scarcity, whether or not it remains real, might then lie behind persisting greed and the coercion it inspires. — Welkin Rogue

I don't disagree with this, but I also think a lot of it was the consequence of the structural changes in agriculture societies. Agriculture relies on building up larger stocks of food after harvesting seasons to get through the non productive months. This makes it more interesting and viable for groups to live of stealing those stocks, which in turn makes defence more of a necessity for these communities. And when you need to keep a more permanent defence around, you get specialists who gain an edge on others when it comes to violence and coercion. Why was it rational to coerce others? Because they could without much trouble... whereas previously they couldn't because there was less need for division of labour and specialists.

So were agriculturalists generally more anxious and greedy? Or was it technology and consequent structural changes that enabled anxiety and greed in agricultural societies? Maybe a bit of both? It's hard to tell, but my guess would be that it's often more a case of changing circumstances enabling changes in behaviour, than the other way around.

I don’t think complete dependence on agriculture increased the risk of starvation. I would say the opposite, otherwise it wouldn’t have thrived. Mismanagement might contribute to starvation. — Brett

Completely depending on a single method for obtaining sustenance is extremely risky because it is putting all your eggs in one basket. If you are a Neolithic slave farmer, and the crop yield is lower than expected, you are fucked because the state will take everything and leave you with nothing. The state exists to perpetuate itself; it ensures the health and safety of its citizens only when convenient and necessary.

I think it's more that an agricultural lifestyle enabled state coercion than that state coercion created the agricultural lifestyle. If you didn't need agriculture, if you could just walk away from an abusive society and live comfortably in the wilderness with no loss to yourself, the state would be powerless over you. — Pfhorrest

You are correct when you say that agriculture enables states. States are agricultural-based. And they did not create agriculture, because agriculture was around for several thousand years before the first states.

Contrary to your point about walking away, though, the historical evidence we have actually shows that people running away from early states was a serious problem for these states. Malnourishment, epidemics, heavy taxes, slavery, wars, back-breaking and onerous labor, inequality, hierarchies, all of this stuff is what you find in states. People had no good reason to stay and so they frequently took flight. The prestige of a state was reflected not so much in how much land it had but in how big their population was. Cities built walls not just to keep enemies out, but to keep the residents in.

And if you are raised in a state, you are basically domesticated and so you don't really know how else to live outside of the conditions of the state. If all you know is farming, then even if there are plenty of other resources available from different methods, you are out of luck.

Contrary to your point about walking away, though, the historical evidence we have actually shows that people running away from early states was a serious problem for these states. Malnourishment, epidemics, heavy taxes, slavery, wars, back-breaking and onerous labor, inequality, hierarchies, all of this stuff is what you find in states. People had no good reason to stay and so they frequently took flight. The prestige of a state was reflected not so much in how much land it had but in how big their population was. Cities built walls not just to keep enemies out, but to keep the residents in.

And if you are raised in a state, you are basically domesticated and so you don't really know how else to live outside of the conditions of the state. If all you know is farming, then even if there are plenty of other resources available from different methods, you are out of luck. — darthbarracuda

Great point.

It sounds like you think agriculture was a bad deal for the oppressed majority, but a good deal for the oppressive minority.

But it must have been a good deal for the majority to begin with at least, right? Otherwise the whole thing wouldn't have gotten off the ground.

So perhaps the story is something like: scarcity causes cooperative agriculturalisation (motivated by well-grounded anxiety about survival without it). But at some point, given the low and declining feasibility of exit, and the division of labour, dominance hierarchies take hold. This is self-reinforcing: political-material inequality locks in because the growing surplus is unevenly allocated according to the hierarchy, and this enables further coercion, which further increases inequality, etc.

Does that sound right?

Sounds right to me. :100:

So to react to your original post, early agricultural states were not based on an anxiety about the future and risk-aversion. Complete dependence on agriculture increased the risk of starvation. There was no good reason for anyone working the fields to be doing that, apart from coercion by the state. — darthbarracuda

That might be the case. I wasn't there, but it seems quite possible that some sort of early cabal roped a bunch of dopes into farming.

Agriculture is a high risk activity for individuals, even if not for the larger population. If agriculture is sufficiently expansive, enough food will usually be produced (usually; not always). For the individual farmer, agriculture is a gamble. Too much and not enough rain, rain at the wrong time, air that is too hot, too cold, too dry, too windy, carries too many locusts, disease -- etc. can all ruin an individual farmer's crop and turn food into starvation.

Agriculture was probably harder work than hunting-gathering. Hunter-gatherers were generally fairly healthy and reasonably long-lived, so I have read. They were mobile. They could follow food. Agriculturalists were literally stuck in the ground.

Against The Current (book) suggests that agriculture was the invention of the earliest nascent state which saw in agriculture a way of extracting wealth from peons. Lure people into grain-growing and they would -- of necessity or force -- stay put and produce more food (wealth) than they themselves needed to live. The surplus could be traded by the elite for other stuff.

Against The Current (book) suggests that agriculture was the invention of the earliest nascent state which saw in agriculture a way of extracting wealth from peons. — Bitter Crank

That doesn’t seem to make sense to me. There must have been an early state of agriculture that had no connection to even a nascent state. The idea that agriculture was a way of extracting wealth from peons suggest that both evolved at the same pace from the very beginning with the state having an advantage before a surplus could have even happened.

Lure people into grain growing. Where did the state get the idea of agriculture from?

Completely depending on a single method for obtaining sustenance is extremely risky because it is putting all your eggs in one basket. — darthbarracuda

But it worked. Unless you disagree with what we have as a consequence.

Against The Current — Bitter Crank

Could you give me a link to this book? I'm interested, and also lots of what I said in this thread comes from a similarly-titled book, Against the Grain.

But it worked. Unless you disagree with what we have as a consequence. — Brett

Well, it worked eventually, but only once industrial technology was invented, which facilitated fast and reliable long-distance travel and communication. Before the Industrial Revolution, and especially in the early days, states were rising and falling all the time.

But it must have been a good deal for the majority to begin with at least, right? Otherwise the whole thing wouldn't have gotten off the ground.

So perhaps the story is something like: scarcity causes cooperative agriculturalisation (motivated by well-grounded anxiety about survival without it). But at some point, given the low and declining feasibility of exit, and the division of labour, dominance hierarchies take hold. This is self-reinforcing: political-material inequality locks in because the growing surplus is unevenly allocated according to the hierarchy, and this enables further coercion, which further increases inequality, etc.

Does that sound right? — Welkin Rogue

Yeah I think that could be a reasonable story of how it all happened. It's hard to say because at this point we are just speculating. I'm sure there were probably several different conditions in which early states would emerge and this one could be one of them.

The common narrative is that states inevitably come after agriculture, and that agriculture-based societies are inherently better than hunter-gatherer nomadic societies. We know now that hunter-gathering, swiddening, pastoralism and the like are comparatively easier and healthier lifestyles. And we also know that agriculture existed for thousands of years before the first states emerged. Furthermore we now know that there are serious problems associated with life in an agricultural state (problems that either do not exist or are much less severe in hunter-gatherer life), and that people frequently tried to run away from the domus. So it's not at all obvious that the agricultural state was an improvement on the conditions of the average person.

The interesting question to me is how and why states developed, given all of these disadvantages. I think at least part of the answer is to see the agricultural society as a population machine, which aims at producing domesticated humans; humans that cannot survive on their own and depend on the state to survive and so therefore maintain it.

The interesting question to me is how and why states developed, given all of these disadvantages. I think at least part of the answer is to see the agricultural society as a population machine, which aims at producing domesticated humans; humans that cannot survive on their own and depend on the state to survive and so therefore maintain it. — darthbarracuda

I've always presumed, maybe incorrectly, that states were a consequence of increase of population size and density, and the need for specialisation that creates. If you're are relatively small group of people, you don't need and can't really afford someone who occupies himself solely with ruling.

Against The Current — Bitter Crank

Against the Grain — darthbarracuda

Sorry about that. The frontal lobe proofreader app failed again. Against The Current is a lefty magazine I used to read. Against The Grain is the title I intended to write.

Lure people into grain growing. Where did the state get the idea of agriculture from? — Brett

I collapsed my incomplete understanding of undigested ideas in a book I read part of a while ago. We lazy philosophers sometimes do that. Besides which, all that isn't my theory.

Clearly the State could not precede the idea of settling down and growing grain in place of the H/G way of life. People had to be settled in place before even the simplest state could form. There had to have been a period (measured in millennia) of transition where people gradually shifted from H/G to Ag. We had to learn how to do it; and besides grain ("man can not live by bread alone") we had to find the various vegetable crops to supply basic nutrition in a settled community no longer foraging over a large area.

Agriculture preceded cities, too. Jericho was established around 9,000 years ago. I think agriculture must have existed for a while in a less settled form.

I don't know much about Jericho 9500 years ago. Uruk dates back to a more recent 6,500 years ago give or take a little. Uruk was one of several city states that rose, controlled the surrounding territory, then subsided. It seems like Uruk would fit the idea of a State encouraging agriculture for purposes of taxation, but 6,500 years ago doesn't line up very well with the rise of crop growing.

Maybe the state of the first State was just a bunch of thugs who forced people to work harder and then walked off with the crop. Some people's children prefer the notion that people can't accomplish anything cooperatively without a gang of thieves rising in the ranks and taking over. We do seem to have a tendency to behave like that, but I wasn't there. Had I been, I would hope that I would have been one of the bitter and resentful peasants fanning the flames of discontent.

We know now that hunter-gathering, swiddening, pastoralism and the like are comparatively easier and healthier lifestyles. — darthbarracuda

That's what I've read, too.

Agriculture requires a lot more intensive and extensive cooperative labor than hunting and gathering. The cycles of nature produced sufficient food for hunting and gathering. Both lifestyles require sharp intellectual skills, and the skills of finding appropriate foods in the wild must have prepared people to succeed at agriculture. They had to be skilled botanists to find food plants and avoid poisoning themselves.

The Western Hemisphere was settled around the time that agriculture arose. The Amerindian people identified several fairly unprepossessing plants like the primitive tomato, teosinte (maize), potato, and so on and developed them into strains which could sustain large populations. That was a bit tricky, because a lot of the food crops the Amerindians developed are in the nightshade family of plants which can be quite toxic (tobacco, tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, pepper) because of the alkaloid solanine, which is toxic in high concentrations. This had to have taken quite a bit of time to accomplish (centuries, millennia). Primitive tomatoes were the size of currents. Seeing a corn cob in the teosinte grass was a tremendous leap of imagination. Further, crop growing diffused north and south where there were starkly different bands of climate.

I'm not sure when Amerindians developed the first urban / state societies; but smaller village settlements must have developed early on, since plant breeding wouldn't seem to go well with a highly mobile lifestyle.

Been a farmer for over 60 years.
this is enlightening

The impetus for agriculture comes from a lack of faith in the eternal abundance of nature. — Welkin Rogue

Could this really be true? Where did this lack of faith arise, what was the impetus? In the beginning of agriculture, (which is pretty difficult to define. What was agriculture in the beginning?) why would anyone commit to it. For it to thrive it would need to have produced real tangible benefits. Which it must have done in many ways. It seems to me that “ a lack of faith in the eternal abundance of nature” doesn’t necessarily mean that a choice was made to go with agriculture, considering the nature of evolution in all things.

@darthbarracuda said

We know now that hunter-gathering, swiddening, pastoralism and the like are comparatively easier and healthier lifestyles. — darthbarracuda

Surely only a really neurotic, unstable creature would give up what worked so well for something that they had to wait for, because of seasons and the nature of agriculture, over what was a “comparatively easier and healthy lifestyle”. Meaning that agriculture offered something better very quickly, which it can’t have.

In particular, it must have been that it was the more risk-averse among us who were willing to pay those up-front costs; to start growing crops and increase reliance on such crops. — Welkin Rogue

This is an assumption made on the basis that they were forced by the instability of food supply into agriculture and those who were not risk averse would have stayed with H/G. Why would the risk averse take the bigger risk?

My other thought is to wonder if it’s only humans that suffer from anxiety. Do animals suffer from anxiety and if so why?

Edit: how exactly are we defining anxiety?

But it worked. Unless you disagree with what we have as a consequence.
— Brett

Well, it worked eventually, but only once industrial technology was invented, which facilitated fast and reliable long-distance travel and communication. Before the Industrial Revolution, and especially in the early days, states were rising and falling all the time. — darthbarracuda

In relation to your post that it was extremely risky to put all your eggs in one basket. It must have worked a little bit faster than “eventually” otherwise there would be no eventually. Nor do I believe you could say the industrial revolution was invented, unless you’re just being loose with words. It’s a big leap from the beginning of agriculture to the Industrial revolution but for the sake of it I’ll go along with you. The industrial revolution could not have happened without all the benefits that came from agricultural societies. The fact that H/G societies never changed right into the 20th century is testament to that.

That might be the case. I wasn't there, but it seems quite possible that some sort of early cabal roped a bunch of dopes into farming. — Bitter Crank

Would that cabal be called "the aristocracy"? I think that is a bit too conspirational. Farming and cities emerging because of their utility (and necessity) is likely more closer to the truth. Yet notice that hunting has been something that the ruling class has enjoyed privileges over others. The natural framework is to both farm and hunt, yet hunting can only support a limited population.

Would that cabal be called "the aristocracy"? I think that is a bit too conspirational. Farming and cities emerging because of their utility (and necessity) is likely more closer to the truth. — ssu

Right. That's what I think, too. The theory floated in Against The Grain is interesting, but I don't see an aristocracy, an elite, or a state existing before there was the material basis to support that kind of expensive socio-political organization. It seems likely that people gradually drifted into settled agriculture because there were some advantages to that kind of lifestyle, compared to exclusive hunting and gathering.

Once there was a solid material foundation on which elites could build, they did. And in retrospect it my look like the elite seduced the people into farming. That idea is not only conspiratorial, how would the elite have known that there even was any potential, and how much, in farming?

The technology of production developed before any social consequences could exist.

. It seems likely that people gradually drifted into settled agriculture because there were some advantages to that kind of lifestyle, compared to exclusive hunting and gathering. — Bitter Crank

Or simply there wasn't enough wildlife to hunt. Hunter gatherers simply have to be few, while agriculture can support far larger populations. And of course the domestication of sheep, pigs and cattle happened only some couple thousand years later than agriculture (8 000 BC or so). Once you start "farming" animals, not so much need for wild game.

I've always presumed, maybe incorrectly, that states were a consequence of increase of population size and density, and the need for specialisation that creates. If you're are relatively small group of people, you don't need and can't really afford someone who occupies himself solely with ruling. — ChatteringMonkey

I don't think that is necessarily incorrect, though I am not an expert. From what I have read it seems as though states are inherently based exclusively on sedentary agriculture (and imports for anything else not available).

The domestication of humans in cities resulted in "de-skilling" them. Instead of knowing numerous ways to to hunt, gather, swidden, harvest, fish, etc, humans know how to do only a handful of things, how to raise only a few crops (wheat, millet, rice, oats - the cereals), and raise only a few animals (pigs, cows, sheep, etc).

If for environmental conditions (or whatever) you find yourself exclusively relying upon sedentary agricultural practices amongst many other people, I think you will need something like a state to keep things organized.

Agriculture requires a lot more intensive and extensive cooperative labor than hunting and gathering. The cycles of nature produced sufficient food for hunting and gathering. Both lifestyles require sharp intellectual skills, and the skills of finding appropriate foods in the wild must have prepared people to succeed at agriculture. They had to be skilled botanists to find food plants and avoid poisoning themselves. — Bitter Crank

I'm not sure if I would 100% agree with this. Hunter-gatherer societies were characterized by sharp spikes of very intense and coordinated work, oftentimes revolving around seasonal animal migrations and the change of weather. They had to take advantage of the situation and they had to work as a team to succeed.

If you are relying exclusively upon agriculture to survive, then yeah I can see how that would require far more labor and cooperation than H/G. But H/Gs practiced limited agriculture too, and so do everyday modern people in their gardens. These modes of agriculture don't seem to require nearly as much effort of group coordination.

Surely only a really neurotic, unstable creature would give up what worked so well for something that they had to wait for, because of seasons and the nature of agriculture, over what was a “comparatively easier and healthy lifestyle”. Meaning that agriculture offered something better very quickly, which it can’t have. — Brett

Yeah, that's the real crazy question, why did they?

Agriculture-based states existed only in very specific environmental conditions; conditions that minimized how much work was needed for agriculture to work, and conditions that offered no other obvious alternative. Ancient Mesopotamian city-states were dependent on the flooding of the Tigris and the Euphrates to do a lot of the hard work for them (but certainly not all of it); it would be unimaginable to see a city-state in a different environment, like the mountains.

But even still, ancient Mesopotamia was not a desert, and there were plenty of other alternatives to agriculture nearby to the rivers at the time (unlike how the region is today, which is an arid desert). Many people were able to live outside of and independent of the states, and many tried to escape as well. If agriculture-based societies were an obvious benefit to anyone, why were the majority of humans living outside of them for the majority of human history, and why were so many people trying to escape?

The industrial revolution could not have happened without all the benefits that came from agricultural societies. The fact that H/G societies never changed right into the 20th century is testament to that. — Brett

Perhaps H/Gs never changed because they never felt the need to :smile:

Centralized agricultural states came and went frequently for the majority of human history. "Empires" looked impressively unified on paper, but were much more porous in reality. Industrial technology allowed humans to conquer the natural work into submission; fast and long-distance travel and communication allowed for unprecedented levels of control. Nowadays states are ubiquitous, but they certainly could not exist without this modern tech.

But H/Gs practiced limited agriculture too, and so do everyday modern people in their gardens — darthbarracuda

H/Ging goes back maybe 200,000 years. What evidence have you heard of that they were gardening (or some sort of limited agriculture) that far back? And how do you define 'limited agriculture'?

H/G had to be very good observers of plant and animal life in order to successfully hunt and forage. They probably knew a thing or two about how plants and animals reproduce, and maybe they planted a nut every now and then. But so do squirrels, and we don't think of them as farmers.

Agriculture is by definition sedentary; how do you square the necessary travel of hunter gatherers with a settled lifestyle? Like H/Ging, agriculture demands skill and tools. l don't have any special knowledge about this; I just don't see H/G and agriculture very compatible.