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

I think it was those who migrated into regions where wheat and barley few naturally that became agriculturalists. So they didn’t really give up one thing for another. I don’t know if they were hunter/gatherers that made the trip or nomads who settled. It’s difficult for us to conceive of time in evolutionary terms.

If they had lived in a region that served them as H/G then it’s unlikely that there would be the right conditions for agriculture. In fact it seems to me from limited knowledge that if you were H/G communities then you remained that way unless outside forces disrupted it.

I think it would be fair to say that with the development of agriculture in exchange for security people lost their real freedom. Whether or not they knew that I don’t know. But those imposition on their freedom became more and more severe. In that sense I can see how it could be argued that agriculture and its consequences created “anxious man”. But was it an acceptable trade off? Obviously if it was not we would not be talking about it. And if not agriculture what other innovation might have entered our world?

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? — darthbarracuda

From a little bit of research, it seems that the 'why then?' question has to do with the ending of the last ice age and population growth. A warmer climate made agriculture possible (or significantly more lucrative), and the fact that humans had multiplied and spread over the entire habitable world by around 10,000 BC made agriculture (more or less) necessary for regions where over-exploitation occurred. At this point, the options for desperate H/Gs were then either (1) increase productivity of the region presently held, which was now much more feasible due to the warmer climate, or (2) displace (run off or exterminate) neighbours and take their land. Seems like (1) would have been preferable.

Some point out that there was an inter-ice-age period before 12,000BC, so why didn't agriculture emerge then? It seems to me like it could have been that it was too early because the human population hadn't reached planetary saturation, and there might have been some necessary biological-cognitive and/or cultural development that was yet to occur to facilitate the invention of fullscale agriculture, but I don't know.

As for why people tried to run off, I recently read an article by a libertarian economist (Rubin, Hierarchy, 2000) which has given me some ideas. He distinguishes dominance hierarchies from productive hierarchies, and argues that the latter really emerge only in sedentary, agricultural society. Although, he never properly defines the term, I take it that productive hierarchies are those in which superiors determine the allocation of work. Dominance hierarchies, in contrast, are those in which superiors determine the allocation of goods (e.g., food, sex, territory).

When productive hierarchies are appropriate, they increase total productivity (e.g., by reducing conflict over who does what). The reason PHs only get going in agricultural societies is that they are only useful when you have a significant degree of division of labour and specialisation. Rubin seems to assume that PHs prevailed and were more productive than all alternatives in early agricultural civilisation, with surplus output benefitting all members of hierarchy, albeit unequally. So it would be rational from an economic point of view for H/Gs to join such hierarchies, even if they ended up being on the bottom.

He also notes, however, that there are fitness considerations that go into the rational calculations of would-be joiners: does joining increase or decrease my reproductive potential? In early agricultural societies, polygyny was common, and dominants in the PH captured most of the women. So that would be a major disincentive to joining.

In 'non-rational' terms, it would have been an enormous cultural shift for H/Gs, who were used to egalitarian structures. Also, Rubin suggests that because of the fitness-reducing effect of dominance hierarchies for non-dominant humans in our evolutionarily formative period, we probably have a hardwired aversion to dominance hierarchies. So no matter what is rational in a given situation, we might be biased against hierarchies of any form.

This helps explain why people tried to run off. But it doesn't explain why enough people opted in to support the expansion and spread of agriculture before socially enforced monogamy. It doesn't seem like a great mystery to me though. Surely there was variation in the payoffs, and it just happened that in enough regions opting in was sufficiently attractive to get a good seed population, and once the whole thing got going, you get the lock-in effects... specialisation and domestication of humans makes exit unviable, and expansion of those early successful agricultural empires would further displace surround H/Gs and extinguish their knowledge... and because agricultural societies are "population machines" which capture outsiders by overwhelming force and facilitate surpluses to fuel fertility, they would have simply out-populated competing forms of life.

I think it would be fair to say that with the development of agriculture in exchange for security people lost their real freedom. Whether or not they knew that I don’t know. But those imposition on their freedom became more and more severe. In that sense I can see how it could be argued that agriculture and its consequences created “anxious man”. — Brett

Yeah I think it did increase our stress levels. Inequality does that. Especially for those lower in the hierarchy. If we use socio-economic status as a proxy for place in the hierarchy, there's a tonne of research on how it affects our health, apparently mediated by stress. And the relation is actually stronger when we consider subjective as opposed to objective SES background.

Interestingly, it appears that inequality also correlates with negative health outcomes for those at the top as well as those at the bottom. A nice argument for the holistic perspective: the individual flourishes only when the whole flourishes.

But was it an acceptable trade off? Obviously if it was not we would not be talking about it. And if not agriculture what other innovation might have entered our world?

It was and is acceptable in the sense that the alterative is death for all those individuals in excess of 10 million - the estimated maximum number of human beings the Earth can support as hunter gatherers.