The Agricultural Revolution as a Fraud

Key Insight

For 2.5 million years, humans fed themselves by gathering wild plants and hunting animals, a lifestyle that was ample and supported complex social structures. This changed approximately 10,000 years ago with the Agricultural Revolution, when humans began devoting almost all their effort to manipulating a few animal and plant species. This transition, beginning around 9500–8500 BC in the hill country of south-eastern Turkey, western Iran, and the Levant, saw the domestication of wheat and goats by 9000 BC, peas and lentils by 8000 BC, olive trees by 5000 BC, horses by 4000 BC, and grapevines by 3500 BC. Even today, over 90 percent of humanity's calories come from these ancient domestications.

Scholars once presented agriculture as a great leap forward for humanity, a tale of progress fueled by human intelligence. This narrative suggested people abandoned the gruelling life of hunter-gatherers for a pleasant, satiated existence as farmers. However, this view is a fantasy. There is no evidence of increased human intelligence over time, and foragers possessed deep natural knowledge essential for survival. Rather than an era of easy living, the Agricultural Revolution generally resulted in lives more difficult and less satisfying for farmers than for foragers.

The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the total food supply, but this extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Instead, it led to population explosions and benefited pampered elites, while the average farmer worked harder and received a worse diet. This fundamental shift is therefore dubbed 'history's biggest fraud' because it offered little to individuals, but dramatically increased the number of Homo sapiens, albeit often under worse conditions.