Hunting and Gathering’s Surprising Benefits and Eventual Downfalls
Jared Diamond’s “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race” encourages thought-provoking questions regarding the implementation of agriculture in modern society. By closely comparing the original hunter-gathering means of obtaining food to the agriculturally rich life we know presently, I would have never known the limits a farming-dependant life entails. Farming was originally popularized by the exponentially growing populations at the time, and it allowed for a safe and reliable means of food. Upon comparing the two lifestyles, factors such as lessened average height, bone diseases, class divisions, and even sexual inequality resulted from the transition to an agricultural dependant society. Diamond’s account of the hunter-gathering groups that still exist today depicts their eating habits and lifestyle in general as efficient and admirable. Diamond successfully points out the drawbacks of agriculture as means of food by painting an intriguing picture of efficiently surviving through hunting and gathering. While life back then may have been better in some ways, I hold that the incorporation of agriculture in society and was necessary for the growth of knowledge, experience, and quality of living, but most importantly the advancement of society as a whole.
Although hunting and gathering has many tempting benefits, I fear any large-scale transition to such a primitive lifestyle will only bring ecological depletion and human divergence. With the addition of a few billion more people to the planet, any competition for a vital component of living will bring chaos to a typically enjoyable task. Aside from the human toll hunting and gathering would place on society, more importantly, I am concerned for the tall expectations that would be placed upon the plants and animals we reside amongst. Our earth simply cannot provide for its non-human residents along with a few billions of people attempting to survive off of its resources alone. The hunter-gathering lifestyle hinges completely on Earth’s provisions, which, in this case, I would not be surprised if it almost entirely depleted the earth of its “renewable” resources. While it is unlikely we will regress to strictly relying on human’s aptness to scavenge for such a universal necessity such as food, the implications are scary to think about. Thankfully advancements in dietary and human survival knowledge allow our diet to be balanced and widely distributed without a personal or smaller group dependant lifestyle.