Agriculture was a disaster for humanity and the world
I am currently reading the book Sex At Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá in which the authors argue that human sexuality was not always what we see it as today.
Agriculture made us abandon our nomadic lifestyle and focus on cultivation, thus protecting land and property and passing it down the generations. That made the humans treat women as another object to possess and control and there started the long tradition of subjugating women. Before agriculture, the authors argue, women enjoyed total freedom and liberty with some nuances of course.
Agriculture also made us live in denser area thus facilitating the spread of all of the modern pandemics and infectious diseases. In the prehistory, tribes rarely contacted each other, and even if a highly infectious and deadly disease latched onto a tribe, it would die off with the tribe right there.
Agriculture made us work longer hours in the field and now in the concrete buildings for much less satisfaction. Prehistoric people may seem to have a harsh life but evidence suggests they did not.
Before the advent of agriculture, humans were more promiscuous and polygamous with more focus on sharing and love than on war. Our views have been distorted by some faulty conclusions by some prominent anthropologists that misinterpreted the evidences. Agriculture brought with the new concept of controlling land and heirs. It made us value monogamy more because it made sure the property went to the family’s rightful heir rather than some outsider. Monogamy then was put on a pedestal by religions and repeatedly whipped its morality into us. Now, the whole world believes that monogamy is the human norm with some mistakes of adultery here and there. But evidence leads us in the totally opposite direction.
