Nasty, brutish, short?
Humans have offered various opinions on whether our history reflects a decline from an earlier golden age, or a triumphant progress from earlier crudeness and darkness. (Personally I think the truth is not as black and white as either picture would have it.) This piece from The Economist argues against the idea of the “noble savage”, which claims that hunter-gatherers live more peaceful, leisurely lives and that farming might be one of the worst ideas we ever came up with.
While agriculture definitely changed our social institutions (perhaps for the worse in some dimensions, introducing a less egalitarian type of society), it brought with it the means of survival for larger numbers of humans than could possibly survive as hunter-gatherers, with all the attendant developments that cities made possible. And hunter-gatherer lifestyles are not all they’ve been cracked up to be: the article cites evidence for high rates of death from warfare in today’s hunter-gatherer societies, and also for progressive destruction of populations of ever-smaller game animals by early human hunters. In short, earlier populations of humans didn’t follow an ideal lifestyle, and whatever else you can say about the changes introduced by agriculture, they did allow for many people to find a way to hang on and survive. And furthermore, it might be inevitable that we always find a way to follow the biological imperative to survive and reproduce, wherever it leads us.
At this time of year it seems appropriate to look both backward and forward. As we look at the way humans have lived in the past, it’s natural to look ahead to how we might live in the future. Will occupying the land ever more densely (as agriculture allows us to do) continue to be a key to our survival, individually and as a species? I doubt it.
Other than the information about animals hunted to extinction by humans, the article did not say much about environmental damage done by humans. We have a far bigger footprint than any other species on the planet, and we are the only ones aware of and able to control our own actions, which gives us a unique responsibility for the other living things we share the planet with (and often depend on). In my view birth control may be one of the most, if not the most, crucial factor in managing environmental problems like pollution and global warming. Expanding into any available niche and figuring out a way to survive, even if it means changes as drastic as the shift from hunting-gathering to agriculture, illustrates our skill at adapting. Do we also have what it takes to limit population growth and refrain from extracting all the resources we can, in the interests of living more closely in balance with other life on the planet? In the end, our survival will depend on this type of sustainable living, so I guess it boils down to the question of whether we have the intelligence and self-control to manage our own behavior before nature manages it for us and brings human population levels down through famine or warfare.
This may seem like a very pessimistic post, and I suppose it is a sobering one, but if we were smart enough to negotiate all the other transitions that life on this planet has required of us, I hope we’re also smart enough to figure this one out. If everyone waits for all the other hominids to take action, nothing will happen. You can learn more about sustainability at the Sustainability Institute, the Alliance for Sustainability, and the Sustainable Community Network.
Best wishes for peace, health, and happiness in 2008.
