the probability of a hunter’s success lies closer to 25%. This has led to an emphasis on sharing in many forager societies, allowing them to take advantage of multiplicative probability. Whereas the chance of a single hunter retrieving nothing on a given day is 75%, the chances that ten will come back with nothing is 0.75 x 10 = 5.63%. If even one hunter makes a kill on a given day, then the band will eat. (Lee, 2000)

The formula specified
0.75 x 10

should be
0.75 ^ 10

that is, .75 to the tenth power, or
.75 x .75 x .75 x .75 x .75 x .75 x .75 x .75 x .75 x .75

The result itself (5.63%) is correct, it’s simply the formula itself which appears to have a typo in it.

Just in case anyone was wondering how .75 x 10 came out to 5.63%….

There must be in the Indians’ social bond something singularly captivating, and far superior to be boasted of among us; for thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those Aborigines having from choice become Europeans! There must be something very bewitching in their manners, something very indelible and marked by the very hands of Nature. For, take a young Indian lad, give him the best education you possibly can, load him with your bounty, with presents, nay with riches, yet he would secretly long for his native woods, which you would imagine he must have long since forgot; and on the first opportunity he can possibly find, you will see him voluntarily leave behind all you have given him and return with inexpressable joy to lie on the mats of his fathers.

— J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer

No European who has tasted Savage life can afterwards bear to live in our societies.

— Benjamin Franklin

White men like to dig in the ground for their food. My people prefer to hunt the buffalo as their fathers did. White men like to stay in one place. My people want to move their tepees here and there to the different hunting grounds. The life of white men is slavery. They are prisoners in towns or farms. The life my people want is a life of freedom. I have seen nothing that a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or food, that is as good as the right to move in the open country, and live in our own fashion. … The white men had many things that we wanted, but we could see that they did not have the one thing we liked best—freedom. I would rather live in a tepee and go without meat when game is scarce, than give up my privileges as a free Indian, even though I could have all that white men have.

— Sitting Bull

Okay, so is what you mean then, “Life or death in the immediate are the only two outcomes for judging the quality of behavior in the members of a species” and that: “…(farming and animal husbandry) allowed the species to grow dramatically which was a very good thing. Our success as a species may have depended on it” given the conditions of Mesopotamia 10k yrs ago.

I’m not convinced. 65,000 yrs before agriculture arose in Mesopotamia, the Toba Caldera exploded in Indonesia, plunged the world into severe environmental cooling, and wiped out all but 10,000 reproduction-age females globally (at the highest estimate — there may have been as few as 1000, and one paper I came across postulated as few as 40). Even under these conditions homo sapiens managed to pull through without resorting to agriculture. So I find it hard to believe that life in the Fertile Crescent was so brutal it required agriculture to survive.

Jay writes: “I think my main point (and also responding to Jason here) is that calling the adoption of agriculture a ‘choice’ (or implying that it was a choice by calling it a ‘mistake’) is incorrect.”

There is plenty of room to doubt whether settlement was the result of a switch to survival by agricultural means — it is entirely possible that humans switched from their nomadic life to settlements due to social & cultural changes, and turned to agriculture as a way of supporting these changes.

If this is the case, then farming was, in fact, a conscious decision. It would have been just as legitimate for settled tribes to once again pick up and follow migrating herds when they’d depleted their natural food base, as it was for them to stick seeds in the dirt.

“Adoption” is a choice. Someone made the decision to stay put.

Jay writes: “So - less a choice and more an inevitable occurance. Once agriculture was discovered it was basically inevitable that it would enjoy widespread adoption. Speaking as if it were a ‘mistake’ is like saying it was a ‘mistake’ to lose our fur. Maybe - but at this point, totally moot.”

I disagree. Human history is not a matter of things just happening to us, always beyond our control, as if we have no agency in our own evolution. Human history is a matter of people making decisions that shape the future. Even your example of losing our fur can potentially be tied to a decision: we chose to use animal skins to keep ourselves warm, thereby protecting ourselves from the selective pressures that would have caused us to remain furry.

I do not believe it was an inevitable occurrance that agriculture should be adopted everywhere. It did not just magically happen among nomadic tribes around the world. Agriculture was a miserable half-life of disease, malnutrition, and social oppression compared with the freedom that nomadic hunter-gatherers lived prior to the Neolithic Revolution. The mystery is why agricultural settlements weren’t abandoned en masse when their lack of benefits became apparent. The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is that those who benefitted most from agriculture — kings, priests, and others that we would today consider the “rich and powerful” — maintained mass commitment to misery via religion and violence.

Everywhere that some tribes chose to adopt agriculture, that I am aware of in any case, the nomadic peoples in its orbit were conquered and forced to abandon their ways. Someone, somewhere, had to make that decision, too.

In any event, I agree with Diamond and with Jason in that agriculture was a huge mistake, and probably the greatest mistake in our history. IMO, understanding the decisions that led some tribes to adopt agriculture is the key to undoing that mistake so that we humans might avoid the global suicide to which it has brought us. Everything we face right now has its roots in the original unsustainable act: farming. The only way we’re going to survive is to undo that mistake somehow.

Jason, there is no choice in the answer to this question. Ofcourse, people will throw themselves at ir to keep it going. If they succeed, the ones who walk away will again be conquered and disappear. If they fail, the ones who walked away will still try again later. It will take multiple failures continously to outlive agriculture.

The adoption of that behavior pattern (farming and animal husbandry) allowed the species to grow dramatically which was a very good thing.

How so? You’re greatly underestimating the hunter-gatherer population. We’d had our brushes with extinction, but the last one was over 50,000 years in our past by the time we began farming. In fact, the Mesolithic had some fairly thick hunter-gatherer populations. But even if that were true, in what way is a large population a good thing?

Our success as a species may have depended on it.

Again, how? Our population was holding steady; since then, we’ve been in a state of overshoot, ensuring die-off and possibly extinction. How does the threat of extinction improve the status of our species, versus a dynamic equilibrium?

At that point our ancestors had nothing like the assured safety from natural forces and other animals which we enjoy today.

No, it was much better before. Foragers are not subject to natural disasters as we are, because they’re mobile (see, for instance, the Andamnan foragers in last year’s tsunami).

Of course there were periods of famine and starvation which may have been avoided had the population remained small to begin with.

Foragers do not starve; farmers do. See thesis #9, myth #2.

Thus my comment about not anthropomorphizing a species

But it was not a species that took up farming. As Daniel Quinn cautions us, “We are not humanity.” It was a very small number of isolated groups that took up farming, grew beyond their ability to support themselves like a cancer, and began conquering everything around them (because they had no choice). The choice those groups made, to deal with their pressures through farming, was the last time in our history that someone did have a legitimate choice. Only with the final, inevitable collapse of the system created by that mistake, will any of us have any choice again.

No one made a “choice” about it, it just won out. No individual had the benefit of our 8000 years of hind-sight to say “hey, this is going to lead to overpopulation in 2100 AD”.

So, it’s your opinion that it’s not a mistake, unless you’re aware of the negative consequences beforehand? Oh good, that means I’ve never made a mistake! I’m surprised anyone ever has, by that criteria. Who is it that says to themselves, “I know this is going to end in disaster, but I think I’ll do it anyway!”

Maybe - but at this point, totally moot.

Not at all—because we’re about to get a choice again when this finally breaks down. Will we waste ourselves throwing ourselves at it again and again to keep it going, or will we walk away from it because it was never a good idea in the first place? Our answer to that question will determine whether we outlive agriculture, or if our mistake kills us off with it.

I think my main point (and also responding to Jason here) is that calling the adoption of agriculture a “choice” (or implying that it was a choice by calling it a “mistake”) is incorrect. Thus my comment about not anthropomorphizing a species (note - a species is not a human being and does not have thoughts or feelings like one. Thus you can ‘anthropomorphize’ a species. But you shouldn’t :). The adoption of agriculture was done over at least a period of 1000 years. The end result was that groups which took up agricultural methods out-survived and probably destroyed virtually all groups which did not. I believe that this is directly related to their having a 100-1 numerical superiority. You can’t deny that agriculture became the dominant behavior pattern in the human species (compared to the hunter/gatherer behavior). No one made a “choice” about it, it just won out. No individual had the benefit of our 8000 years of hind-sight to say “hey, this is going to lead to overpopulation in 2100 AD”.
So - less a choice and more an inevitable occurance. Once agriculture was discovered it was basically inevitable that it would enjoy widespread adoption. Speaking as if it were a “mistake” is like saying it was a “mistake” to lose our fur. Maybe - but at this point, totally moot.

Farming can support a population explosion, but not for very long without serious expansion. Ultimately, farming does not support human species procreation, because it will eventually wipe out the resources it requires for its own perpetuation, AND the resources required for non-agricultural survival, everywhere.

Overpopulation is fundamentally destructive for any species and makes long-term survival less certain than if that species lived in appropriate balance with its ecosystem. Farming has allowed humans to overpopulate and in coming decades we will pay the price. It is by no means assured that we will survive the trajectory on which farming put us all those millennia ago.

If life or death are the only two outcomes for judging the quality of behavior in the members of a species, then surely farming must be judged “bad” because the 100:1 survival ratio it brings now threatens life on the entire planet.