Re: evolutionary success of humans


"John Wilkins" <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:dmgj6k$2dgq$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Skeletal evidence suggests that agrarian societies tend to grow shorter,
> live shorter, and have more diet-related illnesses. On the other hand,
> the energy budget for these societies is much higher than HG societies,
> and so the population density is much higher. ...

> Farmers work 16 hours days in
> backbreaking labour, and tend to be socially isolated.

The high population densities of early agricultural societies tends
to contradict the conventional wisdom that farmers are socially
isolated.

I suspect that urban Americans and Australians tend to have a somewhat
distainful opinion regarding the social opportunities available to
farmers due to the fact that agriculture in those societies tends
to be low density and has a pioneering history.

I suspect that most of the world's agriculturalists have always had
sufficient opportunity for the core social activities of exchanging
gossip, folklore, and news with neighbors, and some limited contact
with a metropolitan urban population. Most agriculture in primitive
times involved garden plots of just a few acres and was conducted by
villages rather than by isolated plainsmen.


.

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