The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race?

Manc Skipper · Jul 7, 2012

Daktoria said:
I'm not really sure what you're talking about. The Vikings were sustained primarily through fishing and livestock. Agriculture is kind of hard to cultivate when you live in a frigid climate:

Viking Food: 800 - 1100 AD

If you have livestock, you need a place to keep it, and to grow something to feed it. That's why the limited amount of land available drove the expansion, trading and raiding.

" ...Scholars say the Viking raids were about survival, not conquest, and were prompted primarily by a shortage of land. In most cases individual Viking chieftains gathered followers and set off on raids. Wherever they went, the Vikings lived off the land, often driving the locals out and taking whatever valuables they could get their hands on... "

Vikings' Barbaric Bad Rap Beginning to Fade

Helix · Jul 7, 2012

__________
cop rock.

Neomalthusian · Jul 7, 2012

Hunting and gathering can't even be classified as a mistake, given its how all living animals survive. So I guess that leaves agriculture.

Agriculture and other human advancements since then have put us and kept us on track to boom and bust. We're self-sabotaging in gradually accelerating fashion and don't really recognize it.

No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.

Baralis · Jul 7, 2012

molten_dragon said:
Happiness and harmony could be argued maybe, but it's downright ridiculous to say that agriculture has negatively affected our health. The average live expectancy in prehistoric times was roughly 25. The average life expectancy worldwide today is 68. Heck, the country with the lowest life expectancy is still almost 40. Pretty hard to say agriculture has negatively affected our health, when the average person today lives almost 3 times longer than early hunter-gatherers did.

I suppose that all comes down to how one looks at it. Many scientists and nutritionists now argue that primitive man, while food supply was abundant, probably had a more balanced and nutritious diet then his modern counterpart. Probably the biggest factors in the expanded life expectancy isnt nutrition but rather supply consistency, safer/cleaner preservation and preparation, and medical knowledge/treatment for ailments.

A modern man with current medical treatments available and the means to practice the hunter/gatherer lifestyle with real food consistency may be a healthier individual then his more typical counterpart.

sawyerloggingon said:
On a certain level hunter gatherer society's had it made. They worked a couple of hours a day to feed themselves and had lots of free time for art, religion and whatever recreational-religion drug they could find. Their needs were food and shelter, nothing more and life was simple. Imagine no alarm clocks, no boss, no economic concerns no bills etc. On the other hand an abscessed tooth was a long miserable death sentence as was a compound fracture. With all it's foibles I'll take modern life but I admit the romanticized version of being a hunter gatherer does sometimes seem appealing.

In my early twenties I studied native americans and their way of living a great deal. Prior to european settlers it is believed they only needed to dedicate about 4 hours a day toward survival. As you say it left the rest of their time dedicated to family, tribe, and religion. I know I have to dedicate much more time to support myself and my added luxuries today, is it really worth it? Im not sure..

Dittohead not! said:
Trying to imagine the world's seven billion people surviving as hunter gatherers.. nope. Can't do it.

Moreover, the pre agricultural people tended to have rather short and difficult lives, even when there were only a few thousand humans to compete for the limited food supply.

The biggest mistake is thinking that the past was better than the present.

That is all a matter of opinion. Personally I think a world population of < 300 million would better suit me, I do not care for all these people. More people does not equate better results imo.

sawyerloggingon · Jul 7, 2012

Dittohead not! said:
Trying to imagine the world's seven billion people surviving as hunter gatherers.. nope. Can't do it.

Moreover, the pre agricultural people tended to have rather short and difficult lives, even when there were only a few thousand humans to compete for the limited food supply.

The biggest mistake is thinking that the past was better than the present.

On the other hand a hunter gatherer society never would have overpopulated the world as we have done. The population would likely have stayed fairly stable. One check in the positive column for them.

ttwtt78640 · Jul 7, 2012

Niether of these "mistakes" was the worst, IMHO, as both allow people to survive and become productive. The worst mistake is either crime or welfare, as both take from others yet produce nothing of value in return. Any society that tolerates either is wasting valuable resources.

Dittohead not! · Jul 7, 2012

sawyerloggingon said:
On the other hand a hunter gatherer society never would have overpopulated the world as we have done. The population would likely have stayed fairly stable. One check in the positive column for them.

Hunter gatherer societies, in fact, have hard time increasing population at all. People keep dying off young, being killed by animals they hunt, starving, dying of complications from pregnancy, dying of diseases, subject to parasites.

On human life expectancy:

AVERAGE WORLDWIDE HUMAN life expectancy reached 66 years in the first quinquennium of the twenty-ﬁrst century, with extremes at the country level ranging from 39 years in Zambia to 82 years in Japan (United Nations 2007). Average life expectancy has increased linearly at almost three months
per year over the past 160 years
Among traditional hunter-gatherers, the average life expectancy at birth varies from 21 to 37 years

Which doesn't mean that hunter gatherers typically die at that age. Much of the difference lies in infant and child mortality:

Infant mortality is over 30 times greater among hunter-gatherers, and early child mortality is over 100 times greater than encountered in the United States.

but it does give some insight as to why population increases more rapidly in modern society than it did before the advent of agriculture and the building of civilization.

TommyTooter · Jul 7, 2012

Dittohead not! said:
Hunter gatherer societies, in fact, have hard time increasing population at all. People keep dying off young, being killed by animals they hunt, starving, dying of complications from pregnancy, dying of diseases, subject to parasites.

On human life expectancy:

Which doesn't mean that hunter gatherers typically die at that age. Much of the difference lies in infant and child mortality:

but it does give some insight as to why population increases more rapidly in modern society than it did before the advent of agriculture and the building of civilization.

the way it was presented to us in college, was the big mistake was when we decided to stand erect. we then not only started to fight against gravity and motion by not creeping, but we also exposed our vital parts more easily to attack by an enemy or predator which led to the necessity for weapons.

agriculture led to cities and cities are the biggest mistake of all, especially the way they've all been built near the coasts and inland waterways, messing up the most biologically productive ecosystems with their wastes. cities don't produce anything useful to the environment and consume more oxygen and water and release more carbon dioxide than other organisms can compensate for (e.g., plants to fix the carbon and re-release the oxygen in the city can't even come close to keeping up with us)

Neomalthusian · Jul 7, 2012

Thinking of our advancements from an ecological point of view, of course they will seem like mistakes. In that sense, the agricultural revolution was a "mistake" the way smoking your first cigarette or drinking your first drink is a mistake if you become a drug addict (the whole gateway argument). The agricultural revolution led to the next revolutions (scientific, industrial/oil, computer) which have happened in accelerating fashion. The upsides to these revolutions are great, in that we've become homo collossus, but again from the ecological point of view it's like graduating on to the next drug... which eventually leads to a crash.

I actually think the worst mistake was that we didn't ration oil when we discovered its power. The explosion in our oil use has contributed to a state of Peak Everything, where we continue to accelerate toward a critical breaking point. As soon as the oil depletes, everything will come unraveled.

Matt Foley · Jul 7, 2012

Worse mistake in the History of the Human Race is exploiting foreigners as cheap foreign labor like slavery, but it doesn't have to be chains and whips slavery. The vampiric, blood dripping from fangs, drive for profit.

This slows down (or reverses) the process of mechanization (industrialization).

d0gbreath · Jul 7, 2012

from_article said:
Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed a crucial stage at which we made the worst mistake in human history. Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.

This statement cannot be denied. We built a caste system with the extra time afforded to the tyrannical.

Neomalthusian · Jul 7, 2012

Matt Foley said:
Worse mistake in the History of the Human Race is exploiting foreigners as cheap foreign labor like slavery, but it doesn't have to be chains and whips slavery. The vampiric, blood dripping from fangs, drive for profit.

This slows down (or reverses) the process of mechanization (industrialization).

This made me laugh out loud.

Thunder · Jul 7, 2012

i think industrialization was our worst mistake.

Jetboogieman · Jul 7, 2012

Thunder said:
i think industrialization was our worst mistake.

I mean just think, if there had been no industrialization, computers would have never been invented and I would have been spared having to look at your ridiculously stupid avatar.

Thunder · Jul 7, 2012

Jetboogieman said:
I mean just think, if there had been no industrialization, computers would have never been invented and I would have been spared having to look at your ridiculously stupid avatar.

speaking of avatars, the Dude Abides.

DiAnna · Jul 7, 2012

Personally, I think Lucas' Star Wars "prequel" was the Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race.

Surtr · Jul 7, 2012

Worst mistake of all mankind, hard to say. Mankind ****ed up a lot, and still does. Agriculture doesn't even make the top 1,000 of this list.

Albert Di Salvo · Jul 7, 2012

Daktoria said:
I'm not really sure what you're talking about. The Vikings were sustained primarily through fishing and livestock. Agriculture is kind of hard to cultivate when you live in a frigid climate:

Viking Food: 800 - 1100 AD

Climate, the Dark Age, and their own social organization created opportunity. The elan of their society and their naval technology put them in a position to seize the opportunity.

Albert Di Salvo · Jul 7, 2012

Matt Foley said:
Worse mistake in the History of the Human Race is exploiting foreigners as cheap foreign labor like slavery, but it doesn't have to be chains and whips slavery. The vampiric, blood dripping from fangs, drive for profit.

This slows down (or reverses) the process of mechanization (industrialization).

Slowing down the development of technology in order to maintain slave societies was done by both Classical Greeks and Romans.

Albert Di Salvo · Jul 7, 2012

Everybody makes mistakes. But some mistakes are fatal.

The clearest mistakes I can think of are:

1. The decision of the Imperial German General Staff to allow Lenin and his entourage to travel from Switzerland to St. Petersburg in a closed train in 1917. The idea was to get Russia out of the First World War as a combatant. The Imperial Germasn succeeded in the short run, but they allowed creation of the Soviet Union. And what did the Soviets do to Germany in 1945. Blowback.

2. The Ming Dynasty was a great blue water naval power with effective control of the waters from East Asia to the Coast of East Africa in the first part of the 15th century. But divison in the Ming Court led to the burning of the logs of the Great Ming Fleet, and the termination of Ming China as a great naval power. About 90 years later the Europeans showed up on the coast of China, and the great Chinese ordeal began.

3. Montezuma the Aztec and Atahualpa the Inca had no idea who they were dealing with when they encountered Cortez and Pizarro respectively. Their peoples never recovered.

Surtr · Jul 7, 2012

Albert Di Salvo said:
Slowing down the development of technology in order to maintain slave societies was done by both Classical Greeks and Romans.

It was also a major part of their downfalls. Slavery is great until the populace comes to rely strictly on slave labor.

Aspasia · Jul 7, 2012

Hatuey said:
This is some pretty theoretical history and I'm not sure I'm completely swayed by Jared's argument. He literally compares different contexts of history ignoring certain key issues. The first would rise out of this particular text:

While seemingly "solid" in its historical background, the underlined part ignores that even though starvation is certainly a problem for populations dependent on agriculture, these same populations also have near infinite populations growths and are less susceptible to extinction. It's also feels redundant to point out that agricultural populations are more technologically advanced than hunter gatherers.

I think Jared Diamond is a brilliant historiographer, however he's not really convincing in his theories. They definitely help explain why some populations have managed to conquer others (for those who read Guns, Germs and Steel) but they're not really convincing as far making an argument against progressive views of technology. If anything I find A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright to be far more convincing (if not ominous) for why we should be weary of technology.

I think Diamond's reference to agricultural communities conquering and replacing hunter-gather societies was directed largely to prehistoric times rather than the historic era of conquest addressed by Guns, Germs and Steel.

Matt Foley · Jul 7, 2012

Albert Di Salvo said:
Slowing down the development of technology in order to maintain slave societies was done by both Classical Greeks and Romans.

And every other culture that used it, including the backwards South which is still suffering to this day.

Dittohead not! · Jul 8, 2012

Obviously, having driven the Neanderthals to extinction was a grave error. Can you imagine a football team that had them as linebackers? It would be unbeatable!

Surtr · Jul 8, 2012

Dittohead not! said:
Obviously, having driven the Neanderthals to extinction was a grave error. Can you imagine a football team that had them as linebackers? It would be unbeatable!

Meh, they were already out the door, just as the homo sapien today will need to make way for the homo superior.

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race?