Thomas Long

Ms. Tigue
ENGL 1101
10 October 2014
The Biggest Mistake in the History of the Human Race
Typically, when humans think of hunter-gatherers, we think of them as
savages, as lower and worse versions of ourselves. We see agriculture as
something that was a big step toward a better life, and something that made us
better as humans. This intrinsic taboo against wildness and against huntergatherers is what is needed to keep agriculture and civilization going. It is generally
believed that hunter-gatherers were and are less healthy and that they live a short,
brutal life where they are clawing to survive each day through the struggle to find
food. Nothing could be further from the truth. Hunter-gatherers, in fact, are better
versions of our now fragile and domesticated subspecies of human. They tend to
have taller and more robust bodies, much better teeth, and almost no trace of the
physical deformities and diseases that are present in modern-day civilization. Also,
hunter-gatherers work less than we do, are generally far happier than humans are
nowadays, and are far healthier than humans nowadays. Thus, the biggest mistake
in human history was the switch from hunting and gathering to agriculture.
Hunter-gatherers do not have to toil and struggle through a difficult life, as is
the general thought of modern humans. There are more than 100 documented
uncontacted hunter-gatherer tribes that still live today, and live all over the world,
but mostly in places like the Amazon rain forest and many parts of Africa. The

Kalahari Bushmen eat about 2140 calories and 93 grams of protein a day, which is
more than the government recommends of the daily amount of calories that should
be eaten. The Bushmen also spend only about 12 to 19 hours a week obtaining this
food (Diamond 65). This is of course very little compared to the average 40-hour
workweek of the average modern human. Also, according to Weston A. Price, in his
book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, The native diet of the tribes living in the
islands north of Australia consisted of liberal quantities of seafood. They were eaten
with a variety of plant roots and greens, together with fruits which grew abundantly
in the favorable climate (Price 262). The diet of hunter-gatherers in general
consists of wild plants and animals. Plants, however, will be focused on here.
Domesticated, agricultural plants are far less nutrient-dense and healthy than wild
plants. An anthropologist named Gibbons did a study in which he examined eight
wild plants and compared the mineral values of their shoots and leaves against eight
cultivated plants of similar type (Haines). The study found that wild plants had
many more vitamins and minerals than the domesticated versions of those
vegetables. The calcium level averages in the wild plants were more than twice
those of the domesticated plants. There was twice the phosphorous, twice the iron,
and 60 more milligrams of potassium in the wild plant than in the agricultural
version of the plant (Haines). With agriculture, on the other hand, especially with
the overpopulation of the world now, most food is made from just a few starchy
cops. These crops are wheat, rice, and corn, and these are very low in nutrients and
lead to all sorts of problems (Diamond 65). In fact, 60% of our nutrients today come

from these starchy plants (Dawn of). Directly correlated to nutrition are wisdom
and intelligence.
Another misconception that people have is that hunter-gatherers were much
less intelligent than modern humans, and that they did not have the wisdom that
modern humans have. This is also very far from the truth. Indigenous peoples have
many plants they used and still use to heal various ailments. For example, the
Kuikuru of Brazil use the blossoms of the hand-flower tree as a blood or heart tonic
(Etkin 26). The Mekele people in Ethiopia use Christ's Thorn Jujube to treat
dandruff and the thorn apple to treat severe abdominal cramping (Yirga). These are
just very few examples of the vast amount of knowledge of medicinal plants
indigenous people have. Also, these people have extremely keen hunting and
tracking abilities that modern people do not have at all (Price 262). Price comments
on the situation on page 265 of his Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: It is
unfortunate that as the white man has come into contact with the primitives in
various parts of the world he has failed to appreciate the accumulated wisdom of the
primitive racial stocks(Price 265). The authors use of the word primitive is
because of the fact that this book was published over thirty years ago. This
abundance of very nutrient-dense food, the very low number of hours of work
compared to modern civilization, and the wisdom and intelligence that native
peoples have, shows multiple things. It shows that hunter-gatherers live a much
more leisurely and healthy life than that of our modern agricultural civilization and
that the way society tends to see hunter-gatherers is generally incorrect. These

indigenous peoples even have much healthier, less diseased bodies than the modern
domesticated sub-species of human.
Through the generations in which humans have shifted from foraging and
hunting to agriculture, physical deformities and disease have become plagues in
humanity. Through the use of paleopathology, the study of ancient diseases with the
use of old skeletons, anthropologists have found that hunter-gatherers toward the
end of the ice age were much taller on average than people shortly after the
adoption of agriculture (Diamond 66). Modern humans also have teeth that are
much worse than those of their ancestors. Students of history have continuously
commented upon the superior teeth of the so-called savages including the human
types that have preceded our modernized groups(Price 12). Tooth decay is seen as
a strikingly modern disease(Price 13). The bad nutrition that agriculture brings to
people that practice it is what causes this. In Nutrition and Physical Degeneration,
there are four pictures of girls of indigenous tribes teeth. These girls have of course
never used any kind of toothbrush, but they are almost completely free from dental
caries, as is a normal thing for indigenous peoples. In fact, in a study of 4280 teeth
of indigenous children in Switzerland, only 3.4% had any sign of tooth decay,
whereas the modernized versions of their ethnicity who eat modernized agricultural
foods had a striking 29.8% tooth decay in children (Price 34). Although statistics
fluctuate a bit, these trends of much higher rates of tooth decay in modern humans
held true for indigenous people in Indiana, in Alaska, in parts of Africa, and in many
other places around the world. Another problem is disease in general. At Indian
burial mounds, anthropologists found 800 skeletons that showed health differences

between 1150 AD Indians who practiced agriculture and indigenous, huntergatherer Indians. The farmer Indians had a 50% increase in enamel defects, a 4
times increase in iron-deficiency anemia, a threefold rise in bone lesions
reflecting infectious disease in general, and degenerative conditions of the spine
(Diamond 66). In Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Price talks about a famous
surgeon that he knew very well. The surgeon, Dr., Joseph Romig, is very familiar
with indigenous peoples. When the first generation of people who began practicing
agriculture came to his office to be treated, he said in his 36 years of contact with
these people he had never seen a case of malignant disease among the truly
primitive Eskimos and Indians, although it frequently occurs when they become
modernized and come into contact with white mans food(Price 91). This is yet
another example of the better, more sickness-free life of hunter-gatherers versus
modernized people.
A large majority of people nowadays believe that humans are better are off
now than as hunter-gatherers. This is very much proven wrong by the extreme
physical and nutritional degeneration that were going through. We are not
progressing as a species, we are in fact regressing, even if that goes against
everything people may have been taught to believe through schools and through
society in general. People may argue that civilization, which is caused by
agriculture, has the arts, so it is all worth it. This is another example showing the
fact that the inherent positivity of civilization should be reexamined. First of all,
many people may trade the arts for healthier teeth, a healthier and more robust
body, a life of 12-19 hours per week to gather food, and a much lower risk of disease

and physical deformities. Also, it is not true to say that indigenous people did not
have art. In fact they used many natural things, such as rocks, to create huge
paintings. Ancient rock artists painted people and animalsit could be that the
artists simply painted things they found beautiful (SAHO). They got their shades
from many different places. They got it from yellow ochre, white paint from white
clay, and black from manganese oxide (SAHO). They played music, danced, painted
their bodies, and do many other things that show that art is not simply something
that came out of agriculture and out of civilization.
Unfortunately, it is impossible for every human on Earth to go back to the
hunting and gathering lifestyle, because of the fact that modern humans are severely
overpopulating the Earth. This was of caused by agriculture, as was modern climate
change. (Cohen 218). When people can begin to recognize the destruction of our
bodies, our minds, and our planet as a result of agriculture, we can begin to move in
a different, more sustainable direction. We can live healthier and more leisurely
lives, where we have a stronger sense of community, where we have a stronger
connection with the Earth, and where, ultimately, we feel a stronger sense of
happiness and sense of place.

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