These signs, of health differentials within local communities of farmers in the past appear on a global scale in the modern world. To most American and European readers, the argument that humanity could on the average be better off as hunter-gatherers than we are today sounds ridiculous, because most people in industrial societies today enjoy better health than most hunter-gatherers. However, Americans and Europeans are an elite in today's world, dependent on oil and other materials imported from countries with large peasant populations and much lower health standards. If you could choose between being a middle-class American, a Bushman hunter, and a peasant farmer in Ethiopia, the first choice would undoubtedly be the healthiest one, but the third choice might be the least healthy.
While giving rise to class divisions for the first time, farming may also have exacerbated sexual inequality already in existence. With the advent of agriculture, women often became beasts of burden, were drained by more frequent pregnancies (see below), and thus suffered poorer health. For example, among the 'Chilean mummies from 1000 AD, women exceeded men in osteoarthritis and in bone lesions from infectious diseases. In New Guinea farming communities today I often see women staggering under a load of vegetables and firewood while the men walk empty-handed. In one case I offered to pay some villagers to carry supplies from an airstrip to my mountain camp, and a group of men, women, and children volunteered. The heaviest item was a 110-pound bag of rice, which I lashed to a pole and assigned to a team of four men to shoulder the pole together. When I eventually caught up with the villagers, the men were carrying light loads, while one small woman weighing less than the bag of rice was bent under it, supporting its weight by a cord across her temples.
As for the claim that agriculture laid the foundations of art by providing us with leisure time, modern hunter-gatherers have on the average at least as much free time as do farmers. I grant that some people in industrial and farming societies enjoy more leisure than hunter-gatherers, at the expense of many others who support them and have far less leisure. Farming undoubtedly made it possible to sustain full-time craftsmen and artists, without whom we would not have such large-scale art projects as the Sistine Chapel and Cologne Cathedral. However, the whole emphasis on leisure time as a critical factor in explaining artistic differences among human societies seems to me misguided. It is not lack of time that prevents us today from surpassing the beauty of the Parthenon. While post-agricultural technological advances did make new art forms possible and art preservation easier, great paintings and sculptures on a smaller scale than that of Cologne Cathedral were already being produced by Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherers 15,000 years ago. Great art was still being produced in modern times by hunter-gatherers such as Eskimos and Pacific Northwest Indians. In addition, when we count up the specialists whom society became able to support after the advent of agriculture, we should recall not only Michelangelo and Shakespeare but also standing armies of professional killers.
Thus, with the advent of agriculture an elite became healthier, but many people became worse off. Instead of the progressivist party line that we chose agriculture because it was good for us, a cynic might ask how we got trapped by agriculture despite its being such a mixed blessing. The answer boils down to the adage, 'Might makes right. Farming could support far more people than hunting, whether or not it also brought on the average more food per mouth. (Population densities of hunter-gatherers are typically one person or less per square mile, while densities of farmers average at least ten times higher.) Partly, this is because an acre of field planted entirely in edible crops produces far more tons of food, and allows one to feed far more mouths, than an acre of forest with scattered edible wild plants. Partly, too, it is because nomadic hunter-gatherers have to keep their children spaced at four-year intervals by infanticide and other means, since a mother must carry her toddler until it is old enough to keep up with the adults. Because sedentary farmers do not have that problem, they can and do have a child every two years. Perhaps the main reason we find it so hard to shake off the traditional view that farming was unequivocally good for us is that there is no doubt that it meant more tons of food per acre. We forget that it also meant more mouths to feed, and that health and quality of life depend on the amount of food per mouth. As population densities of hunter-gatherers slowly rose at the end of the Ice Age, bands had to 'choose', whether consciously or unconsciously, between feeding more mouths by taking the first steps towards agriculture, or else finding ways to limit growth. Some bands adopted the former solution, unable to anticipate the evils of farming, and seduced by the transient abundance they enjoyed until population growth caught up with increased food production. Such bands outbred and then drove off or killed the bands that chose to remain hunter-gatherers, because ten malnourished farmers can still outfight one healthy hunter. It is not that hunter-gatherers abandoned their lifestyle, but that those sensible enough not to abandon it were forced out of all areas except ones that farmers did not want. Modern hunter-gatherers persisted only in scattered areas useless for agriculture, such as the Arctic, deserts, and some rainforests. At this point it is ironic to recall the common complaint that archaeology is an expensive luxury, concerned with the remote past, and offering no lessons of present relevance. Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed for us a stage where we made one of the most crucial decisions in human history. Forced to choose between limiting population growth or trying to increase food production, we opted for the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny. The same choice faces us today, with the difference that we now can learn from the past.
Hunter-gatherers practised the most successful and long-persistent lifestyle in the career of our species. In contrast, we are still struggling with the problems into which we descended with agriculture, and it is unclear whether we can solve them. Suppose that an archaeologist who had visited us from outer space were trying to explain human history to his fellow spacelings. The visitor might illustrate the results of his digs by a twenty-four-hour clock on which one hour of clock-time represents 100,000 years of real past time. If the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 pm we adopted agriculture. In retrospect, the decision was inevitable, and there is now no question of turning back. But as our second midnight approaches, will the present plight of African peasants gradually spread to engulf all of us? Or, will we somehow achieve those seductive blessings that we imagine behind agriculture's glittering facade, and that have so far eluded us except in mixed form?
ELEVEN
WHY DO WE SMOKE, DRINK, AND USE DANGEROUS DRUGS?
Self-destructive chemical abuse by humans has precedents in animal displays that are costly or dangerous to the displaying animal. Such behaviour may have originated from the dilemma that signals available to any individual lend themselves to cheating. But costly or dangerous signals carry a built-in guarantee of honesty and are thus useful—as long as their benefits outweigh their costs. Unfortunately, this old evolutionary framework has gone awry in us.