The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race
Human beings existing in this era hold on to the idea of superiority as a result of the adoption of technology and processes that have eased our lives. Currently, we live under the presumption that we are more equipped and skilled than our predecessors since we have the healthiest and longest lives that are safe from starvations, all enhanced through the inclusion of technology. In as much as these aspects may be perceived as genuine, this should not mean that were are far much better than our predecessors. Perhaps some of the healthier, happy, and efficient people never made use of technology or machines in washing their clothes or tilling their lands in a bid to feed their families and communities. An instance that clearly depicts the reasons why modern technology and agriculture did not improve our lives is evident in the manner in which agriculture affects health. In other words, agriculture has several adverse effects on human health that include height drop that was primarily experienced in Greece and Turkey following the adoption of agriculture, thus resulting in the drop of life expectancy as a result of an increase in degenerative health conditions that affect the spine.
Agriculture is additionally perceived as less dependable compared to gathering and hunting. This remains evident in the fact that agriculture remains dependent on the production of a few sources of food and relies on weather conditions for productivity. In this regard, a disease that affects maize has the capacity to affect and kill other food sources within the community. Considerably, the hunting and gathering lifestyle does not solely depend on a single source of crop in proving food to a given population. Given the mobility of this kind of lifestyle, people are in a position to access a varied number of diets as compared to the high carbohydrate crops agriculturists grow. On the other hand, agriculture has brought about social economic issues in the society. Compared with the hunting and gathering lifestyle, an individual has the capacity to produce more food or even have control over it all. However, agriculture allows a single group of individuals to have dominance and control over a larger group. Power is therefore designated to a single individual or a group thus resulting in power struggles and wrangles in the group.
On the other hand, agriculture additionally encouraged the lifestyles of several families, an aspect that resulted in population growths. In this regard, agriculture provided the opportunity for populations and citizens to grow more food than the capacity of the original environment. This therefore meant that women had the capacity to bare more children since they had a consistent supply of food and minimized movements, an aspect that was prevalent among the hunters and gatherers. However, the immense increase in the population of the society brought about several negative implications such as epidemics and infectious diseases that resulted from the congestion of several people in small areas, an element that was not prevalent among the hunters and gatherers.
Lastly, it is significant to establish that an agriculturist lifestyle failed to improve the quality of individual’s life as a result of the environmental impacts it posed. However, the hunters and gathering lifestyle saw people only collect what the land provided and never pushed the land to producing more that it could produce naturally. Agriculture however resulted in environmental degradation and erosions, hence the depletion of nutrients from the soil as a result of the lack of crop diversity. Given this, it is evident that agriculture had several detrimental factors that include social issues, land degradation, and health issues as compared to the hunting and gathering lifestyle. In this case, it is evident that the worst mistake in the history of human race was venturing n agriculture.
