A Comedy of Error
More than a million years back, a new species of mammals evolved from apes, in the region we call today as Africa. Gradually these unique creatures that possess a big head and could walk using two limbs began spreading over to Eurasia, or more specifically, to the places we have named as Iraq, Syria and Egypt. Years later, they are now present in almost every corner of Earth’s landmass.
Of course, I am discussing about humans. The growth of Homo sapiens, from a predator that small animals feared to a network of creatures that control the world today, is as amazing as a fantasy film, or even as a strategy board game. After all, a major question that could arise to anyone who witness this ‘bull run’ is why was it the humans who could gain access to the key of dominance across the earth, and not any other species? The answer is simple: humans can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. However, it took thousands of years for Homo sapiens to come in terms with the fact that they are uniquely designed to do such things.
Humans lived in small bands back then, something which could have a maximum capacity of fifty (extreme case), of which all were akin. Somewhat like a joint family with grandparents, working people and children. Such families were commonly present even some decades back in India too, with a grand old man of the house, who has multiple wives, from where comes multiple children, who themselves would become parents by the time the old chap dies. Such bands of our ancestors lived fairly in jungles hunting rabbits and evading from wild animals like lions. It may feel simple, but their situation wasn’t as good as we think. Men were required to go far away in search of good prey, which often lead to dislocating the entire band. Food could be poisonous, and prey often hard to catch. Women often couldn’t nurse her children when she too had to help her husband as a hunter-gatherer and moving from one place to another to find food. Their babies often died and parents could even die from wild animals before they could reproduce. In short, our ancestors were fighting hard for the survival of the race.
Why was it the humans who could gain access to the key of dominance across the earth, and not any other species?
Nobody has a clear idea of how the situation changed. But scientists and historians know the why. Perhaps someday, an ancestor of ours would have seen a plant growing on a piece of land, that could reproduce way faster than any observable creature did. More interesting was that this plant could be cooked and eaten! You just need a land and some water to begin with. I know, I am clearly making this up. It could be something like this or could be bit different. The end result was simple: Homo sapiens discovered agriculture. Making it even clear, the learned the key to create food out of a small seed!
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Many historians appreciate this as perhaps the greatest Eureka! moment that happened after the discovery of fire. It may seem a silly thing to us. But humans had all their problems solved. They could produce food at a piece of land where they could permanently stay without displacing their settlement once every week. ‘Home-made food’ was safe. Only men needed to work for food, where women could find time to nurse their children. Less people died as they needn’t encounter large elephants or hungry tigers any more. Moreover, from an economic perspective, we could say that humans could produce more calories to eat from a small piece of land! A band of fifteen people needn’t travel miles the whole day, just to find and catch a deer for the dinner.
The story seems good, isn’t it? Yuval Noah Harari, author of the bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind argues the reverse, that Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud. Humans were feeling safer due to good food production, which resulted in more quality time with their family. More time with their spouse, resulting the obvious. More babies were born, who were required to be fed. Old men retired from work, who too demanded food. Working men, of course, needed enough calories to work harder. Hence demand for food increased and more men began to settle nearby and work on that piece of land. Soon they stuck to their locality. No more displacement happened as before. Humans had to spend their remaining life in that couple of acres of land, just like a parrot in the cage or a chimp in a zoo. In short, food production domesticated humans, and not the reverse!
Sounds strange, doesn’t it? I can give a more detailed picture of this. There are enough analogies similar to this condition. Instagram could be a perfect case-study. Is it you using the Instagram or the Instagram eating away your time (which you realize once you check screen time). A big chunk of today’s youth could relate to the situation faced by these early farmers. The same effort could go to meet up the demands by a girlfriend/boyfriend or even a new FIFA launched. Farming, like the above analogies, did feel to humans as luxuries, but they ended up consuming enough time and effort.
Food production was a trap whose bait was caught erroneously by humans in search of luxury.
Homo sapiens too bent for the whims and fancies of these new plants. Humans worked their backside off tilling soil, building fences, digging canal and even picking up their feces for the growth of their new friend. And did they get a peaceful life in return? Once a child began growing, it competed with its siblings for more calories. Mothers shifted their child’s diet from nutritious breastmilk to porridge that has less calories in it. Soon child mortality increased. Children were not the only victims. Elders too, who relied heavily on less variety of dishes than they did during their stay in the wild. Their happiness was only limited to a good harvest. In situations of famine or diseases (which is something that can be studied in great depth), everyone starved. Investing our efforts and resources in a single item could be a bad gamble, both in case for a stock portfolio or while sowing wheat.
However worse the situation was, early farmers initially believed they were relieved of violent deaths. Well, we know today that it’s not the reality. Excess food supply began to be stored as reserved for future use or emergency, say in case of famine. But parallelly, a small group of men began pooling enough manpower, so that they could go to farmers and take away the harvest. This made the early peasants form guilds for themselves, and appointed a person (or a group) as the caretaker of the stocks, who need not work hard as others in farm. These guys soon developed manpower of their own and controlled the storage, becoming elites of the villages, eventually leading to what we call as feudalism.
All these things when read at once could blow you mind initially. It takes time to digest. Without deviating much far or deep, we have almost reached to the milestone I had initially meant to convey. Humans earned the key to nature’s secrets by learning to cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. Did you even feel any discrepancy when I used the word ‘village’ in the end of the last paragraph. If my writing was smooth enough, you might’ve not. Because that’s how humans gradually transformed from small bands of hunter-gatherers to village units and states, co-existing constructively with many strangers whom they have never met in their life. Though early farmers had to face enough hardships, a sleek equilibrium between birth and death rates helped to increase the population, forming powerful human communities across different parts of the world. The efforts from our ancestors have is the primary reason of Homo sapiens being naturally selected, despite presence of stronger mammals in the wild.
Humans gradually transformed from small bands of hunter-gatherers to village units and states, co-existing constructively with many strangers, which helped them to dominate the world.
It won’t be fair to end this blog without discussing another comedy. Did the early farmer take up these hardships so that the species Homo sapiens could thrive in the future or hoping that his kids would take over the world? Absolutely not! By the time population boomed, farmers had no other option than to continue farming to meet the needs, as going miles away in search of prey was not practical. Food production is clearly a vicious loop, or more precisely, it was a trap arranged by the nature whose bait was caught erroneously by human in search of luxury. However, one thing is clear. Despite enough hardships and errors caused by our ancestors’, humans happened to be the fittest, for which huge credit goes to the foundation of agriculture. After all, as Harari says, “the currency of evolution is neither hunger not pain, but rather the copies of DNA helixes.”
