Colin Tudge wrote Neanderthals,
Bandits, & Farmers, a book that presents his theories on the
dawn of progress and perpetual growth, focusing on how agriculture really
began. At the time, he was employed by the
London School of Economics, an institution focused on capitalism, not
ecological sustainability.
The book vibrates with cognitive dissonance. Tudge has been studying agriculture for many
years. On one hand, it was a magnificent
achievement that threw open the door to the wonders of modernity. On the other hand, modernity has become a victim
of its own success, with seven billion humans dangerously rocking the
boat. As Pandora once discovered, some
magnificent achievements are best left in the box.
For most of the human journey, our ancestors were
hunter-gatherers, whom Tudge likens to bandits.
They lived by their wits, snatched what the ecosystem had to offer, and
had plenty of leisure time in their lives.
The prudent path was to live within the carrying capacity of their
ecosystem. If they had been ambitious
and hard working, they would have wiped out their prey and starved.
Farmers were ambitious, hard working control freaks. They manipulated the ecosystem to increase
its carrying capacity, temporarily, via soil mining. More work produced more rewards, and more
food could feed more people. Wild
critters frequently molested their precious crops, so farmers responded with
pest control — overhunting. Eventually, the
human mob got large, wildlife became scarce, wild land became cropland, and
returning to hunting was no longer an option.
Agriculture emerged independently in at least six widely
scattered locations. It was not invented
in Uruk by a demented genius. It began
maybe 10,000 years ago in the Middle East.
Tudge suggests that it developed gradually, as proto-farming, starting maybe
40,000 years ago. Even primitive yokels
could see that plants grew from seeds, and that clearing other vegetation away
from food plants promoted their growth.
Proto-farming was done on a small scale, a pleasant hobby that left
behind no enduring evidence for scientists to discover thousands of years
later.
In Europe, Neanderthals had been big game hunters for
hundreds of thousands of years. While
surviving a roller coaster of climate shifts, they lived within carrying
capacity and did not wipe out the game. Cro-Magnons
were the Homo sapiens
that later migrated into Europe, maybe 45,000 years ago. Tudge theorizes that these foreign immigrants
were proto-farmers. Because they could
produce their own food, they were less vulnerable to the consequences of
overhunting. Big game species began
blinking out. This eliminated the food
supply for the Neanderthals, who were forced off the stage into oblivion. (Stringer
and Finlayson
have other views on Neanderthals.)
By and by, proto-farming metastasized into a more virulent
form, agriculture. The economists leap
to their feet with enthusiastic applause and cheering. Civilization, here we come! Whee!
The fuse was lit for a joyride of skyrocketing growth — onward to ten
billion! Well, this is the schoolbook
version that everyone knows, and most believe.
(See Cohen
on the shift to agriculture.)
Now, the plot thickens.
A growing number of scholars have been poking holes in the glorious myth
of growth and progress. Farming was
miserable backbreaking work. While
hunter-gatherers benefitted from a diverse and highly nutritious diet, the
farmer’s diet was the opposite, majoring in a few staple foods. Farmers were shorter and less healthy. In their remains, we find that “the toes and
knees are bent and arthritic and the lower back is deformed.”
Tudge acknowledges the revisionists. “People did not invent agriculture and shout
for joy; they drifted or were forced into it, protesting all the way.” Here’s my favorite line in the book: “The
real problem, then, is not to explain why some people were slow to adapt
agriculture but why anyone took it up at all when it was obviously so beastly.”
He believes that overhunting was the sole cause of the
megafauna extinctions. Native Americans
had little self-restraint when it came to hunting mammoths and mastodons. There is no evidence that climate change
played any role in the die-off, he says.
But, at the end of the ice age, as the land warmed up, large areas of
tundra were gradually replaced with dense forests. This put the squeeze on species adapted to
living on the tundra.
Did scruffy rednecks with homemade spears really hunt the
speedy horses of North America to extinction — but not the bison, elk, and deer? We’ll never know the full story, but I would
be wary of dismissing the impact of radical climate swings, or the importation
of Old World pathogens for which the American fauna had zero immunity. (See Kolbert
on extinction.)
Anyway, agriculture took root, because it worked more often
than it failed. Population gradually grew,
which required more and more cropland and pasture. Each expansion raised carrying capacity a
bit, while soil depletion reduced it. The
growing mob had to work harder, and grow more.
In the cult of economists, “growth” is the god word. Unfortunately, perpetual growth becomes a
vicious spiral. Tudge winces at the
paradox. “To condemn all of humankind to
a life of full-time farming, and in particular arable farming, was a curse
indeed.” (See Montgomery,
Manning,
Dale,
and Postel
on agriculture’s drawbacks.)
Animal domestication, on the other hand, greatly benefitted
the critters we enslaved, says Tudge.
For example, wild wolves are vanishing, but domesticated dogs have
zoomed past a half billion. Similarly,
domesticated sheep can breed far more when well fed and defended. If the population of a critter explodes, this
is called biological success. Dogs are a great success story, but their luckless
wolf relatives keep smacking into bullets, stepping in traps, and eating
poisoned bait. Oddly, neither dogs nor
sheep could survive in the wild, apart from humans. (See Shepard on
animal enslavement.)
It’s a great tragedy of history that the wild folks who
adapted to their ecosystem, and lived within its carrying capacity, have been
unable to withstand the constant pressure from growing mobs of farmers. When Tudge wrote, we were approaching six billion. The spectacular success of growth and
progress was beginning to look like a Pyrrhic victory. We might actually have real limits! (See Bourne
and Cribb
on Peak Food.)
Clouds of doubt swirled in his head. “Our earliest hunting ancestors must have
been lazy, as lions are. Perhaps we
should learn from them.” It’s touching
and illuminating to watch the poor lad struggle with the conflict between
powerful cultural myths and his growing awareness of reality. This struggle is a necessary challenge on the
path to growth and healing. We must
stand against the strong current.
The book is just 53 pages, and easy to read. It would be a good text for courses in
eco-psychology, environmental ethics, and critical thinking.
Postscript. In a
recent online video,
Tudge reveals his grand solution, Enlightened
Agriculture — small organic family farms raising a wide variety of
crops. By 2050, 9.5 to 10 billion will
be coming to dinner. Can we feed
them? “The answer is a resounding yes!” We can feed them for decades, maybe
indefinitely. Profit-driven,
energy-guzzling monoculture agriculture is fantastically unsustainable. All we need is simply a total revolution in
how we live, think, breed, and produce food — as soon as possible, please.
Tudge, Colin, Neanderthals,
Bandits, & Farmers — How Agriculture Really Began, Yale
University Press, New Haven, 1998.
