Globalisation

[CountDeMoney]

Wrong. You are exposed to risk, only more in the large events, and less in the small ones.

The h-g can scatter the flocks, but if the crops burn, you're done.

Hunter-gatherers don't have flocks.

I would think hunter-gatherers under the larger "nomadic peoples" subcategory, no? Some of them where bigly herders.   

[Tamas]

Wrong. You are exposed to risk, only more in the large events, and less in the small ones.

The h-g can scatter the flocks, but if the crops burn, you're done.

Hunter-gatherers don't have flocks.

I would think hunter-gatherers under the larger "nomadic peoples" subcategory, no? Some of them where bigly herders.   

No. Pastoral societies have, AFAIK, nothing to do with hunter-gatherers.

Pastoral societies offered a much bigger competition to settled agricultural lifestyle.

[Eddie Teach]

Some farmers plant crops and some raise herds.

[CountDeMoney]

I would think hunter-gatherers under the larger "nomadic peoples" subcategory, no? Some of them where bigly herders.

No. Pastoral societies have, AFAIK, nothing to do with hunter-gatherers.

Pastoral societies offered a much bigger competition to settled agricultural lifestyle.

OK.  I wasn't addressing that, but OK.  Beet herder.

[Tamas]

Some farmers plant crops and some raise herds.

By pastoral societies I mean the nomadic or semi-nomadic ones who raise their own herds and move around with them seasonally or after outgrowing grazing grounds. NOT farmers who happen to have animals.

[crazy canuck]

I think you guys were too romantic about hunting-gathering earlier.

In what way is that more comfortable or safe than agriculture? With agriculture you can stockpile, and predict. If you are a hunter-gatherer you are not less exposed to unpredictable natural forces, but more, much more.

Agriculturalists were exposed to crop failures as well.  Think about all the references to famine in the Old Testament alone.

[Malthus]

Agricultural societies are significantly more violent than hunter-gatherer societies, as far as we can tell and on average (naturally, this only applies to the ones still around when people started to take records of such matters - and an argument could be made that these were the peaceful ones that got pushed to the margins by agriculturalists! Also, there are oddballs like West Coast native Americans). In some tribal agricultural societies, a violent death was a major cause of mortality. The reason: protecting good growing territory is very important, particularly as population densities increased (see for example Highland New Guinea). 

Healthier and longer lived is right, but this isn't remotely proven.

Can't be "proven", without a time machine; but the available evidence is very suggestive.

https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-archaeological-evidence-on-violent-deaths/

The actual empirical evidence shows that rates of violent deaths go something like this.

Far and away, the safest societies in history are our own Western industrial ones - even taking into account our occasional horrible wars (at least, so far. If we nuke the planet that could change).

Next come relatively modern state-level societies.

Then come hunter-gatherers, who weren't the all-peaceful types some romantics make them out to be (they certainly had feuds and murders a-plenty, as you would expect in societies that by definition lack law enforcement and in which every person had access and knowledge of weapons).

Finally, at the bottom, far below the others, by far the most dangerous human societies in history: pre-state agriculturalists and pastoralists.

[Malthus]

I think you guys were too romantic about hunting-gathering earlier.

In what way is that more comfortable or safe than agriculture? With agriculture you can stockpile, and predict. If you are a hunter-gatherer you are not less exposed to unpredictable natural forces, but more, much more.

It is a simple matter of risk management.

Farmers and pastoralists historically depend on a small number of living species. Every species has its peaks and low points in thriving - diseases, parasites and bad conditions bring about bad years.

If you are a hunter gatherer, you aren't tied to one food source, you collect from dozens - plus you are more mobile. If one is having a bad year, another may be having a good year. If one area isn't doing well, you could move to another.

That's why throughout history agricultural societies suffered periodic terrible famines.

Why agriculture then? Simple: despite the periodic famines, it could support a much higher population density than hunting and gathering - orders of magnitude higher.

Why couldn't farmers just switch to hunting and gathering when crops failed? Of course they could try - but didn't I just mention that bit about a population density orders of magnitude greater than could be supported by hunting and gathering?

If hunting and gathering could only support a low population, didn't they go through famines wen the population grew too fast? Apparently not - for a bunch of reasons. Most notably, they practiced birth spacing to keep populations down - having lots of kids was a disadvantage to a hunter gatherer, but an advantage to a farmer (the more kids, the larger the family labour force!). 

[grumbler]

I would think hunter-gatherers under the larger "nomadic peoples" subcategory, no? Some of them where bigly herders.   

No.  Rather, pastoralists fall (like agriculturalists) under the larger category of "post-Neolithic Revolution." Hunter-gatherers are associated with the Paleolithic era.  Pastoral people had things like iron weapons and tools, that HG types couldn't develop.

[dps]

The actual empirical evidence shows that rates of violent deaths go something like this.

Far and away, the safest societies in history are our own Western industrial ones - even taking into account our occasional horrible wars (at least, so far. If we nuke the planet that could change).

Next come relatively modern state-level societies.

Then come hunter-gatherers, who weren't the all-peaceful types some romantics make them out to be (they certainly had feuds and murders a-plenty, as you would expect in societies that by definition lack law enforcement and in which every person had access and knowledge of weapons).

Finally, at the bottom, far below the others, by far the most dangerous human societies in history: pre-state agriculturalists and pastoralists.

That progression would suggest, while it doesn't always lead to a betterment of the human condition, in general, technological advance is a good thing.

Now, having said that, I would acknowledge that rates of violent death aren't the only measure of how well off a population is, and also that reasons for a given level of violence in a society are far more a result of social, rather than technological, conditions.  However, I'd also point out that our modern, Western industrial societies are (the best by this measure) couldn't exist without modern technology.

[grumbler]

If hunting and gathering could only support a low population, didn't they go through famines wen the population grew too fast? Apparently not - for a bunch of reasons. Most notably, they practiced birth spacing to keep populations down - having lots of kids was a disadvantage to a hunter gatherer, but an advantage to a farmer (the more kids, the larger the family labour force!).

I've never heard that HG groups "practiced birth spacing" or any similar conscious practice (though certainly the lack of artificial means of providing for infant nursing would mean that paleolithic women would have birth at longer intervals due to longer nursing periods).  HG populations were largely kept down because infant mortality was extremely high (since they essentially lived outdoors and babies were no less fragile back then) and because tribes that were too large to hunt effectively broke apart.  If hunting grounds were too populated, rival bands almost certainly killed each others' hunters.

Hunter-gatherer types almost certainly went through the cycle of population boom and bust.

[Oexmelin]

I've never heard that HG groups "practiced birth spacing" or any similar conscious practice (though certainly the lack of artificial means of providing for infant nursing would mean that paleolithic women would have birth at longer intervals due to longer nursing periods). .

They are called "post-partum sex taboos" and they are widespread among many societies and have been documented to range between 30 days and four years. They existed in all types of societies, but hunter gatherers and horticulturalists tended to have the longer duration.

[The Minsky Moment]

Sure. But there is this story that it was dying and in decline in the south before the Cotton Gin and that is simply not a true fact. Now maybe it might have died later but it was not like slavery needed cotton to thrive anywhere before or since.

Slavery as an institution wasn't dying but the slaves were.  The demand for slaves in the 18th century was met by African slave trade.  And the Constitution permitted that trade to be shut down after a transition period.  The cotton gin meant that slaves could be redeployed from growing sugar (high mortality rates) to cotton.  The result was massive demographic growth in the slave population from the early 1800s up to 1860.

[Malthus]

If hunting and gathering could only support a low population, didn't they go through famines wen the population grew too fast? Apparently not - for a bunch of reasons. Most notably, they practiced birth spacing to keep populations down - having lots of kids was a disadvantage to a hunter gatherer, but an advantage to a farmer (the more kids, the larger the family labour force!).

I've never heard that HG groups "practiced birth spacing" or any similar conscious practice (though certainly the lack of artificial means of providing for infant nursing would mean that paleolithic women would have birth at longer intervals due to longer nursing periods).  HG populations were largely kept down because infant mortality was extremely high (since they essentially lived outdoors and babies were no less fragile back then) and because tribes that were too large to hunt effectively broke apart.  If hunting grounds were too populated, rival bands almost certainly killed each others' hunters.

Hunter-gatherer types almost certainly went through the cycle of population boom and bust.

Self-regulation of population among HGs is reasonably well documented. The best studied are probably the !Kung San.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/656392?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Both biology (long weaning periods - much longer than for other folks) and cultural adaptations are thought to contribute to such self-regulation - though how much is "conscious" in terms of deliberate pursuit of a goal of not stressing the environment is of course a matter of debate.

Certainly such self-regulation is one factor which could lead to a very low rate of population increase (in this article, the group being studied increased at a rate of 0.5%) which tends to avoid problems of boom and bust (though no doubt they occurred anyway, just not to the same extent as among agricultural peoples, whose rate on natural increase tends to be much higher).

[dps]

Sure. But there is this story that it was dying and in decline in the south before the Cotton Gin and that is simply not a true fact. Now maybe it might have died later but it was not like slavery needed cotton to thrive anywhere before or since.

Slavery as an institution wasn't dying but the slaves were.  The demand for slaves in the 18th century was met by African slave trade.  And the Constitution permitted that trade to be shut down after a transition period.  The cotton gin meant that slaves could be redeployed from growing sugar (high mortality rates) to cotton.  The result was massive demographic growth in the slave population from the early 1800s up to 1860.

IIRC I read somewhere that slaves, while of course they didn't want to be slaves at all, much preferred to not be sold to plantations in Louisiana, because that was likely to mean getting worked to death growing sugar crops, while being sold getting sold elsewhere likely meant easier, less unhealthy work growing cotton.