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Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in an anthropology class. The professor is discussing agriculture.
Professor:
Let’s just pick up where we left off last week. Okay, as you’ll recall, earlier theories about the
development of agriculture tended to view it as a progressive event, or even as a catalyst for everything from art
to industry, but I’m going to share a rather different view with you. From a revisionist perspective, the  Q6
development of agriculture about 10,000 years ago didn’t improve the lives of early farmers. On the
contrary, when hunter-gatherers abandoned the age,old method of foraging for food and began to cultivate  Q10
crops, they put their health at risk. Now I know it’s just the opposite of... it’s quite a different viewpoint
let’s say, so... why would this be so... why would their health decline when agriculture provided
people with an efficient way to get more food for less work?
    Clearly, cultivated fields yield more food per acre than uncultivated land with undomesticated
patches of berries and nuts. Well, first let’s consider the conditions that are necessary for agriculture
to flourish. In order to have enough labor to plant, tend, and harvest crops, a larger number of people
must well  they have to cooperate. That means that the density of the population must increase in
the area surrounding the cultivated farms. And, as we know, crowding contributes to the transmission of
infectious diseases. So when hunter-gatherers were wandering in small bands, the likelihood of an  Q11
epidemic was slight, but after the agricultural revolution, tuberculosis... and diseases of the intestinal
tract... these began to reach epidemic proportions in the crowded agr cultural communities. And in
addition, because the population was no longer mobile and... and relied on trade to inject variety into
the lives and diets of the farmers, that meant that disease was also transmitted through the exchange of
goods.
    Now, the revisionists also argue that the content of the diet for early farmerswas inferior to that of
the hunter-gatherers. You’ll recall that hunter-gatherers enjoyed a variety of foods selected from wild
plants and game, and in studies of modern tribes that have continued the tradition of hunting and
gathering food, it appears that those...the hunters and gatherers...they have a better balance of
nutrients and even more protein than tribes that have adopted agricultural lifestyles. Today, three grain
crops... wheat, corn, and rice... these account for the bulk of calories consumed by farming societies.
SO, consider the implications. Extrapolating from this and from evidence that early farmers raised only  Q11
one or two crops, we can conclude that a disproportionate amount of carbohydrates formed the basis of
their diets.
    Now another interesting series of studies involve the skeletal remains of hunter-gatherers as
compared with their agricultural relatives. And one such study from Greece and Turkey... it indicates that
the average height of hunter-gatherers at the end of the Ice Age was... let me check my notes...yes,
it was 5’9" for men and 5’5" for women. And their bones were strong, healthy, and athletic. But, after  Q7
the agricultural revolution, skeletal remains revealed that height had diminished to a shocking 5’3" for
men and 5’ for women. And evidence from bone samples suggests that they suffered from diseases
caused by malnutrition, like anemia. And this is interesting. Further studies from paleontologists at the
University of Massachusetts project life expectancies for hunter-gatherers at about twenty-six years, but
post agricultural life expectances were less than twenty years. Let me just read you something from one
of the studies by George Armetagos, and I quote, "episodes of nutritional stress and infectious disease
were seriously affecting their ability to survive." And he’s referring to early farmers here.
    So, let’s see where we are. Oh, yes. Consider that hunter-gatherers had the advantage of mobility.  Q8
So if food wasn’t plentiful, they broke camp and moved on in search of an area with a larger food
supply. And, if one type of food were in short supply, for example... well, berries, then they wouldn’t eat berries but there would probably be a good supply of another type of food, like nuts. Or hunting might
compensate for a bad year for plant foods. But farmers were very vulnerable to crop failures.  Q11
Remember, most early farmers cultivated only one or two crops. If there was a drought and the grain harvest
failed, they didn’t have other resources and that’s why they were subject to malnutrition or even
starvation. So, as you see, revisionists have made a rather convincing case. To sum it up, according to the  Q9
revisionists, the development of agriculture put the health of early farmers at risk.