There's an interesting article in The Economist about the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and the invention of agriculture. It paints the lifestyle in a less rosy fashion than Jared Diamond does. So maybe agriculture wasn't such a bad idea after all.
From the article:
What's more, the famously “affluent society” of hunter-gatherers, with plenty of time to gossip by the fire between hunts and gathers, turns out to be a bit of a myth, or at least an artefact of modern life. The measurements of time spent getting food by the !Kung omitted food-processing time and travel time, partly because the anthropologists gave their subjects lifts in their vehicles and lent them metal knives to process food.
Travel time, omitted? What an oversight! The daily commute is the key to History!
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