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Hunters And Gatherers Essay

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For thousands of years, hunter and gatherers roamed the earth with no real “home”. They searched for food without ever needing to grow anything. Population began to grow. Hunters and gatherers were then overpowered by farmers, which shifted the world into an agricultural state. While hunters and gatherers seemed to be better off than the farmers who lived after them, agriculture changed the way the world works today.
The typical diet of hunters and gatherers was considerably healthier than the diet of the farmers. On average, hunters and gatherers would eat around 2140 calories during months where food was easily accessible. They also took in 93 grams of protein, which is much more than a necessary amount for a person at that time. Since hunters and gatherers traveled and lived in many different places, they were able to eat around 75 different plants (Diamond 2). Farmers, on the other hand, were dependent on very few crops. If the crop grown on one’s farm was unsuccessful, there was a high chance of starvation for the farming family. Most crops grown on farms were wheat, rice, and corn. These are starches which are …show more content…

Hunters and gatherers had to space their kids out. Women were unable to carry multiple children while moving around. At this time, women were deemed as equal to men and put in as much work as they did. Farming was a lot of work, therefore families needed many kids to help tend the fields. This lead to a higher rate of pregnancies and births. Due to the lack of medication which makes childbirth much easier by today’s standards, pregnancy took a toll on the health of women. Found from Chilean mummies, women had more bone lesions due to infectious diseases than men did (Diamond 4). Diamond states that, “women in agricultural societies were sometimes made beasts of burden” (4). He then goes on to share how while he was in New Guinea, women would carry everything while the men walked with

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