Progressivism Vs Revisionism Analysis

Farming has been a source of work ever since man has been introduced to the earth, but the past 100 years have been promising in continuing to provide for the needs of the growing population. The people have become more educated, and technology has become much more advanced. The two have come together to boon the land and animals so that they produce to their fullest potential. The people of the world have been influenced to the extent that they work smarter not harder to provide for the growing population. Farming, a crucial necessity to the survival of mankind, has evolved in the area of education of the people which has assisted in the advances of technology, land, and animal production which will lead to the provision of food for the growing

The emergence of agriculture was a major stepping stone in human history. During this birth of agriculture, also known as the Neolithic revolution, humans began inhabiting permanent settlements, grow their own crops, and domesticate both plants and animals for food (Weisdorf, 2005). Considering humans have been hunter-gatherers for the majority of their approximately 7 million years of existence, the emergence of agriculture in the Old World only occurring 10,000-5,000 years ago, marks a significant transformation in food sustenance techniques (Weisdorf, 2005). However, this turning point in history is associated with both positive and negative implications. There is much controversy over whether or not the introduction of

Health problems did not only stop at diseases, but continued on to physical health as well. Both hunter-gatherers and farmers have to work to obtain food, however farming requires a lot of hard physical labor. Farmers have to work hard to maintain their crops because that is their only food source, and taking care of crops is not easy and it took a toll on their health. It is shown in evidence that farmers had “an increase in degenerative conditions of the spine, probably reflecting a lot of hard physical labor” (Diamond, 118). Between diseases and physical defects farming was making a huge impact on humans’ ability to survive, so much that even life expectancy went down from twenty six years in hunter-gatherers to nineteen years in farming communities (Diamond, 118).

Introduction: The emergence of agriculture was a major stepping stone in human history. During this birth of agriculture, also known as the Neolithic revolution, humans began inhabiting permanent settlements, grow their own crops, and domesticate both plants and animals for food (Weisdorf, 2005). Considering humans have been hunter-gatherers for majority of their approximately 7 million years of existence, the emergence of agriculture in the Old World only occurring 10,000-5,000 years ago, marks a significant transformation in food sustenance techniques (Weisdorf, 2005). However, this turning point in history is associated with both positive and negative implications.

Jared Diamond, in his article, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human race”, explains that the worst mistake that humans made was the decision to change from a hunter gatherer society into an agriculture society. Jared Diamond gives evidence of how switching from an agricultural society was a bad mistake. Many believe that adopting an agricultural society and leaving the hunter gatherer society was the way to a more qualitative and sustainable lifestyle. As Diamond says, it is true that because this society was adopted and evolved because we have longer lifespans and live better now than how people lived back in the old days. But Diamond`s claim that the hunter gatherer society gave humans more benefits individually than what the agricultural society had to offer is agreeable.

From the early prehistoric society until now, we often heard the word “adaptation”, which means the process of changing something or changing our behavior to deal with new situations. The ways people adjust their natural environment varies according to time, place, and tribe. Foraging is common way of adaptation that people uses for most of human history; however because of the population pressure, some people adopt agriculture to fulfill their need. This essay, will discuss the positive and negative aspects of life in hunting and gathering societies compared to the agricultural societies based on Martin Harris’ article “Murders in Eden” and Jared Diamond’s article “The Worst Mistake in the History of Human Race.”

The ability to produce more crops required a method to transport them to more people. This method was for people to clump closer together, which facilitated the spread of disease amongst communities. People migrated nearer to each other because they could receive a frequent supply of food. “The mere fact that agriculture encouraged people to clump together in crowded societies, many of which then carried on trade with other crowded societies, led to the spread of parasites and infectious disease” (65). Diamond argues that because agriculture brought people together in close proximity disease and parasites were able to spread more rapidly and frequently. Hunters and gatherers tended to spread out and keep to themselves. This ultimately eliminated the possibility of an epidemic sweeping through societies. For instance, “epidemics couldn’t take hold when populations were scattered in small bands that constantly shifted camp” (65). Among hunter-gatherer

Compare and contrast life in foraging societies with life in agricultural societies after the Agricultural Revolution

The author states, " Finally, the mere fact that agriculture encouraged people to clump together in crowded societies, many of which then carried on trade with other crowded societies, led to the spread of parasites and infectious disease. " Diseases were more likely to spread in these agricultural societies because they were clumped together and also because they did not move around a lot since their society is built to become a permanent settlement. Diseases would not affect the hunter-gatherers as much because these people were nomadic. Diamond states, "Epidemics couldn't take hold when populations were scattered in small bands that constantly shifted camp." This quote helps reveal that it would not have an effect on the hunter-gatherers as much as it would to a population because they constantly shifted around looking for animals to hunt and for plants to gather. In conclusion, agriculture is shown to have many downsides compared to hunting and gathering which helps demonstrate that agriculture was an error in human

Throughout time, humans have pushed forward in every aspect in life in order to improve their living standards, wealth and most importantly the agricultural sector which is the base of every human race. Food is the basic requirement for any individual to stay alive and healthy. In an article by Tamsin McMahon, she states that over the past 60 years, the world population has grown from 2.5 billion to 7 billion while world hunger dropped from 40% down to 15% (McMahon T., July 2012). This shows that our agricultural advances through technology have helped control world hunger and decrease it by more than half, but this is a short-term solution if we want to consider the future generations that depend on our current actions toward the three main pillars of agriculture which are: Health and nutrition, Economy and sustainability all while considering the local small farms and corporate farms.

So the lives of at least the survivins hunterFatheresaren't nastyand brutish,even though farmers have pushed them into some of the world's worst real estate.But modern hunter-gatherersocietiesthat have rubbed shoulders with farming societies for thousands of vears don't tell us about conditions befor€ the agricultural revolution. The progressivist riers is reallv making a claim about the distant past: that the lives of primitive people improved when they snitched from gathering to farming. Archaeologists can date that sv!'itchby distinguishing remains of wild plants and animals from thoseof domesticatedonesin prehistoricgarbage dumps. Horr' can one deduce the health of the orehistoric garbagemakers.and therebydirectly test the progressi\ist vierv? That question has become answerable onlv in recentvears,in part through the newly emerging techniquesof paleopathology, study of signs of the dirase in the remainsof ancientpeoples. In some lucky situations,the palmpathologist has almost as much material to study as a pathologist todav For example, archaeologistsin the Chilean deserts found well preserved mummies whose medical conditionsat time of death could be determinedby autopsv. And feces of long-dead Indians who lived in dry cavesin Nevada remain sufficientlywell preserved to be examinedfor hookworm and other parasites. Usually the only human remainsivailable for study are skeletons, they permit a surprising numbut ber of

Diamond's article is about how the agricultural revolution was the worst mistake in the history of the human race. He starts off by saying, “adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe,” (1). He talks about this “catastrophe” by using progressivist and revisionist views. The progressivist view claims that the lives of hunter-gatherers were improved when they shifted to farming. Farming provided more food, which meant more mouths were being fed. But, this was hard to prove and was then challenged by the revisionist view that Diamond talks about. He says that the revisionists were thinking the opposite. They

For starters, “farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and potatoes” while hunter-gatherers got “more protein and a better balance of other nutrients” by eating a variety of wild animals and plants (3). The balance of nutrients that a hunter-gatherer obtained made their overall health better. For instance, the “average height of [Greek and Turkish] hunter-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages” was five to six inches taller than the average height of people after the adoption of farming. Even today only “3 high-carbohydrate plants-wheat, rice and corn--provide the bulk of the calories that we eat” (pg__). The author makes a good argument when he says, “the farmers gained cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition” because all that farming did in a health standpoint was provide an abundance of poor nutritious food when people already had a balanced diet as

Many of the farmers were less healthy than the hunter-gatherers, the farmers even died, on average, earlier than the hunter-gatherers. Many of the farmers had more serious diseases than the hunter-gatherers did too. Some people, including the northeastern Australian people even saw their neighbors practicing domestication and farming but did not take up what their neighbors did because they preferred the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Some hunter-gatherers did, in a way, produce food. For example some Australians burned the land they hunted on to encourage new seeds to grow so they could eat them. A reason why the hunter-gather way of living got less popular is simply because over the years less wild food was available. Over the past 13,000 years the amount of animals and edible plants has got less prevalent. The reason why many people still believe that food production was better than hunting and gathering is because food production led to more people and more technological advancements like guns and

Change is something different than what has normally been done. Change happens when a problem arises and to resolve the conflict, people must agree on what action should be taken. Due to this fact, both the consensus view, and the revisionist view is correct; though one depicts the harsh reality and the other, a watered down version that fails to talk about the real effect the exploration and domination of the Europeans had on the minority groups. The statement, “the past is not history only raw materials of it” is true in this situation because it depends on if you want the harsh truth, revisionist view, or the ‘watered down version’ meaning the harsh facts is passed around delicately, consensus. Even though after years of interactions, the