On the other hand, many anthropologists today believe that agriculture was also the source of many of the evils afflicting our world, and that it harmed human health, to the extent that some historians consider that it was a crop such as wheat that in fact domesticated man and made him captive, and not the other way around. As many believe.
Clark Larsen, professor of anthropology at Ohio State University in the United States, published a new paper in this regard, on Monday, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. The paper examines the implications of the discovery of agriculture and its relationship to the evolution of human societies.
The other face
Larsen’s insight came in a special issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which includes eight articles that draw on the science of bioarchaeology. To look at changes in diet, behavior and lifestyle over the last 10,000 years or so, Larsen co-authored two of those eight articles.
The paper by Clark Larsen notes that while the changes brought about by agriculture have already brought a lot of good to humanity, they have also led to increased conflict and violence, higher levels of infectious disease, decreased physical activity, limited diet, and enhanced competition for resources.
In exclusive statements to Sky News Arabia, Larsen says that the changes that occurred in human health and well-being 12,000 years ago are mainly due to the transformation of humans from hunter-gatherer societies to agriculture, considering that this development is one of the most important evolutionary shifts in human history.
An anthropology professor at Ohio University adds that since the shift to agriculture, human health has deteriorated in places where domesticated plants have become an important food source. Today, this has become a global situation, as agriculture spreads to all parts of our planet.
Agriculture caused humans to replace the varied diet with a very limited diet of domesticated plants and animals, which often led to a decrease in nutritional value. Much of the world’s population now relies on three foods – rice, wheat and corn – especially in regions where animal protein sources are unavailable, Larsen said.
Another important change in the human diet brought about by the agricultural revolution was the addition of dairy products to the list of human foods. Researchers examined teeth found in human remains to discover the first evidence of the history of eating milk and cheese, which dates back about 5,000 years in northern Europe.
According to Larsen, the problems arising from agriculture today include: unfair distribution of food to the inhabitants of the planet, as well as insufficient food in the first place.
spark conflict
Larsen believes that over the past ten thousand years, the world has witnessed an increase in population density, competition for land and resources, and from here the human conflict that existed before the agricultural revolution actually spread, but it was not of a global nature as it became the case in a world where infection spread Farming.
In some detail, Larsen tells Sky News Arabia: “The shift from searching for food to agriculture led to the stability of humans, after they lived a life dependent on mobility, so human settlements emerged from small villages to major cities.”
He adds: “Thanks to the agricultural revolution, food was provided to the world’s population, and the population of our planet grew from about 10 million people before the discovery of agriculture to more than 8 billion people today.”
And he continues, “The escalation of conflict and war among the early farmers began when communities competed over land rich in resources and lands suitable for growing crops and raising domestic animals, such as sheep and cattle.”
live image
In this special issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists try to breathe life into the lives of the ancients, as if they were alive today, Larsen says.
The researchers studied three Neolithic (early farming) regions in south-central Turkey, including Catalhoyuk, a city founded about 9,000 years ago.
“When humans established agricultural societies, so did social changes,” says Larsen. Scientists analyzed strontium and oxygen isotopes from tooth enamel in early agricultural societies more than 7,000 years ago to help determine where the populations came from.
The results revealed that Catalhoyuk, in modern Turkey, was the only one of several societies studied to have people who were not indigenous to it, and this is what the researchers considered evidence of the development of social and biological networks, which were the basis for the organization of other societies later in West Asia.
There were challenges that these early societies faced as well, including the lack of geography for steady human growth, and a series of human conflicts emerged. Researchers who studied human remains in early agricultural societies in western and central Europe found that about 10 percent died from traumatic injuries (occur when an external force causes causing injury).
“This analysis reveals that violence in Neolithic Europe was endemic and escalating, leading to patterns of warfare that resulted in increased death tolls,” Larsen explains.
The new research also reveals that early human societies created the perfect conditions for another dilemma that occupies the world today: infectious disease. Larsen says that the domestication of animals has led to the spread of zoonotic diseases, which can be transmitted from animals to humans.
A professor of anthropology at Ohio State University says that these developments brought about by the agricultural revolution in the last 12,000 years occurred in the blink of an eye, given the age of human evolution, which is nearly 6 million years, but in fact they reveal the evolutionary ability of humans to adapt to all the challenges facing their path.
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