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market-farming - RE: [Market-farming] Another book suggestion

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  • From: "Ken Bezilla" <kenbez AT hotmail.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: RE: [Market-farming] Another book suggestion
  • Date: Tue, 04 May 2004 22:48:12 +0000

I've read it. It's excellent.

Interesting aspect of the book = the reading about gatherer-hunter tribes that I did back in my anthropology classes suggested that gatherer-hunters preferred to not do agriculture, because it was easier (4 hours/day) to be gatherer-hunters... and that it was only when human population built up to the point that the land could no longer support gathering and hunting that a tribe would settle down to take up agriculture (working more than 4+ hours/day in exchange for more food to support a higher population).

Stanley Diamond -- the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel -- argues that humans have a tendency to WANT to settle down, and that this is the main reason why humans took up agriculture when the local ecology allowed for it. (OK, it's been several years since I've read the book, but that's how I remember it.) That's an argument I hadn't heard before, and I've wondered about it ever since I read the book...

Ken Bezilla
southern Missouri

How many of you have read Guns, Germs, and Steel? Has a lot to say about agriculture and the human condition. Janet Bachmann

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