Sapiens: a brief History of Humankind

Map 2. Locations and dates of agricultural revolutions. The data is contentious, and the map is
constantly being redrawn to incorporate the latest archaeological discoveries
.
1
That tale is a fantasy. There is no evidence that people became more intelligent
with time. Foragers knew the secrets of nature long before the Agricultural
Revolution, since their survival depended on an intimate knowledge of the
animals they hunted and the plants they gathered. Rather than heralding a new
era of easy living, the Agricultural Revolution left farmers with lives generally
more di cult and less satisfying than those of foragers. Hunter-gatherers spent
their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of
starvation and disease. The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum
total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate
into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated into population explosions
and pampered elites. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager,
and got a worse diet in return. The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest
fraud.
2
Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits
were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants
domesticated 
Homo sapiens
, rather than vice versa.
Think for a moment about the Agricultural Revolution from the viewpoint of
wheat. Ten thousand years ago wheat was just a wild grass, one of many,
con ned to a small range in the Middle East. Suddenly, within just a few short
millennia, it was growing all over the world. According to the basic evolutionary
criteria of survival and reproduction, wheat has become one of the most successful
plants in the history of the earth. In areas such as the Great Plains of North

---

America, where not a single wheat stalk grew 10,000 years ago, you can today
walk for hundreds upon hundreds of kilometres without encountering any other
plant. Worldwide, wheat covers about 2.25 million square kilometres of the globes
surface, almost ten times the size of Britain. How did this grass turn from
insignificant to ubiquitous?
Wheat did it by manipulating 
Homo sapiens
to its advantage. This ape had been
living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years
ago, but then began to invest more and more e ort in cultivating wheat. Within a
couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from
dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat
demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke
their backs clearing elds. Wheat didn’t like sharing its space, water and nutrients
with other plants, so men and women laboured long days weeding under the
scorching sun. Wheat got sick, so Sapiens had to keep a watch out for worms and
blight. Wheat was defenceless against other organisms that liked to eat it, from
rabbits to locust swarms, so the farmers had to guard and protect it. Wheat was
thirsty, so humans lugged water from springs and streams to water it. Its hunger
even impelled Sapiens to collect animal faeces to nourish the ground in which
wheat grew.
The body of 
Homo sapiens
had not evolved for such tasks. It was adapted to
climbing apple trees and running after gazelles, not to clearing rocks and carrying
water buckets. Human spines, knees, necks and arches paid the price. Studies of
ancient skeletons indicate that the transition to agriculture brought about a
plethora of ailments, such as slipped discs, arthritis and hernias. Moreover, the
new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle
permanently next to their wheat elds. This completely changed their way of life.
We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word ‘domesticate’ comes
from the Latin 
domus
, which means ‘house’. Who’s the one living in a house? Not
the wheat. It’s the Sapiens.
How did wheat convince 
Homo sapiens
to exchange a rather good life for a more
miserable existence? What did it o er in return? It did not o er a better diet.
Remember, humans are omnivorous apes who thrive on a wide variety of foods.
Grains made up only a small fraction of the human diet before the Agricultural
Revolution. A diet based on cereals is poor in minerals and vitamins, hard to
digest, and really bad for your teeth and gums.
Wheat did not give people economic security. The life of a peasant is less secure
than that of a hunter-gatherer. Foragers relied on dozens of species to survive, and
could therefore weather di cult years even without stocks of preserved food. If
the availability of one species was reduced, they could gather and hunt more of
other species. Farming societies have, until very recently, relied for the great bulk

---

of their calorie intake on a small variety of domesticated plants. In many areas,
they relied on just a single staple, such as wheat, potatoes or rice. If the rains
failed or clouds of locusts arrived or if a fungus learned how to infect that staple
species, peasants died by the thousands and millions.
Nor could wheat o er security against human violence. The early farmers were
at least as violent as their forager ancestors, if not more so. Farmers had more
possessions and needed land for planting. The loss of pasture land to raiding
neighbours could mean the di erence between subsistence and starvation, so there
was much less room for compromise. When a foraging band was hard-pressed by a
stronger rival, it could usually move on. It was di cult and dangerous, but it was
feasible. When a strong enemy threatened an agricultural village, retreat meant
giving up elds, houses and granaries. In many cases, this doomed the refugees to
starvation. Farmers, therefore, tended to stay put and fight to the bitter end.