Ed Weick wrote:
>
>
> The only important point I tried to make about agriculture is that its
> invention permitted people to accumulate a surplus that would permit
> survival in difficult times and would, once the surplus was sufficiently
> large, permit population to grow and the detachment of part of that
> population from food production.
Only a small part of the population benefitted from the stored surplus.
To quote Ferdnand Braudel again, from "The structures of everyday life"
- page 74:
"France, by any standards a privileged country, is reckoned to have
experienced 10 general famines during the tenth century, 26 in the
eleventh, 2 in the twelfth, 4 in the fourteenth, 7 in the fifteenth, 13
in the sixteenth, 11 in the seventeenth and 16 in the eighteenth.
While on cannot guarantee the accuracy of this eighteenth century
calculations, the only risk it runs is over-optimism, because it omits
the hundreds and hundreds of local famines (in Maine, in 1739, 1752,
1770 and 1785 for example), and in the south-west in 1628, 1631, 1643,
1662, 1694, 1698, 1709 and 1713."
And: "The peasants lived in a state of dependence on merchants, towns
and nobles, and had scarcely any reserves of their own" (page 74).
Hunger was a part of everyday life. In Norway a conscription army was
established about 1650, and we therfore have reports telling about the
health of the male population for quite a long time. Mostly because of
hunger people 150 years ago and more developed so slowly physically that
they were not grown up before they were 28-30 years old. Norwegian men
were on average 165 cm tall when they were 22 years old in 1760. And
they stayed rather small all the time until about 1920.
Today norwegians and people living in the Netherlands are the tallest
persons in the World. A century ago norwegian men 20 years old were on
average about 168 cm tall, today they are more than 180 cm tall.
Lack of food in winter and spring was normal.
> In "The Economy of Cities" Jane Jacobs
> suggests that urban development was the driving force in the development of
> agriculture - i.e., the fact that people began concentrating in cities and
> could not produce their own food meant that a system had to be developed
> to produce food for them. Perhaps this was so.
>
Not in Europe north of the Alps. Towns did not occur (but the few the
Romans based, like Cologne) until after the heavy plow became usual and
after the horse harness had been developed so far that horses could pull
the heavy plow, and that happend 500-800 after Christ. Towns occured
after the countryside had developed so far that it might feed towns.
> I don't know why someone would suggest that health deteriorated with the
> development of agriculture. It may have in some cases. For example, the
> Indian population of the Caribbean was undoubtedly healthier before
> Europeans
> converted the islands to sugar plantations.
There are several reasons that health detoriated after the development
of agriculture.
One is that most of the bacteria and virus, germs, that causes sickness
first infected humans when humans started to domesticate and breed
animals. The bacteria that lived with humans 30.000 years ago and more
had been with us for so long that humans were adjusted to a peaceeful
life with them.
And if someone got sick, that person, or his group, would die before
they met other humans and were able to infect them.
A third reason was that people began to crowd together. Most towns only
few generations ago had a death-rate that was higher than the birth rate
- so much higher that without a large migration from the countryside
they would have been empty within a rather short time.
A fourth reason is that because of worse nutrition people became more
vulnerable.
By the time the sugar
> plantations were well advanced, the native population was not only
> unhealthy, it was largely dead. However, in much of early Europe, it's
> probable that the transition to agriculture led to a healthier population.
What is the evidence?
>
> Of course, climate played a very important role in agricultural productivity
> and the ability of agriculture to sustain a population. A large
> agriculturally-based population was vulnerable to adverse changes in
> climate, but then so was a hunting and gathering population, even a small
> one. An
> agricultural population was also on something of a treadmill even during
> normal times. Agriculture could stimulate rapid population growth, but to
> feed a growing population you needed more agriculture. Population had to
> either move out from the center as it probably did in much of early Europe
> or raise more productive crops as it probably did in much of China, or both.
> If none of these things were possible, people would certainly become less
> healthy and would die off.
>
> Except perhaps in some tropical areas, where there was an abundance of wild
> food, hunting and gathering populations were typically more vulnerable than
> agricultural populations.
I do not think so. A hunting-gathering population would exploit a wider
range of plants and animals then agricultural populations, and they
(their group) would exploit a larger area. Transportation of food was
only possible by sea and ship until 150 years ago, because people living
in the countryside could not afford to pay food transported by road. In
times of starvation they had to leave to go and beg for food, but it
would not help much during a famine.
--
All the best
Tor F�rde
visit our homepage: URL::http://home.sol.no/~toforde/
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