Back to Ted
It invented having a relatively reliable food surplus.
I wish I could make all these neoprimitives actually live the life for a week so they shut up forever about it.
Practically every single tribe on the planet decided that the odds for farming was better than rolling the dice every year.
I think it’s more likely that it was better odds, and those that continued nomadic life died off at a much higher rate.
I think both of you are not considering two major aspects:
Farming can feed more people on a given fertile area than hunting and gathering can.
Farming is area exclusive, e.g. there is a set amount of people farming in one area and considering this area to be theirs, excluding everyone else from usage.
It is very much possible, that in terms of providing food for the existing population both are equally viable. But with farming you could create larger more densely packed populations, which in turn provided means to exclude others by force. So while hunting and gathering was not necessarily a bad way of life, it did not allow for imperialism and was subsequently diminished by the imperialists.
We have more food than we know what to do with and people are still starving. Growing your own food provides a reward someone like you not only can’t experience, but if you did you wouldn’t be able to understand it.
