Down&OutHunting

So i was working on some homework tonight for my history class and it dealt with hunting and agriculture. To sum up the reading it said that hunting was better than farming and the life expectancy was more when people soley hunted rather than when people quit hunting and started to farm. The life expectany when people solely hunted was 26 and when they turned to agriculture it dropped to 19Basically because more people gathered where farming was taking place and disease spread rapidly. Just a little history on hunting thought some people might like it.

D Rock

As a history teacher I find that very interesting. That makes a lot of sense though. Think of all the hard work that goes into tending a crop. Hunting is must easier on the body. Civilization can be a nasty thing to accomplish. I for one would much rather live the hunter lifestyle.

BigBuck95

Hunting v. Ag

I can imagine that this is true. While farmers are a huge part of the economy, its not easy. Its a very hard occupation. Hunting over the ages has been fun, and not stressful. NOT saying farming isn't AWESOME!!!!!!! but the whole life expectancy thing isn't surprising. Thanks for the note! haha

Wingbone

There is a great quote by Edward Abbey that speaks to that:

"The real work of men is hunting meat. The invention of agriculture was a giant step in the wrong direction, leading to serfdom, cities, and empire. From a race of hunters, artists, warriors, and tamers of horses, we degraded ourselves to what we are now: clerks functionaries, laborers, entertainers, processors of information."

kevin1

Hunting isn't stressful when performed for recreation, it's a whole different ballgame when you have to do it to survive.

One could postulate that we'd all be better off as hunters than farmers, but without agriculture we wouldn't have the time to hunt for recreation, we also wouldn't have anywhere near the number of cool toys that we enjoy now. Think about it, if everybody hunted who would invent things like television, or Saturn 5 rockets? They wouldn't have time to do that since they'd be chasing their next deer steak. We also wouldn't have made any progress as a species, we'd still be at subsistence level like the rest of the animal kingdom. It's true that our proximity to each other promotes the spread of disease too, but how many of those diseases have we conquered, how many still kill us? It wasn't all that long ago that the words "measles" or "small pox" conjured images of plague and dread. Polio used to cripple millions, and prior to penicillin and the rest of the antibiotic family people routinely died in agony from simple wounds. Another thing to consider is this, could you really live like an Apache indiana from the early 19th century? Are you that good a hunter? Could you give up all you own, move to the wilderness and survive? Agriculture was the turning point for our species that took us to the pinnacle of the food chain, we are the apex predator of this planet.

Now dwell on that while you're making me a ham sammich, don't forget the cheese.

thndrchiken

I'd have to say that science has been the cause of more diseases than not. When times were simpler so was life. Granted the life expectancy may not be what it is today but the population in general was in better shape. People had to perform manual labor as opposed to these days when most don't even exercise. Believe me I'd rather be up and moving around but after my back and knee injuries it limits me to driving a desk in front of a computer.

drvsarchry123

I'm a hundred percent agree with the fact that hunting is better than farming in a sense that being into hunting is like having great fun-filled experiences in which they don't have while farming. That was one of the reasons behind this. For which farmers have also need more time to plow and plant for the rice fields and try to maintain this for a longer span of time while on hunting, you only have to spare a little time,not more than a month or maybe weeks to have a good hunt to bring back into their homes.But we must need to know that farmers have great contributions in the economy.

Robert L E

Hunter/gatherers had greater variety than the people who live mostly off of crops. They didn't get oranges from California in those days.

The varied diet was healthier than a largely grain diet. It is possible to have a vegetarian (farming) diet that is healthy but it takes a lot of education to keep you from being deficient in nutrients. One reason we are taller today is that modern diets, though agriculturally based, are much more varied than the diets even just 100 years ago.

We are taller than our recent ancestors but not much taller than the hunter/gatherers before.

Bob

Steve863

If the 300 million that live in this country now needed to go back to hunting in order to eat, then it wouldn't be long before there was NO game left to hunt. Without farming they would probably all starve. Farming is not such a bad thing after all.