The Biological Ancien Regime: The British Agricultural Revolution

The Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, which spanned from the late 1500’s to 1700’s, shaped today’s modern world through disregarding past information and seeking answers on their own through the scientific method and other techniques created during the Enlightenment. Newton’s ‘Philsophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica’ and Diderot’s Encyclopedia were both composed of characteristics that developed this time period through the desire to understand all life, humans are capable of understanding the Earth, and a sense of independence from not having to rely on the nobles or church for knowledge.

The transition from the traditional hunter gatherer societies, in to an agriculture based living system, has allowed humans to increase their population size, putting strains on the Earth’s environment. Agriculture has also brought along with it a decrease in women’s roles in the community, while also bringing about a class system where the wealthy rule, and were the weak and poor obey. As humans began to domesticate more plants and animals, they settled in permanent areas. The Change from hunter gatherer benefited few, but had dire consequences for the earth and groups with in it. One such consequence was the population increase, which has lead to major issues throughout history, and one that has ties to current global issues.

Journal #1. Page 32-“The era of human history when agriculture was the most important of all productive technologies and the foundation for most human societies.”

In the 1930's, V. Gordon Childe proposed that the shift to food production was one of the two major events in human history that improved the condition of human societies. Childe described the origins of agriculture as a 哲eolithic Revolution.But the shift from hunting and gathering to food production was not as advantageous to humanity as Childe believed. Although there were benefits, there were also serious drawbacks, and humans paid a price for the advantages of agriculture.

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About ten to twelve thousand years ago, humans made one of the most important decisions in history - agriculture. A task as simple as deciding to grow your own wild plants enabled the advancement of the technology that we have today. Agriculture also supports larger populations of people; larger populations means that we have the advantage to evolve at a quicker pace because we have more genes. However, with agriculture, came a more clear distinction between the roles of the sexes, it gave birth to the development of social classes, and brought about more disease. Which brings some people to question whether or not we should go back to being hunter-gatherers. I argue that it is impossible for industrialized societies become hunter-gatherers; however, those societies can learn a lot about how to maintain good health, how to raise healthier families, and how to maintain strong social relations, from the hunter-gatherer groups today. While the development of agriculture has brought on some negatives, the positive changes do greatly outweigh the negatives. Thus, agriculture is the necessary

No matter how many people do claim overpopulation is not a relevant issue, it very much is because of the simple fact that starvation and pollution are very real and existing issues that are ultimately offset by overpopulation. In an article titled “Overpopulation Is Not the Problem,” author Erle C. Ellis uses the analogy “Like bacteria in a petri dish, our exploding numbers are reaching the limits of a finite planet, with dire consequences,” to argue that overpopulation is not a problem by stating the opposing claim. “We are nothing like bacteria in a petri dish,” Mr. Ellis solemnly asserts, “...these claims demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the ecology of human systems. The conditions that sustain humanity are not natural and never have been. Since prehistory, human populations have used technologies and engineered ecosystems to sustain

One of the greatest revolutions in the history of homo sapiens was the adoption of agriculture, which changed the face of communities at every level of class. Though this change was built upon new ideas and allowed us to provide more food for more people, was it in fact a positive change at the time? Today in 2017, we can all look around and see where the agricultural revolution has gotten us in the long run, but authors such as Yuval Noah Harari (2011) claim that during the infancy of the agricultural revolution, life for the average citizen was often a worse one than that of the common forager. A change in food production created many other changes, such as permanent human settlement, biologically unconventional labor, and a larger population density. This paper explores the pros and cons of the agricultural society and the hunter-gatherer society

The main idea of Howell’s arguments about the Neolithic Revolution is that the adoption of agriculture is beneficial because hunting life makes nature in control of humans. Nature controls the limit on animals and plants. When it reaches its limit in a given place, humans are forced to move to survive. Nature requires humans to spread themselves out across the land and limit the number of people they band themselves with to not use all the natural resources in short amount of time. Moreover, the limited resources cause groups to kill off the young, sick, and elderly to lower the amount of humans exploiting the land. As a result of isolation amongst each other, humans rarely become civilized or social and the sexual division of labour does not change. As a result of agriculture, food is domesticated and grown rather than gathered. Also, humans are able to create civilizations with hundreds of people.

The revolutionizing transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture was a central shift in the way homo sapiens lived that occurred twelve thousand years ago. Consequently, several factors contributed to this astonishing modification of life including increasing population size, favorable environments such as the Nile River in Egypt and the Fertile Crescent in the Mediterranean. Furthermore, the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture allowed for mass production of food in order for the sustainability of the increasing population size, but with agriculture also came specialization and the division of labor ultimately leading to moral inequality.

With the introduction of agricultural and the rise of the Industrial Revolution, living standards have been elevated, while epidemics and famine have been diminished (prb.org). Ever since the 18th century, the human race has only continued to make improvements. For example, in the medical field. The creation of vaccines, medicine, and an increased knowledge of the spread of diseases have all helped to eliminate common causes of death, leading to overpopulation. Not only is overpopulation caused by an accelerated number of births, but it is also due to a decrease in the number of deaths, with 360,000 people are being born every day and only 151,600 deaths a day

People have had trouble growing enough food since early in human history. “With a demographic

The emergence of agriculture was a major stepping stone in human history. During this birth of agriculture, also known as the Neolithic revolution, humans began inhabiting permanent settlements, grow their own crops, and domesticate both plants and animals for food (Weisdorf, 2005). Considering humans have been hunter-gatherers for the majority of their approximately 7 million years of existence, the emergence of agriculture in the Old World only occurring 10,000-5,000 years ago, marks a significant transformation in food sustenance techniques (Weisdorf, 2005). However, this turning point in history is associated with both positive and negative implications. There is much controversy over whether or not the introduction of