preview

The Worst Mistake

Decent Essays

I found “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race” by Jared Diamond to be quite thought evoking. This article explains the “what ifs” of humans keeping the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to this day, and why Diamond believes that to have been the better option. While he goes on to make convincing arguments towards keeping the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, I commend him for also taking a professional approach in mentioning reasons why people would prefer the agricultural lifestyle we have today due to reasons such as “having to do less work, having more time for leisure and art, etc.”. David has set up a solid basis for arguing, which I believe to be quite beneficial in being able to see as many point of views as possible. Before reading this article, I never put in a considerable amount of thought into which process of obtaining food is best. Mostly, I have been told how fortunate I am to be able …show more content…

The human population has made a tremendous amount of advancements in technology, knowledge, and the arts, all of which happen to be quite life changing in possibly some positive way. It could be the case that some of these advancements were bound to develop over time no matter what lifestyle people took on, and there is the question if they would have been developed within the same time frame. There are many things to consider when it comes to the “what ifs”, but one example that comes to my mind when thinking of how settling down could have been more beneficial than continuing a nomadic lifestyle is Gregor Mendel’s pea plant discovery. Taking on agriculture has allowed Mendel to observe and study the differences between pea plans, which has given us a basic foundation of how genetics work, and from that we have been able to go even further to make other medical and scientific

Get Access