Was The Agricultural Revolution Good For Humanity

Was the Agricultural Revolution Good for Humanity?

10,000 years ago, humans underwent a dramatic shift in lifestyle. For the majority of their existence, humans were hunter-gatherers. As defined by Carol Ember, professor of history at Yale University, hunter-gatherers were nomadic foragers who hunt and gather food rather than farm it (Ember 2). Even today, hunter-gatherer societies still exist. However, the majority of the world has adopted the farming lifestyle. Dubbed the Agricultural Revolution, a shift to farming occurred all over the world, from Mexico to China (The Agricultural Revolution 1). Humans realized that they could farm food and animals rather than hunt and gather for them. However, the question as to how beneficial the Agricultural Revolution was to humanity remains. Some people argue that the Agricultural Revolution offered and illusion of lavish life, but at more cost than benefit. For example, Friedrich Engels, co founder of Marxism, believed agriculture the direct cause for a loss of political innocence (Noble or Savage 2). Others argue that agricultural came as a great success for the survival of the human race, and believe it to be crucially beneficial to the development of humanity. Both arguments have their flaws and strengths, however, evidence suggests that the Agricultural Revolution benefited humanity from the perspective of a larger group, but came as a deficit to humanity from the perspective of the individual human.

Because