“Agriculture—perhaps the most life-changing innovation in the history of the human species—came to Europe from the Middle East in ancient times, so that Europeans who happened to be located in the eastern Mediterranean, closer to the Middle East, received this epoch-making advance, moving them beyond the era of hunter-gatherers, centuries before those Europeans living in northern Europe. Agriculture greatly reduced the amount of land required to provide food to sustain a given number of people, and thus made cities possible.”

— Basic Economics by #ThomasSowell

https://a.co/d8F3gCR

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Wile I do not want to disagree with you but are is another view about modern agriculture.

Pick up a copy of:

https://www.amazon.com/Ishmael-Novel-Daniel-Quinn/dp/0553375407

Drop a quote from that book. I’d love to read it.

FYI: I quote from Thomas Sowell’s book simply as a reference and as point of interesting information. I don’t necessarily agree with everything in the book. For example here is a quote I came across that I’m going to dig a bit more into. Please let me know your thoughts.

“Although much of the Western Hemisphere seems geographically similar to Europe, in terms of land, climate and waterways, it was a profoundly different economic setting for the indigenous peoples of North and South America before the Europeans arrived. What was totally lacking throughout the Western Hemisphere when the Europeans arrived were horses, oxen or other heavy-duty beasts of burden. The whole economic way of life that existed in Europe for centuries would have been impossible without horses—and was impossible in the Western Hemisphere before the Europeans brought horses across the Atlantic. Severely constrained transportation options meant that the cultural universe in the Western Hemisphere was for millennia much smaller than the cultural universe available to the people living in much of Europe, Asia or North Africa.”

— Basic Economics by #ThomasSowell

https://a.co/hlJf3zI