Scholars have long puzzled over the different fates of the world’s peoples. Why, on the eve of the modern world, were some societies so technologically and politically complex? …
Now, a provocative new study… attempts to explain a strange pattern in agricultural practices. The most advanced civilizations all tended to cultivate grain crops, like wheat and barley and corn. Less advanced societies tended to rely on root crops like potatoes, taro and manioc.
It’s not that grains crops were much easier to grow than tubers, or that they provided more food, the economists say. Instead, the economists believe that grains crops transformed the politics of the societies that grew them, while tubers held them back.
Call it the curse of the potato.
The argument depends on the differences between how grains and tubers are grown. Crops like wheat are harvested once or twice a year, yielding piles of small, dry grains. These can be stored for long periods of time and are easily transported — or stolen.
Root crops, on the other hand, don’t store well at all. They’re heavy, full of water, and rot quickly once taken out of the ground. Yuca, for instance, grows year-round and in ancient times, people only dug it up right before it was eaten. This provided some protection against theft in ancient times. It’s hard for bandits to make off with your harvest when most of it is in the ground, instead of stockpiled in a granary somewhere.
But the fact that grains posed a security risk may have been a blessing in disguise. The economists believe that societies cultivating crops like wheat and barley may have experienced extra pressure to protect their harvests, galvanizing the creation of warrior classes and the development of complex hierarchies and taxation schemes.
If I read this correctly, the hypothesis is tubers produce simple r-selection – lots of food, not much risk. As a result, where they were grown, people invested a small amount of effort and then sat back, dug them up when they wanted them, and ate them, but never built anything great anywhere else.
Grains produce something different, a sort of amalgam of the ability to multiply up to r-selected levels, while still applying to the civilization the selective pressures of K-selection, favoring ferocity and drive, in order to protect the grains. That combination of sky high reproductive rate combined with the need for the K-virtues produced large and densely packed societies with numerous phenotypes to select from, while it kept everyone programmed to exhibit high amygdala development, martial virtue, and a need to function together as a group, lest their hard earned grains be stolen.
It would probably also offer a faster evolutionary rate, due to the increased variety and number of individuals for Darwin to choose from when “selective circumstances” did periodically arrive.
Add in that the grains could be kept for long periods and exchanged, and you have the beginning of a currency-based economic system, which would encourage others to branch out into niches like metallurgy, medicine, and intellectual arts, whereas tuber growers just didn’t have the motivation since they could throw a few tubers in the ground, and eat when they wanted.
Very interesting.
Even more amusingly the one knob in the piece who objected to the idea is the one idiot whose entire career is devoted to trying to figure out why inequality arose in human society. Because it would only be natural for a lazy idiot to have as much stuff as an industrious genius. Clearly some unnatural force intervened.
You can see what happens when you live in a society where you walk into any gas station, and see wall to wall candy, cakes, sodas, sandwiches, donuts, bagels, and other delicious food, and realize that even the poorest have all of that provided to them for free through welfare.
Not that I even judge. I just see where it goes.
This is a world which rebels at satiation and comfort. Wherever it arises, it will be eradicated by natural processes eventually. Inevitably push will come to shove, and only the hard will survive.
[…] Grains Vs Potatoes Or Civilization vs Survival […]
AC, here’s a good example of a society going K:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/788543/duterte-endorses-killing-corrupt-journalists
The new president literally ran on a platform of shooting criminals out of hand and assassinating corrupt journalists. He won in a landslide.
You might want to do a blog post on it.
Wow, Yes I might.
AC, I think the analysis is incomplete. Both theirs and yours. Theirs in that they for get the value and need of animals for domestication both for labor and especially for food as a protein source. Grains and tubers are mostly a source of calories, but humans are built out of protein and fats.
So if grains did cause the growth of government, it would foster ‘r’ in the ability to freeload off the labor of others more easily. Or K because now both farmer and Kleptocrat -gov’t official- need to plan for the seasonal availability of food. And of course all this needs to be calibrated through when the foods were domesticated. The article stated that tubers were domesticated a few thousand years after grains.
So I’m not sure that this shows r/K split.
In fact we should expect any huge change in human behavior to grow both r and K strategies. If it favors one over the other to much, it would probably cause one to be extinguished. The next time the K’s needed a r solution, it wouldn’t be there and the reverse is true.
I know, I know “need an r solution?” Well if one of the characteristics of r is novelty and thrill seeking, think how much that goes with the willingness to risk for the next new thing. I look at the ‘r’ and the ‘K’ as a bunch of co-existing characteristics on a continuum of intensity for ‘mostly r’ to ‘mostly K’ for any given characteristic. And each has a time when it plays to the advantage of the host population.
I agree. I mainly liked it because it seemed a condition that combined r and K, favoring rapid growth and all the good that produces in terms of variations and numbers, while still fostering a K-aspect. But obviously there will be a ton of different variables and factors contributing to what we have become.
Very interesting and intuitive too. Densely packed populations and intensive would also result in lower food nutritional content, meaning that those who fought for more and the best food were better off physically and mentally than those who didn’t. Further, the non fighters would be weaker and have to resort more to technology, spurring eventually scientific advancement.
The ability to choose to grow grains, which when stored provide reliable calories during droughts, rather than tubers which die during droughts and are not then harvestable, disproves this assertion. The choice between relying on EBT cards (Africa) and developing more sustainable farming techniques (Japan) was clearly a choice, and not a by-product of “region.”
It’s sad to see people resorting to Jared Diamond-ish levels of “it’s the planet’s fault” in their attempts to ignore genetics’ influence on behavior. White Egyptians had more stable crop harvesting patterns than the later Nubian kingdoms’ choices.
Which came first, the high IQ or the low technology?
Pretty obvious case for HBD, isn’t it?
And keeping animals means you can’t kill them in a rage (cough Africa cough).
Indeed. That’s one of the cues we need to look out for to determine which of the “right wing” bloggers nowadays are willing to address the most meaningful ethnic question of all–and which ones are trying to co-opt nationalism into a battle against “leftists” rather than parasites.
All leftists are parasites, but some parasites scapegoat leftists, I call them Papers Ks. HBD denial is a red flag, we are not all the same.
True. Consider, then, the theory that Europeoids have evolved a sheltering response toward underdogs meant to bolster the community as a whole, and that Semites have evolved the ability to exploit the underdog response by tricking Europeoids (like cuckoos) into viewing non-contributing outsiders as “underdogs” and therefore sheltering them.
The underdog response that Europeoid leftists engage in, then, is not actually r-type behavior, but is K-type, vigorously supportive of the group, and just being misdirected. If we purge genuine outsiders, great. But if we exterminate the Europeoids under the influence of the Cuckoo, we ultimately harm only ourselves. It is the Cuckoo, not his victims, that is the origin and perpetuation of the problem.
Good idea, but I think the brainwashing is in too deep. They’d rather die in a blaze for people who wouldn’t let them a quarter. The Cuckoo’s idiots will be a danger until the Cuckoo is dispatched.
I think that one thing the past two centuries (so far) have shown us is that without the Cuckoo–the ACLU, the NAACP, the ADL, the communists, etc.–African Americans would be working, getting married, and committing violence less often. I suspect that the same would hold true today if, say, Soros and Twitter and the New York Times didn’t try to whip up a frenzy every time some gangbanger got killed while attacking police officers.
I come to a different conclusion. Grains allowed for more people to be fed with less effort and with less people thus freeing people to engage in things other than constantly trying to get food.
North American Indians grew corn and they did not advance much past hunter gatherer. Maybe they didn’t have the grain long enough but since the Aztecs and Mayans did show that the whole issue is more complicated than that study indicates and is probably not a great or complete conclusion.
Could be. It is an interesting concept which pressed a button in me because I have always felt a little r in the plan is helpful to speed evolution along by increasing numbers and variability rapidly, so a cull can be more aggressive and has a greater chance of finding a big leap forward, to make the baseline of the next generation better. If you are always K, you just don’t get the rapid growth in numbers and variability, so the selective process has to move slower.
I suspect cold winters played a great role, since it required realization (of reality), visualization (of the future), planning, execution, and an adaptation to harshness, as well as maybe the ability to work together more. But the truth is most of this is guesswork.
Hi Anonymous Just something interesting to think about in the article.
Check the figure 4 and figure 5 and look at Europe. I find it interesting that most of Europe doesn’t have a grain or tubers. It is also interesting to think that for most of history up to a least in most parts of the world you had great large empires that cover major areas and did not advance philosophy, writing, history, language, government, maths, currency, laws, roads and of the ideas of human having rights in the world until the Greeks and then later the Romans. The world for most of history in the east it look more like China, Egypt or Persian empire.
The main crop in ancient Athens was olives. It had to traded (at first olive oil) to get grains from other places such as Egypt or Macedon. It also had at first (like the Romans later on) relay on its civilians provide for their own arms and later for the ships.
I would like to get your views on this
It isn’t just the grains, but I think grains may have been a factor which facilitates the evolution of it. I think a lot of intellectual stuff may have required mixing genes somewhat. Maybe some lines which lived in harsh environments had the ability to see reality as it was, while there were r-strategists elsewhere which specialized in creative ways to avoid having to compete. Maybe there were others who had to visualize in their mind some task they only got one shot at, like spearing a mastodon. So it took time and conquest to mix populations and bring together a magic mix of uniquely evolved cognitive traits, which would then produce the modern intellectual.
I have always been struck by how molecular biology and cell bio is kind of like a big play, with different characters (molecules, signaling compounds, receptors, enzymes, etc) who all have different jobs. I wonder now if r-strategists, with that innate ability to perceive and navigate complex social systems may apply that innate ability to things like biochemistry and cell bio, simply replacing people with cellular constituents.
I found it interesting in the article that the first farmers were weak and sickly. To me that reeks of weak r-strategists seeking to find an alternative resource stream so they wouldn’t have to compete. Without agriculture they’d have died, but with it they survived, they created a niche for themselves in the community, and they fostered the growth of their kind.
Hi Anonymous Conservative, You are right I bet there is a lot more to it. I pointed out the grain not in Europe until after it was introduce by the East (Horses being the other major step in human advancement from the east). The other civilization developed much faster but individualism (as a idea) was either breed out or killed off in Asia.
It probably come after all the early wars during the rise of the Qin dynasty in China, the rise of Assyria in the Middle east and the rise of Maurya Empire on the Indian sub continent.
It might of been more due to the natural barriers but no major empire ever took over the European continent (the EU has come close).
The reason I brought up Greece and Rome was the Philosophy (mainly individualism was different to what every other civilization was doing. It may be more my Libertarian thinking.
Putting the r vs K. Eastern Philosophy often appeals to r types since it is about harmony and finding peace with your place in the universe and doing good for the whole group. They view the world and themselves in a series of cycles not a liner world view (Western view). Duty towards all others is a very important more than the individual. Also controlling ones feelings is important, anger is often criticized as foolish.
Just some quotes from Eastern philosopher’s
“Be satisfied with whatever you have, and enjoy the same. When you come to know that you have everything, and you are not short of anything, then the whole world will be yours.” ~ Lao Tzu
“Virtuous life and adherence to performing your duties.” ~ Confucianism
“Desires are the cause of suffering. If desire, which lies at the route of all human passion, can be removed, then passion will die out and all human suffering will be ended.” ~ Buddhism
“Action can be achieved by inaction, where the result is achieved by “Not-Me” ~ Zen
“Pride and excess bring disaster for man.”Xun Zi
“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
The Buddha
Vs
Some Western philosopher’s
“When one is deprived of ones liberty, one is right in blaming not so much the man who puts the shackles on as the one who had the power to prevent him, but did not use it.” – Thucydides
“Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.” – Aristotle
“The name of peace is sweet, and the thing itself is beneficial, but there is a great difference between peace and servitude. Peace is freedom in tranquillity, servitude is the worst of all evils, to be resisted not only by war, but even by death.” – Cicero
“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” – Aristotle
Fine I’ll make a comment without a joke about the Irish. But y’know, the original article doesn’t mention ‘Irish’ at all, so there’s something for the original author to chew on.
Ehhh Idk about this one. Like someone said, Native Americans cultivated corn, but they didn’t exactly get that far from Hunter Gatherers. Also, West Africans have a indigenous grain crops (fonio from the Mali Empire, sorghum, pearl millet). They also had native African rice (smaller than Asian rice and red in colour), which was probably just as important to their culture, or even more important, than their native yam tubers. But they also didn’t get far. I don’t think it lies in the tuber vs grain argument, I think it’s more of the domestication of animals. Africa had the tsetse fly and could hardly herd their cows in places. And the places that they could, they didn’t get very far either. So maybe it’s inherent, plus available domestication of animals.