| Abstract: |
Time-budget studies done among contemporary primitive people suggest that the
first farmers worked harder to attain subsistence than their foraging
predecessors. This makes the adoption of agriculture in the Stone Age one of
the major curiosities in human cultural history. Theories offered by
economists and economic historians largely fail to capture
work-intensification among early farmers. Attributing a key role to human
metabolism, this study provides a simple framework for analysing the adoption
of agriculture. It demonstrates how the additional output that farming offered
could have lured people into agriculture, but that subsequent population
increase would eventually have swallowed up its benefits, forcing early
farmers into an irreversible trap, where they had to do more work to attain
subsistence compared to their foraging ancestors. The framework draws
attention to the fact that, if agriculture arose out of need, as some scholars
have suggested, then this was because pre-historic foragers turned down
agriculture in the first place. Estimates of population growth before and
after farming, however, in light of the present framework seem to suggest that
hunters were pulled rather than pushed into agriculture. |