Gregory's ServerConsider in particular Jared Diamond’s argument that agriculture was “the worst mistake in the history of the human race.”
“As population densities of hunter-gatherers slowly rose at the end of the ice ages, bands had to choose between feeding more mouths by taking the first steps toward agriculture, or else finding ways to limit growth. Some bands chose the former solution, unable to anticipate the evils of farming, and seduced by the transient abundance they enjoyed until population growth caught up with increased food production. Such bands outbred and then drove off or killed the bands that chose to remain hunter-gatherers, because a hundred malnourished farmers can still outfight one healthy hunter. It's not that hunter-gatherers abandoned their lifestyle, but that those sensible enough not to abandon it were forced out of all areas except the ones farmers didn't want.”
A variation on this is Stephen Hawkings’ warning about meeting alien species: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race
2/12
In response to this claim, let’s take a look back to the spread of agriculture into Europe starting about 9,000 years ago. Most of Western Europe was, at that time, populated by a community that geneticists have creatively dubbed “Western Hunter Gatherers.” These people—dark skinned and light-eyed—hunted and fished and foraged, preferring woodlands and the edges of wetlands and bodies of water.
Archeologists wondered for a long time if agriculture spread by adoption—if these foragers took up farming. But, thanks to genetic studies, we now know that agriculture spread into Europe mostly by migration as early farmers from Anatolia migrated first into what is now Greece and then into the rest of the continent.
These Neolithic farmers brought with them cereal crops, like wheat, and domesticated animals, like cattle, that had originated in the ancient Near East. They resembled modern Sardinians, the modern community with the highest percentage of these Neolithic farmers among their ancestors.
(Basically, if you have ancestors from Europe, your ancestors almost certainly included people from both of these foragers and these farmers.)
These two communities, rather than clashing, co-existed with each other throughout Europe for thousands of years. They sometimes interbred, but for the most part they left each other alone, each preferring very different environments.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/ancient-face-cheddar-man-reconstructed-dna-spd
3/12
In response to this claim, let’s take a look back to the spread of agriculture into Europe starting about 9,000 years ago. Most of Western Europe was, at that time, populated by a community that geneticists have creatively dubbed “Western Hunter Gatherers.” These people—dark skinned and light-eyed—hunted and fished and foraged, preferring woodlands and the edges of wetlands and bodies of water.