So I would conclude by proposing this: that the spread and ultimate dominance of agriculture was not some function of agriculture itself, but rather of intentional state violence. Coercing people into being settled, taxable, conscriptable, and *controllable* farmers would also have produced the added benefit of creating a population entirely dependent on a single, easily controlled food supply, rendering us even more docile.

This would explain the transition from agriculture as a flexible option that people sometimes adopted, abandoned, or lived alongside without transforming themselves, into what we live with today—industrial agriculture as the sole source of food for the vast majority of people alive.

This is just a hunch, but one that feels intuitively true. From the Assyrian and Incan Empires to the indigenous reserves of the modern US and Australia, states have always and everywhere been obsessed with settling nomads and transforming foragers into farmers.

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