Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T02:19:21.890Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Why did the first farmers toil? Human metabolism and the origins of agriculture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2009

JACOB WEISDORF
JACOB WEISDORF*
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen, Department of Economics, [email protected]
Get access

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 prehistoric foragers turned down agriculture in the first place. Estimates of population growth before and after farming, however, in the light of the present framework seem to suggest that hunters were pulled rather than pushed into agriculture.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Review of Economic History , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , August 2009 , pp. 157 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © European Historical Economics Society 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ashraf, Q. and Galor, O. (2007). Cultural assimilation, cultural diffusion and the origin of the wealth of nations. CEPR Discussion Paper 6444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashraf, Q. and Galor, O. (2008). Human genetic diversion and comparative economic development. CEPR Discussion Paper 6824.Google Scholar
Bar-Yosef, O. and Belfer-Cohen, A. (1991). An early Neolithic village site in the Jordan Valley. Journal of Field Archaeology 18, pp. 405–24.Google Scholar
Binford, L. R. (1968). Post-Pleistocene adaptation. In Binford, S. R. and Binford, L. R. (eds.), New Perspectives in Archaeology. Chicago: Aldine, pp. 313–41.Google Scholar
Boserup, E. (1965). The Conditions of Agricultural Growth. London: Earthscan.Google Scholar
Clark, G. (2007). A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, M. N. (1977). The Food Crises in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, M. N. and Armelagos, G. (1984). Paleopathology at the origins of agriculture. In Cohen, M. and Armelagos, G. (eds.), Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture. Orlando, FL: Academic Press, pp. 585–602.Google Scholar
Dalgaard, C.-J., and Strulik, H. (2007). A bioeconomic foundation of the Malthusian equilibrium: body size and population size in the long run. Leibniz Universität Hannover Discussion Paper 379.Google Scholar
Dalgaard, C.-J., and Strulik, H. (2008). A bioeconomic foundation for the nutrition-based efficiency wage model. Leibniz Universität Hannover Discussion Paper 396.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernandez-Armesto, F. (2001). Food: A History. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Galor, O. and Moav, O. (2002). Natural selection and the origin of economic growth. Quarterly Journal of Economics 117, pp. 1133–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galor, O. and Moav, O. (2007). The Neolithic Revolution and contemporary variations in life expectancy. Brown University Working Paper 2007-14.Google Scholar
Gebauer, A. B. and Price, T. D. (1992). Foragers to farmers: an introduction. In Gebauer, A. B. and Price, T. D. (eds.), The Transition to Agriculture in Prehistory. Wisconsin: Prehistory Press, pp. 1–10.Google Scholar
Harlan, J. R. (1992). Crops and Man. Maddison, WI: American Society of Agronomy.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harlan, J. R. (1995). The Living Fields: Our Agricultural Heritage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hibbs, D. and Olsson, O. (2005). Biogeography and long-run economic development. European Economic Review 49, pp. 909–38.Google Scholar
Kremer, M. (1993). Population growth and technological change: one million BC to 1990. Quarterly Journal of Economics 108, pp. 681–716.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, R. B. (1968). What hunters do for a living, or, how to make out on scarce resources. In Lee, R. B. and DeVore, I. (eds.), Man the Hunter. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Lee, R. B. and DeVore, I. (eds.) (1968). Man the Hunter. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Locay, L. (1989). From hunting and gathering to agriculture. Economic Development and Cultural Change 37, pp. 737–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marceau, N. and Myers, G. (2006). On the early Holocene: foraging to early agriculture. Economic Journal 116, pp. 751–72.Google Scholar
North, D. C. and Thomas, R. P. (1977). The first economic revolution. Economic History Review 30, pp. 229–41.Google Scholar
Oppenheimer, F. (1914). The State. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co.Google Scholar
Pryor, F. L. (2005). Economic Systems of Foraging, Agricultural, and Industrial Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M. (1972). Stone Age Economics. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Seabright, P. (2005). The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Seabright, P. (2008). Warfare and the multiple adoption of agriculture after the last Ice Age. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Smith, B. D. (1995), The Emergence of Agriculture. New York: Scientific American Library.Google Scholar
Smith, V. L. (1975). The primitive hunter culture, Pleistocene extinction, and the rise of agriculture. Journal of Political Economy 83, pp. 727–55.Google Scholar
Voth, H.-J. (2001). Time and Work in England 1750–1830. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar