Was Farming an Improvement over Farming?

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Ten thousand years ago humans made the decision to completely change their lifestyle. They began penning animals, pulling weeds, and purposely planting certain plants with nutritional value. In other words, humans began farming. The question is: Was it for the better? I believe it was better for many reasons, including food production, more advanced tools and weapons, and the immense population increase, although people who believe that foraging was better did prove some valid points.
Farming or agriculture was a major improvement over foraging. One noticeable difference in this time period was humans began using more complex tools to do more advanced techniques of farming. They also began domesticating plants and animals, this was one of the leading factors of the beginning of agriculture. This was a huge turning point for humans everywhere. People could now live together in communities, villages, cities, etc. This was very different than the traditional way of a nomadic lifestyle. Farming also allowed the population to grow extremely, birth rates sky rocketed. Food, because of farming, could now be produced with less time and effort. Civilization with farming can provide a more assured source of constant food. With communities and people together, people are grouped together they can learn collectively and also have more protection against other predators. Perhaps the most significant reason farming is a major improvement over foraging is that specialization could occur. Specialization is when an individual or a group focuses on one craft that will better help their communities. One example of this is being a shoemaker. Having a wide variety of skills is crucial to a community.(hunter…shelters 6),(Reilly 17)
Some people di...

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I used this article because it gave me a general idea of how the foragers lived. It also provided me with information on the nomadic lifestyle.
Text 9-“ Jared Diamond, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,” Discover magazine (May 1987) 64–66. This source provided me with a lot of information and a good argument for why foraging could be considered better.
Text 11-Richard Lee, “What Hunters Do for a Living,” in Man the Hunter, eds. R.B. Lee and I. DeVore (Chicago: Aldine, 1968).
This cite gave me a lot of data pertaining to the schedule that hunter gatherers gi by. Also, it told about the amount of leisure time that they get.
Text 13- Kevin Reilly, The West and the World: A History of Civilization (New York: Harper Collins, 1989)
This source was beneficial to my paper because it gave me several very good points on why farming is better.

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