Sapiens Chapter 5 Summary – History’s Biggest Fraud

The Chapter 5 of Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari deals with a pretty radical argument. Basically, the chapter suggests that agriculture was history’s biggest fraud.

This flies in the face of common wisdom that the Agricultural Revolution was a great leap for mankind. In fact, for thousands of years, agriculture had been linked with increase in human intelligence.

According to Harari, this tale is nothing more than a fantasy. In this Sapiens Chapter 5 Summary and Analysis, we look at the arguments made within the chapter.

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Agricultural Revolution was a Fraud

Scholars often think of agriculture as this great epochal event fuelled by human evolution. Increase in brain power laid bare the secrets of mother nature. Humans became smart enough to decipher those secrets and gain mastery over the element of nature leading to the dawn of agriculture.

However, there is actually no evidence of people getting smarter. If anything, our forager ancestors understood the intricacies of nature far better. Their survival was directly dependent on an intricate knowledge of the animals they hunted and the plants they gathered. They lived a healthier and far more sustainable life as compared to humans after the advent of agriculture.

In Harari’s view, the Agricultural Revolution left farmers with generally more difficult and less satisfying lives. With increasing dependence on agriculture, starvation and disease became more probably. Even though the sum total of available food increased, but it did not translate into a better diet or leisure for our ancestors. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager while getting less in return.

Basically, agricultural revolution turned out to be history‘s biggest fraud, swindling mankind into a false sense of security.

The Fraudsters of Agricultural Revolution

If Agricultural Revolution was a fraud, who were the fraudsters?

Basically, the fraudsters were a handful of plant species such as wheat, rice and potatoes. Actually, these plants domesticated Homo sapiens rather than the other way around.

The above statement might sound outrageous but there are always two sides of a coin.

Harari encourages to think about the situation from the perspective of wheat. 10,000 years ago, wheat was just a wild grass confined to a small part of the Middle East. However, within a few millennia, wheat was growing all over the world. Ultimately, wheat became one of the most successful plants in the history of the planet.

How did this unremarkable grass turn from insignificant to near-ubiquitous?

Basically, wheat manipulated Homo sapiens to its own advantage. Our forager ancestors were living a fairly comfortable life of hunting and gathering, but then we began to invest more and more effort into cultivating wheat. But cultivating wheat wasn’t easy. It required a serious amount of dedication and hard-work. Some of the basic tasks needed to cultivate wheat have been listed below:

Clear rocks and pebbles.Spend long days clearing weeds under the scorching sun.Keep a watch for worms and blight.Build fences and stand guard over the fields.Dig irrigation canals.Collect animal faeces to nourish the soil in which the wheat grew.

Human bodies had not evolved for such tasks. We were adapted to climbing apple trees or running after game and not to clearing rocks or carrying water buckets.

A transition to agriculture brought about a plethora of ailments such as slipped discs, arthritis and Hernia’s. Our spines, knees, necks and arches paid the price of this transition. Moreover, agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle next to their wheat-fields. In other words, cultivation of wheat completely changed our view of life.

Hence, it won’t be an overstretch to say that we did not domesticate wheat but wheat ended up domesticating mankind.

In my view, this is one of the most controversial point of views expressed in the book. Logically, the argument seems to make sense. However, since it is so divergent from common wisdom, it seems a little incredulous.

How Agricultural Revolution Ruined Human Life?

Continuing further, Harari points out that humans, by nature, are omnivorous creatures. We can generally thrive on a variety of foods.

Before the Agricultural Revolution came about, grains made up only a small fraction of our diet. This was probably for a reason. A diet based on cereals is inherently poor in minerals and vitamins.

Post the advent of agriculture, all of this changed. We started relying more on grains as a source of calories. Our diet became poorer. Initially, it seemed like a good trade-off as cultivating food seemed to provide a more secure future.

However, wheat did not give us economic security. The life of a peasant was even less secure when compared to that of a hunter gatherer. Our ancestors relied on dozens of species to survive. After the agricultural revolution, we became dependent on a few plant species for our survival. If there was a failure of production in those plant species, peasants died by thousands and millions.

Agriculture also increased human violence in the society. Earlier when one band tried to overpower a smaller rival, the rival could usually move on and settle at a different location. With agriculture, this meant giving up entire fields, houses and granaries. This was because farmers acquired more possessions when compared to hunter gatherers and needed land for planting the crops. The loss of pasture land to raiding neighbours could mean the difference between life and death so there was not much room for compromise. Farmers therefore tended to stay put and fight to the bitter end to protect their possessions.

Studies prove that even simple agricultural societies with no political frameworks beyond village and tribe had more human violence. Only after the development of larger frameworks such as cities, kingdoms and states, this human violence was brought under control. However, it took thousands of years to build such huge and effective political structures that could provide adequate protection to early farming societies.

Harari points out that our judgement about this topic is clouded by the affluence and security built on the foundations of agricultural revolution. However, it is wrong to ignore thousands of years of history from the perspective of the modern world. A Chinese girl in the first century dying from malnutrition because her father‘s crops failed would not care that in 2000 years her sacrifice would be worthwhile. For our ancestors, Agricultural Revolution was not a wonderful improvement to life but a harsh reality that led to many hardships.

Of course, Agricultural Revolution also had some benefits.

While agriculture did not offer something new to an individual but as a species we were able to cultivate more food per unit of territory. Due to agricultural revolution, an area which could support a band of hundred relatively healthy and well nourished people could now support a cramped village of 1000 people. This created an ideal environment for Homo sapiens to multiply exponentially, but at the expense of far more suffering in the form of disease and malnourishment.

Just as economic success of a company is measured by the number of dollars in its bank account and not by the happiness of its employees so is the evolutionary success of a species measured by the number of copies of its DNA. If no more DNA copies remain the species is extinct. Just like a company without money is bankrupt.

From the perspective of a species, a thousand copies are always better than hundred copies. This is what the agriculture did for Homo sapiens. It gave the ability to keep more people alive even if the conditions were not great from an individual’s perspective.

I must admit that this section of the chapter really presents some strong arguments against the Agriculture Revolution. Of course, agriculture was vital to the growth of our society, but for individuals it may not have been a great prospect. Even today, we see signs of exploitation of poor farmers in developing or under-developed nations. Even today, we see famines leading to huge losses of lives. Of course, we can no longer break the shackles of agriculture since there is no way we can sustain the present human population levels through a hunting and gathering life.

The Spread of Agriculture

About 18,000 years ago, the last ice age gave way to a period of global warming. Rising temperatures led to increased rains.

The new climate was ideal for middle eastern wheat and other cereals which multiplied and spread during this time. As a result, people began eating more wheat and in exchange they unknowingly spread its growth even further. Since it was impossible to eat grains without grinding and cooking them, people who gathered the grains in the wild carried them back to their temporary camp sites for processing. Wheat grains are small and numerous so some of them would have invariably fallen on the way to the campsite and got lost in the soil. This led to the gradual spread of wheat along favourite human trails and near campsites.

When humans burned down forests and thickets, it also also indirectly helped cereals. Wheat and other grasses monopolised the sunlight, water and nutrients. Wherever wheat became abundant, it became possible for human bands to gradually give up their nomadic lifestyle and settle down in seasonal and even permanent camps. Initial camps may have been for four weeks during the harvest but a generation later the harvest camp might have lasted for five weeks and then six. Finally, these settlements turned into permanent villages.

Soon humans also started cultivating grains in more and more elaborate ways. When gathering grains they took care to lay aside part of the harvest for the fields next season. They found that better results could be achieved by sowing the grains deep into the ground rather than scattering them. This led to the practice of ploughing the fields. Gradually they started to guard the fields against parasites and to fertilise them for better yields. Ultimately, there was less time to gather and hunt wild species. The foresters had turned into farmers.

With the move to permanent villages and increase in food supply the population began to grow swiftly. Giving up the nomadic lifestyle enabled women to have a child every year. Of course, the extra hands were needed in the fields. But the extra mouths quickly wiped out the food surpluses so even more fields had to be planted to keep the food supply at adequate levels.

People began living in disease ridden settlements. Children fed more on cereals and less on mother’s milk and each child competed for his or her porridge with more and more siblings. This resulted in soaring child mortality rates. In most agricultural societies, at least one out of every three children died before reaching 20. However, the increase in births still outpaced the increase in deaths.

In my view, none of this sounds like a good thing for our ancestors. On the one hand, the human population grew, the quality of individual life took a severe beating. In fact, even today, we see examples of this happening all over the world even in non-agricultural fields. Large multinational companies often sacrifice an individual employee’s personal aspirations in order to serve the collective interest and productivity of the company.

Why Humans Fell into the Trap?

Moving further, Harari does try to put things into perspective. Reading about the various fallacies of agriculture, it sounds like our ancestors were foolish in getting trapped. However, the truth is that we are viewing the Agricultural Revolution with a hindsight of thousands of years.

Our ancestors would have simply thought that if they worked harder their children will never have to sleep hungry. It made perfect sense. If you work harder you would have a better life. It sounded like a pretty good plan.

However, they did not foresee that the number of children would also increase meaning that the extra wheat would have to be shared between more children. Neither did they realise that feeding children with more porridge and less breast milk would weaken their immune system and the permanent settlements would become hotbeds for infectious diseases. The farmers also did not foresee that in good years their bulging granaries would invite thieves and enemies compelling them to build walls and also perform guard duty.

At this point, we might wonder that if agriculture was such a bad thing, why didn’t humans abandon farming when the plan seemingly backfired?

One reason is that it took generations for the small changes to accumulate and transform society at large. By the time things changed for the worse, nobody remembered what life was like before the entire mess.

To make matters worse, population growth burnt the proverbial boat. One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and providing for them turns into an obligation. Once people get used to a certain luxury they start taking it for granted. They begin to count on its eternal presence and finally, they reach a point where they can’t live without it. The pursuit of an easier life kept drawing us further into the trap.

However, there is another theory that suggests that agricultural revolution might have been a conscious decision of our ancestors. According to this line of thought, our ancestors had other aspirations and they were willing to make their lives harder in order to achieve them.

Typically scientists seek to attribute historical developments to cold economic and demographic factors because they fit better with their rational and mathematical methods. However we have enough evidence to suggest that some of the most pivotal events in human history such as the Second World War were not caused by food shortage or demographic pressure.

The general accepted theory is that the humans first built a village and when it prospered, they set up a temple in the middle. What if it was the other way round?

Perhaps, our ancestors had other reasons to pursue the path of agriculture. Perhaps, the reason had more to do with faith and less as a result of economic factors. Since we don’t have any written evidence from prehistoric era, we often find it hard to believe that pre-literate people were motivated by faith rather than economic necessity.

In some rare cases we are lucky to find clues. In Gobekli tepe we find evidence that our ancestors built structures that had no obvious utilitarian purpose. Despite their no obvious use, our ancestors thought it was worth the amount of time and effort to build such structures. Moreover, such structures have also been built near the first evidence of the origin of wheat.

Gobekli Tepe

It may well be possible that foragers switched from gathering wild wheat to intense wheat cultivation not to increase their normal food supply but rather to support the building and running of a temple of some sort.

In my view, Harari’s arguments about the slow trap of perceived luxury is absolutely spot on. The idea is not so different from the story of the frog who does not realize that he is dying in boiling water if the temperature is increased slowly. Even in the modern era, human nature is still the same. Many of us toil our entire lives for the future of our children, hoping that if we work hard, they won’t have to. And the cycle keeps repeating.

Victims of Agricultural Revolution

Many might not considers humans as victims of agricultural revolution. However, there were also other victims of the agricultural revolution. These victims were animals such as sheep, goats, pigs and chickens.

Harari explains the three stages in which humans affected these animals.

Initially, nomadic bands that stalked wild sheep gradually altered the constitution of the herds they hunted. This process started with selective hunting of only adult Rams and old or sick sheep. They often spared females and young lambs to safeguard the future of the local herd for sustenance. You could think of this as the first stage of exploitation of such animals by mankind.

The second stage might have been to actively defend this herd against predators and other tribes.

In the third stage, humans began to make a more careful selection among the sheep in order to tailor them to human needs. The most aggressive Rams were slaughtered first. Also the most inquisitive females were slaughtered so that they cannot run away from the herd. With each generation, the sheep became fatter, more submissive and less curious.

As humans spread around the world so did their domesticated animals. Today the world contains about 1 billion sheep, 1 billion pigs, more than 1 billion cattle and more than 25 billion chickens. And these animals have spread all over the globe. From a narrow evolutionary perspective of a species where success is based on the number of DNA copies, the agricultural revolution can be considered a wonderful boon for chickens, cattle, pigs and sheep.

Unfortunately, as we saw with humans, the evolutionary perspective is an incomplete measure of success. It judges everything by the criteria of survival with no regard for individual suffering and happiness. Domesticated chickens and cattle are among the most miserable creatures that have ever lived. The natural lifespan of wild chickens is about 7 to 12 years. In contrast the vast majority of domesticated chickens are slaughtered between the age of a few weeks and a few months because this has been the optimal age for slaughter from an economic perspective.

Humans also commit many other acts of cruelty to these domesticated animals. In many societies of New Guinea, farmers slice off a chunk of each pigs nose to ensure that the pigs can’t run away. This causes severe pain whenever the pig tries to sniff. Since the pigs cannot find food or even find their way without sniffing, this mutilation makes them completely dependent on their human masters.

The dairy industry has its own way of exploiting animals. Cows, goats and sheep produce milk only after giving birth and only as long as the youngsters are suckling. One common method to ensure continuous supply of milk is to simply slaughter the calves shortly after birth and milk the mother for all she is worth before getting her pregnant again. Another method is to keep the calves near their mother but prevent them by various strategies from sucking too much milk. The simplest way to do that is to allow the calf to start sucking, but drive it away by force once the milk starts flowing.

Though several farmers and shepherds loved their animals and took good care of them it was not much different from certain slave holders feeling affection and concern for their slaves.

From the viewpoint of domesticated animals, the agricultural revolution was a terrible catastrophe. Their so-called evolutionary success is meaningless.

Concluding Thoughts

The discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual suffering is perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from the Agricultural Revolution. Maybe for plants such as wheat and maize the pure evolutionary perspective may make sense. However, in the case of animals such as cattle and sheep having their own complex world of sensations and emotions, we have to consider how evolutionary success translates into individual misery.

The same has been the case for humans during most of history. The increase in collective power and success of our species has led to more suffering at an individual level.

With this chapter, Harari has certainly opened the door on some arguments that challenge our usual notion of success and well-being. In this regard, this chapter is one of the most important parts of the entire book.

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