The pessimists, led by Mark Cohen and Marshall Sahlins, argued that farming was a back-breaking treadmill that brought a monotonous diet deficient in nutrients to a people plagued by pollution, squalor, infectious diseases and early death. More people could now live upon the land, but with unchecked fertility, they would have to work harder. More babies were born, but more people died young. Whereas extant hunter-gatherers such as the Dobe !Kung seemed to have ample leisure and to live in ‘the original affluent society’ (Sahlins’s phrase), limiting their reproduction and so preventing
