Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots

by James Suzman

Both ancient farmers and foragers suffered seasonal food shortages. During these periods children and adults alike would go to bed hungry some days and everyone would lose fat and muscle. But over longer periods of time farming societies were far more likely to suffer severe, existentially threatening famines than foragers.6 Foraging may be much less productive and generate far lower energy yields than farming but it is also much less risky. This is firstly because foragers tended to live well within the natural limits imposed by their environments rather than skate perpetually on its dangerous verges, and secondly because where subsistence farmers typically relied on one or two staple crops, foragers in even the bleakest environments relied on dozens of different food sources and so were usually able to adjust their diets to align with an ecosystem’s own dynamic responses to changing conditions.