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

by James Suzman

Second, he put his finger on one of the main reasons that people in agricultural societies had to work so hard. Malthus believed that the reason peasants bred so enthusiastically is because of raw uncontrolled lust. But there is another, more important reason too. Farmers were all too aware of the correspondence between how hard they worked and how well they might eat over the course of a year. There were many variables that they couldn’t control when it came to making sure they took in an adequate harvest and the health of their livestock—like droughts, floods, and disease—but there were many variables that they could manage. There were also things they could do to limit the impact of big, near-existential risks, and all of these involved work. The problem was that there was rarely labor to spare, and for most farmers the only obvious solution to this problem was to procreate. But in doing so they stumbled into one of Malthus’s snares. For each new laborer they gave birth to was not only an additional mouth to feed, but after a point resulted in a noticeable decline in food yields per person. This left farmers with few options: go hungry, take land from a neighbor, or expand into virgin territory. The history of agriculture’s rapid spread through Asia, Europe, and Africa shows that in many instances they chose the last.