Whereas hunter-gatherers had a child roughly every four years, women in early agricultural societies gave birth on average every two years.[22] A recent study of the Palanan Agta people in the Philippines demonstrates that, even in the twenty-first century, nomadic hunter-gatherer women have markedly fewer children than those who have adopted sedentary agriculture.[23] Farming allows women’s bodies to recover faster from the strain of childrearing because they get to eat calorie-rich cereals and dairy products rather than low-calorie game, seafood and plants, and expend much less energy on
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