This is entirely true; but in my purely made up example—birds are transportable; they leave fertiliser as they go and probably improve the quality of the soil. Assuming a nomad repeats their path; they will eventually pass across previously visited places with edible plants growing where they have passed.
The model of try new crazy ideas that sound good and see if they fail can probably be compared to modern day “startups” (within reason). Where startups fail etc. Whereas feeding some birds can probably be compared to “minimum viable products”. No one farmer ever tried to domesticate lions in a day. But someone somewhere probably fed the pigeons the scraps.
But back to the question at hand—were they malnourished? Yes probably.
The model of try new crazy ideas that sound good and see if they fail can probably be compared to modern day “startups” (within reason).
There is a rather different cost of failure. And I’m not sure your actual point “that the early stages of agriculture are pretty easy to slip into” is valid—in particular if you separate agriculture (growing plants) and husbandry (having domestic animals). I think domesticating animals—in particular, hunting companions (dogs) and pack animals—came before agriculture proper. Domesticating animals is easy to “slip into”, committing to planting a field and waiting for the harvest—not so much.
well; the risks of failing at a startup really hinge on how much you put on the line. Similarly if you sit on your ass hoping a field will grow you are probably putting too much on the line.
I suspect we are talking about different definitions of the parts of agriculture. I can confidently say that if some idiot tried to plant an entire field at once from scratch—they deserved to get what was coming to them.
Just like if I decided to try to run a startup with too bold goals and no profit turning opportunity till its fully established; I would expect people to give me wild looks from time to time, and chance of failures to be high.
dogs probably came before husbandry which probably came before monoculture. But planting a few seeds here and there probably happened concurrently to husbandry. With viability of some plants there would have been growth; with growth—more opportunity for mass-farming… etc—till today.
This is entirely true; but in my purely made up example—birds are transportable; they leave fertiliser as they go and probably improve the quality of the soil. Assuming a nomad repeats their path; they will eventually pass across previously visited places with edible plants growing where they have passed.
The model of try new crazy ideas that sound good and see if they fail can probably be compared to modern day “startups” (within reason). Where startups fail etc. Whereas feeding some birds can probably be compared to “minimum viable products”. No one farmer ever tried to domesticate lions in a day. But someone somewhere probably fed the pigeons the scraps.
But back to the question at hand—were they malnourished? Yes probably.
There is a rather different cost of failure. And I’m not sure your actual point “that the early stages of agriculture are pretty easy to slip into” is valid—in particular if you separate agriculture (growing plants) and husbandry (having domestic animals). I think domesticating animals—in particular, hunting companions (dogs) and pack animals—came before agriculture proper. Domesticating animals is easy to “slip into”, committing to planting a field and waiting for the harvest—not so much.
well; the risks of failing at a startup really hinge on how much you put on the line. Similarly if you sit on your ass hoping a field will grow you are probably putting too much on the line.
I suspect we are talking about different definitions of the parts of agriculture. I can confidently say that if some idiot tried to plant an entire field at once from scratch—they deserved to get what was coming to them.
Just like if I decided to try to run a startup with too bold goals and no profit turning opportunity till its fully established; I would expect people to give me wild looks from time to time, and chance of failures to be high.
dogs probably came before husbandry which probably came before monoculture. But planting a few seeds here and there probably happened concurrently to husbandry. With viability of some plants there would have been growth; with growth—more opportunity for mass-farming… etc—till today.
I am not sure that we disagree much.
History of agriculture is not a new topic of inquiry :-)
briefly; many models—we don’t know how it all started. Neat!