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Old 08-20-2012, 10:37 PM   #81 (permalink)
jamesqf
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Quote:
Originally Posted by IamIan View Post
#1>
How far would the innovation you refer to have gotten without Agriculture as a base under it? ... a small band of hunter gather warlike people conquering and enslaving others ... such 'organization' would have greatly struggled to get larger than a hundred people ... compared to billions today thanks to agriculture.
I think you missed my point, which was that large-scale agriculture quite likely wouldn't ever have existed without the social & military organization needed to force people to spend their lives laboring in the fields, and thus that organization is more of a major innovation than agriculture itself. How many people would choose to spend their lives doing field work, when they could get all they needed from hunting & gathering?

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