"Sometimes unorthodox ideas are unorthodox for a reason. On today's episode of Good on Paper, I'm joined by Andrea Matranga, an economist whose recent paper 'The Ant and the Grasshopper: Seasonality and the Invention of Agriculture' argues that the Neolithic revolution happened as a result of climactic changes that necessitated storing food for the winter."
"Matranga rejects the idea that the past 12,000 years of human development were a mistake, one that underrates the threats of famine and starvation endemic to nomadic life."
"The argument largely rests on research that shows our nomadic forebears were healthier and had more leisure time than those who chose to farm... we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny."
"There's a sense in which theories of the Neolithic tend to mirror the political anxieties and the social anxieties of the time in which people came up with them and in which they found favor."
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