Put Another Way, The Chimpanzees' Closest Relative

Although Native Africans Domesticated Some Plants In The Sahel And In Ethiopia And In Tropical West Africa, They Acquired Valuable Domestic Animals Only Later, From The North.

The United States Has Long Thought Of Itself As The Land Of Infinite Plenty, And Historically We Did Have Abundant Resources. But Now We Are Gradually Exhausting Our Fisheries, Our Topsoil, Our Water. On Top Of That, We're Coming To The End Of World Resources.

Twelve Thousand Years Ago, Everybody On Earth Was A Hunter-gatherer; Now Almost All Of Us Are Farmers Or Else Are Fed By Farmers. The Spread Of Farming From Those Few Sites Of Origin Usually Did Not Occur As A Result Of The Hunter-gatherers' Elsewhere Adopting Farming; Hunter-gatherers Tend To Be Conservative.... Instead, Farming Spread Mainly Through Farmers' Outbreeding Hunters, Developing More Potent Technology, And Then Killing The Hunters Or Driving Them Off Of All Lands Suitable For Agriculture.

The Rate Of Human Invention Is Faster, And The Rate Of Cultural Loss Is Slower, In Areas Occupied By Many Competing Societies With Many Individuals And In Contact With Societies Elsewhere.

Not Until The Beginning Of The 20th Century Did Europe's Urban Populations Finally Become Self-sustaining: Before Then, Constant Immigration Of Healthy Peasants From The Countryside Was Necessary To Make Up For The Constant Deaths Of City Dwellers From Crowd Diseases.