A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
I know it’s a joke but this is science memes and it plays into a widespread misconception about early humans that we were some kind of blood drenched carnivores. Not true. Humans have always mostly eaten plants supplemented with some meat or other animal foods.
Also it's not like "getting food is easier" is the only hypothesis out there as to why we settled down. Another one, IMO much more in line with human nature, is that we figured out how to ferment beer and for that reason planted buttloads of grain.
Since there’s no written record, it’s hard to know for sure but I believe it was because agricultural communities were able to reproduce much faster and live at much higher densities, so they tended to win conflicts and displace societies based on foraging—even though foragers had better quality of life and didn’t normally experience the food shortages people imagine.
That said, modern foraging societies have largely converted to agriculture after being subjugated and not because they were hungry. So there is some evidence to support this hypothesis.
Also the foraging people might end up living on the periphery of a settlement, foraging and then trading what they foraged with the settlement to make thier lives easier.
The loss of roaming territory to the sedentary oppressors might also have something to do with the transition.
Right, that’s what I mean. Agricultural societies were likely better organized and more populous and so better able to defend and expel rivals from their lands. Foragers were forced into increasingly marginal lands over time, and all forager societies today exist on land that is essentially unsuited for agriculture, which is the only reason they have survived to this day.
I don't know how suitable this is, but I instantly thought of it as sort of comparable to bacteria in the wild, compared to the same bacteria moved to a sterile environment and being fed growth medium. The latter can grow to vastly larger quantities in a comparable area, maybe even in a giant vat. But if there's enough of a problem with the single source of growth medium, some kind of contamination or just no more supply, the whole colony dies. It's a more successful colony, but in a potentially far less stable state unless the conditions can continue to be kept that good.
It depends so much on location and period, as an example, the Inuit diet consisted of a lot of meat whole the Kaurna in Australia ate lots of yams.
Yeah you’re right, I probably stated it over-broadly. I’m more talking about the typical prehistoric human diet but there were exceptions.
Eat grass.
You ever think about how corn is just really tall grass.
Banana is Grass.
Wheat, rice, barley, rye, corn, millet... Even bamboo is grass!
Well done grass. You really won this round.
We thought we were the ones domesticating grass when we invented agriculture, but the grass isn't the one that changed how it lives
Upvote because the thought of rolling fields of bananas made me happy.
I don't know if you knew this but the banana tree isn't a tree, but actually some kind of giant grass. So a field of bananas trees is technically a field of grass.
No. While corn truly is in the Poaceae, bananas are in the Musaceae. They are not even in the Poales! They are in fact more closely related to ginger and bird of paradise plants (all in the Zingiberales).
Gimmie a couple more stomach chambers and I will.
I can hear this meme 😂
The best kind of meme
Might need to rewatch her stuff. So funny
She is hilarious. Her charachter is amazing in Motherland (Netflix)
Last I heard this was because of overpopulation, making hunting more difficult.
Okay but this is incorrect. Agriculture isn't "eating plants" its cultivating plants.
Cunk on Earth and Cunk in Britain are parody shows. Everything she says in incorrect.
Does she ever admit that? Because that would cause a paradox
Are you saying that plants can run away?
Yes, and it's very frustrating. People don't realize how difficult the life of a produce farmer is. There's a reason we tie all the produce into the ground. Potatoes used to be a fucking nightmare before we started doing it the new way, burying them in dirt.
Do you have any idea how high a potato jumps if given the chance?
Yes
yea but on the other hand this is clearly from a comedy skit so not sure this is worth the exercise in pedantry.
Now just hang on a minute, this is the internet after all! How dare you have a sane and rational take on the situation!?
I demand to be called the spurn of a worthless whore ...or something!