Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

crop failure. Throughout history, our growing numbers kept pace with
agricultural production. Good harvests tended to set population size, making
a squeeze inevitable during bad years. Until relatively recently in the
agricultural age, this combination kept whole societies on the verge of
starvation.
For over 99 percent of the last two million years, our ancestors lived off
the land in small, mobile groups. While certain foods were likely to be in
short supply at times, it appears that some food was available virtually all
the time. Typically, hunting and gathering societies considered food to
belong to all, readily shared what they had, and did not store or hoard—
egalitarian behavior indicating that shortages were rare. If more food was
needed, more was found. There was plenty of time to look. Anthropologists
generally contend that most hunting and gathering societies had relatively
large amounts of leisure time, a problem few of us are plagued with
today.
Farming’s limitation to floodplains established an annual rhythm to
early agricultural civilizations. A poor harvest meant death for many and
hunger for most. Though most of us in developed countries are no longer
as directly dependent on good weather, we are still vulnerable to the slowly
accumulating effects of soil degradation that set the stage for the decline of
once-great societies as populations grew to exceed the productive capacity
of floodplains and agriculture spread to the surrounding slopes, initiating
cycles of soil mining that undermined civilization after civilization.
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