Neanderthals, Bandits and Farmers: How Agriculture Really Began (Darwinism Today)

1 of the 1st 4 titles of a new series, provocative, controversial long essays by today's leading Darwinian thinkers. The Darwin seminars at the LSE have beome a crucial intellectual forum in recent years, attended by leading scientists, social scinetists, journalists, film makers, TV producers and writers as diverse as A.S.Byatt and Douglas Adams. Tapping into the most exciting intellectual revolution of our times, they have presented cutting edge Darwinian ideas from a series of eminent speakers , including the famous, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, to less well known researchers at the cutting edge of today's debates. The series, Darwinism today, consists of a seres of short books, each drawing on the content of 1 of the seminars abd written by many of the leading figures in the Darwinian revolution, writing both on evolutionary ideas and on the applications of these ideas to a wide range of human behaviour. Neanderthals, Bandits and farmers argues against the traditional view that agriculture began in the Middle East around 10,000 years ago. Colin Tudge goes back even further to a race of proto-farmers who may have ousted the hunter gathering Neanderthals. The traditional view is that hunter gathering is hard and that farming made life easier. Colin Tudge turns this notion on it's head.Farming is at least as hard, if not harder. In Genesis it is regarded as a necessary evil. So why did our ancestors make the change?