How farming shaped the world

Why are some countries so much richer than others?
The traditional view, dating back to Adam Smith (d.1790), is that farming brought about food surplus, which in turn allowed hierarchies to develop and led to the establishment of large civilisations. Omer Moav describes exciting new findings that tell a very different story.
Read the research:
Joram Mayshar, Omer Moav, and Luigi Pascali (2022). The Origin of the State: Land Productivity or Appropriability? Journal of Political Economy (130:4). www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi...

[@AintNoFossil]

Very insightful. Appreciate the hardwork. 👏

[@user-cj4tb1xt9g]

I'm from a course teaching how evolutionary ecology shaped human behaviour, this is an insightful video.

[@davidrowland6]

From their paper (Mayshar, Moav and Pascali, 2022):

[@jamieevans3666]

so taxation effectively increases infant mortality rates?

[@drphilosia]

Interesting conjectures & the paper suffers from a Mesopotamian-cradle bias.

[@davidrowland6]

Seems a little complacent. There are many plausible explanations for the correlation between cereal-oligoculture societies and complex society formation - e.g. nutrition. In the West for decades, most children are taught that "breakfast" is the most important meal of the day - and that breakfast is typically cereal (fortified with vitamins like folic acid) with milk(which also provides nutrients which promote healthy development). As historically and currently complex states are well-integrated into the global economy (e.g. China, Taiwan, U.S., European and MENA) these countries have access to a great diversity of crop types. It's telling that most children across these developing and developed nations do not start the day with a yam or sweet potato, but instead with dairy products and cereals (e.g. eggs with toast, "cereals" with milk)