Based on my reading of “An Edible History of Humankind” by Tom Standage, I learned many things: Food has become technology due to human intervention, hunter-gatherers having far more advantages than farmers themselves, the impact of plant and animal domestication on certain parts of the world, and much more. Right at the beginning of the reading, it was explained how in ancient times humans would domesticate three particular crops (wheat, corn, and rice) in order to produce an abundant amount of them in a shorter period of time. Although this seems like a huge gain for humans, it was still a horrible process for crops because, due to complex but deleterious processes, crops got to a point where they could no longer grow without human intervention. Likewise, such processes later introduced agriculture. However, according to Standage, the adoption of "agriculture" was the "worst mistake" in the "history" of the "human race." Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original EssayThis statement was made because the domestication of plants and animals caused more harm than good. As a result, hunter-gatherers were recruited. In ancient times, we can think of hunter-gatherers as a specific group of people who had difficulty maintaining a sufficient food supply compared to farmers. When in fact this wasn't true at all, simply because hunter-gatherers moved to where their food would go, meaning that whenever a food source in a particular location ran out, they were moving to another place where there was an abundant supply of any food. they were looking at that time. Farmers preferred to stay in one place and plant the crops they believed would provide a sufficient quantity for their population. However, farmers were at a disadvantage as they were exposed to diseases such as anemia, malaria and tuberculosis. More importantly, this only happened because agriculture resulted in an unbalanced diet with less variation than that of hunter-gatherers. Considering these two particular groups, it was later argued that the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture was actually more of a gradual change than an instantaneous one. That being said, Standage also clarified how the shift to “adoption of agriculture” began with hunter-gatherers. Within the hunting and gathering society, there were rules to avoid "overexploitation", attempts to create "obligation" and to avoid everyone feeling like they had a higher status than others. Hunter-gatherers would share all weapons and food between their groups (bands) to prevent any one group from feeling like they had achieved superiority. Considering these points, hunter-gatherers did not have the “perfect lifestyle”; to control their population, they sometimes had to resort to infanticide, which caused "vast conflict" and cannibalism. Eventually, hunter-gatherers began to settle in permanent residences, that is, villages, and some villages were smaller than others. Villages that were larger generally meant that they owned more "prestige objects", which then introduced societal appropriation of private property. Then, as the appropriation of private property was brought about, some villages became more.