Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind · chapter 5 · id sapiens-c5-01-the-agricultural-revolution-wa
“The Agricultural Revolution was 'history's biggest fraud' -- farming made individual life worse for most humans compared to hunter-gatherer existence.”
TRUE, BUTconfidence: medium⚠ extracted by pipeline, re-audit pending
Receipts
Larsen (1995), Annual Review of Anthropology 24:185-213DOI registry: valid
Biological changes in human populations with agriculture include declining stature, increased dental caries, increased porotic hyperostosis, and increased infectious disease markers at the farming transition.
Mummert et al. (2011), Economics & Human Biology 9(3):284-301DOI registry: valid
Meta-analysis of 54 studies found stature declined at the agricultural transition in most but not all regions. Some regions showed no change or slight increase. The pattern is general but not universal.
Bocquet-Appel (2011), Science 333:560-561DOI registry: valid
The Neolithic Demographic Transition -- a burst of fertility at the farming transition -- shows population grew rapidly, suggesting some advantage even if per-capita health declined.
This claim is a stable, citable object. If you can falsify a verdict, tell us. Corrections are loud here.