Does the origin of agriculture explain global inequality today?
Yes, but it is only one step in the full explanation
One of the most interesting fields of academic inquiry seeks to explain current inequalities between nations and ethnic groups using “deep history.” By deep history, I mean history that goes back many centuries or millennia.
Pioneers in this field include Stelios Michalopoulos, Ian Morris, Louis Putterman, David N. Weil, Diego Comin, William Easterly, Charles Jones, Ross Levine, Erick Gong, Enrico Spolaore, Roman Wacziarg, Ola Olsson, Marcella Alsan and Douglass Hibbs.
If you are interested in this field, I would recommend reading these summaries from my library of online book summaries. Today I will try to build on some of their current theories.
See also my other articles on deep history:
Why are there such huge variations in income across the globe?
Commercial societies (which invented modern progress)
You might also be interested in reading my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
Head start theory
The “Head Start” theory (an informal name that I am giving it) is one of the most widely acknowledged theories of how deep history affects modern economic history. Those who embrace the Head Start theory believe that different levels of current economic development are determined by how much time has elapsed since that society:
developed agriculture or
formed a state (i.e. government)
The two factors roughly coincide so it does not matter so much which variable you choose.
In other words, societies that first invented agriculture and/or a state were:
the first to industrialize and
currently have the highest material standard of living and
currently have the highest rankings in development metrics.
On the other hand, societies that were late to embrace agriculture and/or a state industrialized much later have a lower standard of living today. Note that some researchers point to the widespread use of plows (which created Agrarian societies) as the critical turning point rather than the invention of agriculture.
The logic of the Head Start theory is that it takes time to move from an agricultural society to an industrial society, so it makes sense that some societies have had a head start over competing societies. While there is clearly some truth to this theory, I think it misses the mark as a full explanation.
On the face of it, the Head Start theory makes a lot of sense. There is quite a bit of evidence that societies tend to invent the same technologies in roughly the same order. The societies do so at different times and at different rates, but the order is roughly the same. Anyone who has ever played the video game, Civilization, will get this concept immediately.
If you are skeptical, Ian Morris makes an excellent case in Why the West Rules – for Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future. Or you can read my summary of his book.
So if societies innovate in the same order, it makes sense that the societies that started first had a Head Start over all the others. This is particularly true when you add on that those regions that adopted agriculture grew to much larger populations and had much larger cities where innovation typically takes place.
So the Head Start theory is plausible, but does it hold up to the evidence?
The goal
What we are looking for is a causal variable that can explain the variation between regions based on the following:
Order of the year that a nation industrialized
Per capita GDP (PPP) in 2024.
Relative order in the following development matrix: economic growth, human development, freedom, slavery, poverty, agricultural production, literacy, diet, famines, sanitation, drinking water, life expectancy, neonatal mortality, disease, education, access to electricity, housing, and violence (to name just a few), and in virtually every nation. And there are plenty more in my first book.
None of these metrics is a perfect approximation of economic development, but taken together they are close enough.
Below are the rankings of former-Agrarian societies based upon the number of years since Agricultural Transition (i.e. when the region first adopted agriculture):
Middle East (first region to adopt agriculture)
East Asia
Central Asia
Mediterranean Europe
Caucasus
Balkans Europe
South Asia
Northwest Europe
Central Europe
Southeast Asia
Scandinavia
etc
If the theory were true, the Middle East, which developed agriculture first, should be the most developed region in the world. Instead, over the last two hundred years, the Middle East has been a laggard in comparison to the rest of Eurasia. In addition, East Asia should be far more developed than Europe, when East Asia is actually just starting to catch up to Europe.
On the European continent, the actual rankings also greatly differ from the theory’s predictions. While Northwest Europe and Scandinavia are the most developed regions on the Continent, they were actually the last to adopt agriculture. And the Balkans should be the most developed region within Europe, when it is actually the least developed.
While it is very clear that societies that previously developed plow-based agriculture are far more developed today than other societies, the reason is not the passage of time. If one looks exclusively at former-Agrarian societies, the rankings are way off.
But what about the USA and other settler nations?
Just as important, North America, which is the most developed continent in the world, ranks far down on the list of countries based on the timing of their development of agriculture. The same, to a lesser extent, is true for southern South America and Oceania.
How can we account for the relative “richness of these regions?”
If, as Louis Putterman suggests, we use the date when the ancestors who inhabited the region developed agriculture, then the theory can account for those regions. The settlers of North America, who largely came from Northwest Europe, developed agriculture far earlier than the indigenous peoples of North America. The same is true for the settlers of the southern cone of South America, who are largely descendants of settlers from Mediterranean Europe. The same goes for Australia and New Zealand.
Now let’s look at the rankings based upon years since ancestors transitioned from Agriculture, taking into account global migrations (bold italics text denotes nations that changed ranking from the previous list).
Middle East
East Asia
Central Asia
Mediterranean Europe, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile
Caucasus
Balkans Europe
South Asia
Northwest Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand
Central Europe
Southeast Asia
Scandinavia
Etc
Note that nations in North America, South America, and Oceania that were settled by large numbers of Europeans shoot up the list compared to our first list. This fits actual history.
European settlers brought their genes, crops, domesticated animals, culture, technologies, and organizations with them. This accounts for their high levels of development today in North America, South America, and Oceania. European settlers terraformed the region by leveraging all the advantages of their ancestors’ Head Start on agriculture.
But what about Northwest Europe?
Where the Head Start theory runs into serious problems, however, is in Northwest Europe, and to a lesser extent the rest of Europe. Northwest Europe did not develop agriculture until thousands of years after the Middle East, Central Asia, and East Asia, but the region still has far higher levels of development (at least until very recently).
So while the Head Start theory clearly has some merit, I think that it misses the mark in many crucial regions, particularly Northwest Europe and the Middle East. Northwest Europe has been a pioneer in economic development at least since 1800 and possibly since 1200. But on the list of regions to develop agriculture and states, Northwest Europe was a laggard. Meanwhile, the Middle East was a pioneer in both but is an economic laggard today. And within Europe, the Balkans and Central Europe were early adopters of agriculture but today are laggards in economic development compared to the rest of Europe.
Can we modify the Head Start theory in a way that accounts for these discrepancies? I believe so, yes. We can do so by applying the concept of society type. Society type is a category of society based on how a society produces the majority of its food calories.
The graphic below roughly shows how:
the order in which society types evolved
the biomes within which they evolve (essentially the dominant vegetation in any one geographical area; see a previous post explaining this concept).
the key Enabling technologies that needed to evolve to create such a society type; these technologies typically are related to food and energy).
I believe that a far better predictor of the current level of development is the complexity of the society type of those people’s ancestors in 1500. Or to be more accurate the dominant society type for the region in that year. I chose the year 1500 because it is the last year before there were significant amounts of European migration to other continents.
Since there have been roughly 26 generations to have lived in a specific society (or one that is more complex) since 1500, this gives a significant amount of time for human genes, culture, skills, and social organization to adapt to life with that society type. The different pathways of adaptation during that time period better prepared some people for success in the modern economy than others. This roughly corresponds to the society type of their genetic ancestors.
Below are the updated rankings based upon society type of ancestors in 1500:
Commercial societies in 1500:
Netherlands, Belgium, Northern Italy, Rhineland Germany
England
USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (based on ancestry from England)
Free Peasant societies in 1500:
Scandinavia
Switzerland
Agrarian societies in 1500 (i.e. they adopted widespread use of animal-driven iron plows):
Remainder of Europe
China, Korea, and Japan
India
River deltas of Southeast Asia
Middle East
Horticultural societies in 1500 (i.e. they adopted agriculture but used hand tools rather than widespread use of animal-driven iron plows):
Meso-America (Mexico and northern Central America)
Andes
Tropical Forests of:
Highlands and Tropical Southeast Asia
Amazonia
Central America
Caribbean
African Sahel
Herding societies in 1500:
Central Asia
African Savanna
Hunter-Gatherer and Fishing societies in 1500:
Isolated regions throughout the world (no economic data).
The list above correspond much more closely to the our metrics than previous lists:
Order of the year that a nation industrialized
Per capita GDP (PPP) in 2024.
Relative order in the following development matrix: economic growth, human development, freedom, slavery, poverty, agricultural production, literacy, diet, famines, sanitation, drinking water, life expectancy, neonatal mortality, disease, education, access to electricity, housing, and violence (to name just a few), and in virtually every nation. And there are plenty more in my book.
So while the origins of agriculture clearly do give us some insight into why a nation is rich today and when it industrialized, the society type of their genetic ancestors is far more useful.
Is this proof?
No.
As a former professor in social science, I am well aware that a rough correspondence between the two lists is far from proof. A serious quantitative study is necessary; preferably, many of them. Unfortunately, I do have have access to the quantitative databases available to researchers, and quantitative calculations are not my strong suit.
My hope is that other researchers who have access to quantitative databases and have expertise in quantitative calculations can test my hypothesis. In particular, we need to add a new variable in the existing database that measures the society type of genetic ancestors in 1500. Other researchers will likely need to research the current historical literature so that all regions have the updated data.
While I do not believe that this new variable will answer all the existing questions, I am confident that it will improve our understanding of how deep history has influenced modern economic history.
See also my other articles on deep history:
Why are there such huge variations in income across the globe?
Commercial societies (which invented modern progress)
You might also be interested in reading my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
I guess one way to understand the Head Start theory is to consider that Europe and Middle East are part of the same ensemble as they have benefited from the same domesticable cereals and draught animals ? With Northern Europe having a temperate ecological environment that might have proved much less fragile over the long term.
Then on the matter of the Industrial Revolution occurring in England rather than anywhere else, I remember reading this article I found quite insightful : https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/ Especially regarding the fact that it did need many more preconditions than one might think.