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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

The farmer-forager distinction has an interesting parallel to the agriculturalist-pastoralist distinction that historians of the proto Indian-European world have previously drawn: "we must recall the cultural differences between the Indo-Iranian and the European branches of the Indo-European family. Of the two, the Europeans seem to have been much more agricultural, given the evidence of vocabulary, while the Indo-Iranians were more pastoral in their orientation. For all the Indo-Europeans, though, cattle were of crucial importance, furnishing a tremendous amount of the food supply and serving as the basic unit of wealth in the economy."-The Indo-European Myth of Creation, Bruce Lincoln, History of religions 1975.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Perhaps the distinction persists because it is rooted in our psychology. The forager is more id-oriented, and the farmer more superego-ish.

We revert to satisfying the id when we can get away with it.

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