Hopi shrines near the East Mesa, Arizona

How do you actually show that lives of people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting for farming? Until recently, archaeologists could not test this question directly. Instead, they had to resort to indirect tests, whose results (surprisingly) failed to support the view of agriculture as an unmixed blessing. Here is one example of such an indirect test. If agriculture had been visibly such a great idea, you would expect it to have spread quickly, once it arose in some source area. In fact, the archaeqlogical record shows that agriculture advanced across Europe at literally a snail's pace: barely 1,000 yards per year! From its origins in the Near East around 8000 BC, agriculture crept north-westwards to reach Greece around 6000 BC and Britain and Scandinavia only 2,500 years later. That is hardly what you can call a wave of enthusiasm. As recently as the Nineteenth Century, all the Indians of California, now the fruit-basket of America, remained hunter-gatherers, even though they knew of agriculture through trade with farming Indians in Arizona ...»