Kyle Harper

So I'm not going to be critical of that movie.

Like it plays very loose with the facts of high politics around Commodus and the creation of this character.

But who cares?

I mean, Russell Crowe is incredible.

On slavery in particular.

I mean, I think actually that's one of the strong suits of the movie is you see this like completely exploitative system that brings people from very different parts of the world who –

Have very different backgrounds.

And then the system of like urban spectacle is very real.

And the use of slave labor in that is certainly a part of it.

So the movie actually gets like some really important things about that right.

And that makes it totally forgivable that it has to create a kind of high politics storyline.

Yeah.

They emerge in Africa.

And disperse, multiply.

But we spend 90, 95 percent of our history as foragers.

So people who are hunter-gatherers who take energy from wild food sources rather than sedentary farmers who have domesticated plants and animals and live a sedentary lifestyle where you –

You're enslaved to this wheat or rice, but it gives you reliable calories.

That is, along with the Industrial Revolution and then whatever this thing we're about to go through, that is the biggest change in the history of our species other than those others.

OK.

So the shift from foraging to farming, it affected everything.