Kyle Harper

But there is this idea that the transition from foraging to farming – I mean Jared Diamond called it humanity's biggest mistake.

And the –

And certainly these changes entailed some things that were not positive net for humanity.

And one of them is that it definitely increased the infectious disease burden.

So simply as our population multiplies and as we're in contact with feces and as we're sharing the air through which respiratory pathogens can spread, diseases are constantly increasing.

trying to take advantage of this.

That's just how nature works.

Energy is scarce.

Everybody is trying to steal it from everybody else, including microbial parasites.

And so the disease burden of humans over time definitely increases.

And the burden of infectious disease on humans goes up over time.

So very broadly across these thousands and thousands of

The diseases that are suffered by, say, people by the time of the Roman Empire are absolutely much worse than what had been, you know, the case in Stone Age times.

I mean, I would...

First thing, say – like it's important.

I think you were starting to get at this, that there's never like a generation of humans that has the opportunity to make this choice once and for all.

Like should we stay like hunting mammoths or should we become sedentary farmers with like –

basically torturous dentistry and die by diarrhea.

Like this happens over thousands of years through an evolutionary process where nobody can – it's a story of unintended consequences, right?

I mean the mammoth are gone because – partly because we killed them all.