Agriculture Was a Trap for Individuals

Agriculture was a huge step forward for the collective (enabling cities and empires) but a trap for the average individual: peasants worked harder at bodily and mentally tougher tasks, ate a more monotonous and nutrient-poor diet, suffered more infectious diseases from domesticated animals and unhygienic villages, and lived under steep new social hierarchies of exploitation—making the average peasant's life worse than that of earlier hunter-gatherers.