A bit of fun, perhaps, but more than a bit of seriousness as well. Look around you. How many hunter-gatherer groups do you see? Who do you think won that game, ultimately?
Within a relatively short biological timeframe, humanity had changed from universally a population of gatherer-hunters to near-universal farmers who were starting to build cities. HGs were more physically capable and overall healthier than the first farmers, but they were small bands, few in number, and were faced with a group which not only outnumbered them but suddenly had walls. They were also unused to challenges that they couldn't walk away from. Within a short few thousand years most of the usable land had been turned to farming, and the range open to HG bands was restricted to an area too small to sustain them, and without the necessary biodiversity to support their foraging. They were pushed out of their accustomed habitat and almost all began farming themselves. For the disadvantages of farming see Jared Diamond's article.
Further, settled villages appear during the rise of farming. This isn't so bad, but a settled lifestyle encourages population growth, which encourages large-scale agriculture, which encourages complex state-level societies, which tend to have oppressive class systems, stratified gender roles, intergroup competition, and even organized warfare, which is the topic. (Hah, I made this relevant.)
I think the situation you are thinking of may have occurred in isolated instances later on, such as the Hyksos people's momentary control of the Nile region. But on a geological scale, the agricultural revolution swept the world, in a relatively short period of time. It's still going on, in fact; there are very few HG populations left (the !Kung in Africa, for instance) and they're now being swept by industrialization.
My contention, although true to my tendencies I believe this only temporarily, until I am convinced otherwise, is that agriculture led to a competition for land and resources which was less of a problem when the world was sparsely populated by small mobile groups. State level society increased the problem, because people were now prone to accepting the authority of a ruling elite, and the ruling elite could order the underclasses to fight for them. So, according to my limited imagination, a hunter-gatherer society which developed writing and other advanced technologies without falling into the agriculture trap could have developed relatively peacefully-- provided they were in a sufficiently abundant environment and that the population remained low, which I think it would as long as a mobile strategy was favored over a settled one. |
