Ian Morris - Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve

Figure 1.2.The water bearers: Kenyan women collecting
water at a stream

Figure 1.3.Secular-rational values and nonagricultural
wealth

Figure 1.4.Composite World Values Survey scores
and economic development

Figure 2.1.Locations and social groups mentioned
in chapter 2

Figure 3.2.Locations and social groups mentioned
in chapter 3

Figure 3.4.The exponential growth of European population
between 8000 BC and 2000 BC

Figure 4.2.Locations and social groups mentioned
in chapter 4

Figure 5.2.Locations and social groups mentioned
in chapter 5

Figure 5.3.Distribution of potentially domesticable
wild plants with seeds weighing at least
10 milligrams

Figure 5.4.Distribution of potentially domesticable
mammals weighing over a hundred pounds

Figure 5.6.The scale of major political units in Eurasia,
3000 BCAD 117

Figure 5.7.Eastern and Western energy capture per person
per day and the hard ceiling limiting agrarian
development, 1300 BCAD 1700

Figure 5.8.Trends in average real wages in selected
European cities and Beijing, AD 13501800

Figure 10.1.Locations and social groups mentioned
in chapter 10

Table 10.1. Yuval Noah Hararis comparison of ancient
and modern Athenian women

Figure 10.2.World peak energy capture,
14,000 BC to AD 2000

No author ever works alone, and this book would never have become a reality without the participation of a lot of people. First came Princetons University Center for Human Values, whose members kindly invited me to deliver the Tanner Lectures in November 2012. Before I even drafted the presentations, my Stanford colleague (and former member of the Princeton Center) Josh Ober talked me through the issues over several evenings of margaritas in Los Cabos. Once I arrived in Princeton, Erin Graham took wonderful care of me, while the audiences who came to the talks, the members of the Center for Human Values, and above all the respondentsMargaret Atwood, Christine M. Korsgaard, Richard Seaford, and Jonathan D. Spencechallenged me with all kinds of interesting questions. I did most of the work of expanding the two lectures into the first five chapters of this book during the 201314 academic year with the kind support of the Hoover Institution (where I held a Campbell National Fellowship) and the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. As I was writing, Sam Bowles, Giovanna Ceserani, Meiyu Hsieh, Steve LeBlanc, Paolo Malanima, and Rob Tempio guided me to readings that I never would have found for myself, and my arguments were sharpened greatly by conversations with Steve Haber and Richard Wrangham and by presenting a revised version of the arguments to members of al Quds University and the Albright Institute at the cole Biblique in Jerusalem. Once the chapters were drafted, Phil Kleinheinz, Josh Ober, Kathy St. John, Walter Scheidel, Paul Seabright, Ken Wardle, two anonymous readers for the Princeton University Press, and my editors Rob Tempio and Steve Macedo read the manuscript and gave me invaluable feedback. Michele Angel drew the marvelous maps, and Sandy Dijkstra, Elise Capron, Andrea Cavallaro, and Thao Le at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency and Rob Tempio, Terri OPrey, and Jennifer Harris at the Princeton University Press kindly and patiently kept everything moving forward on the many occasions that my attention wandered. I owe a great debt of gratitude to them all, but particularly to Kathy St. John and the animals, who taught me whatever I know about human values.