Jared Diamond has written an very interesting essay about what he calls humanity’s worst mistake, the Agricultural revolution. Jared Diamond is a very interesting psychologist. In his book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” he argues that environmental factors account for the differences in evolution of human societies. In particular that the widespread availability of plants suitable for domestication allowed Europe to support a larger population that led to “crowd” diseases (smallpox, typhus, measles) which they then developed resistances to. Technology advanced in civilizations with higher population densities because they could support the specialists necessary to develop technology. And so on.
In this most recent essay of his, he talks about how humanity was given a choice to stay limited in size or grow. We decided to grow, and thus greated social and gender inequalities and warfare. It is a good read. Check it out.