Nick Szabo  🔑

Applying the Sprengel/Liebig principle of the minimum to human food production & nutrition, a society can be protein-rich, and thus limited by its carbohydrate & fat intake (i.e. calorie-limited), or it can be rich in carbohydrates or fats, thus limited by its protein intake. /2

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors had poor social scalability because they were roving bandits, frequently at war with each other. Their typical diets, compared to ours, were heavier in meat, & thus more limited in energy (carbohydrates & fats) and less limited in proteins. /3

Stationary agriculture was carbohydrate heavy -- abundant in energy but relatively scarce in protein. Permanent food sources enabled stationary bandits, an innovation that allowed social scaling to far greater population sizes and densities than roving banditry. /4

The downside to stationary agriculture: the protein-limited grain diets of typical farmers were unnatural & poor compared to the protein-rich diets of their hunter-gatherer forebears. Genetic adaptation was only partial. /5

Alongside the stationary carbohydrate-rich (and thus protein-limited) cultures were the nomadic protein-rich cultures, far more limited in social scale, except when, as with Mongols, Arabs, etc. they conquered & led the social scaling institutions of stationary societies. /6

All Civilisations with their innovations and drive have emerged and prospered while being grain fed, from rice to wheat to barley to maize. Complex systems (the changes within the genomics of hosts, commensal microbiota, endemic pathogens) cannot be simplified down to 2 lines