Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels

Outline

Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels (2015) argues that the way societies capture energy shapes their values. Ian Morris traces human history through three great eras, hunting and gathering, farming, and the age of fossil fuels, and shows how each produced different attitudes toward violence, inequality, and gender. The book, based on his Tanner Lectures, includes responses from other scholars and asks what values the future may bring.

• The way a society captures energy shapes its values, according to Ian Morris.
• Human history can be read through three eras: hunting and gathering, farming, and fossil fuels.
• Each energy era produced different attitudes toward violence, inequality, and gender.
• The book grows out of Morris's Tanner Lectures and includes responses from other scholars.
• It also asks what values the future may bring.

Ian Morris is a British historian and archaeologist and a professor of classics and history at Stanford University. He is known for big-picture books that explain long-term patterns in human history. His works include Why the West Rules—For Now, War! What Is It Good For?, and Geography Is Destiny.