alt Hacker News> 10,000 years old, since agriculture made migratory hunter-gatherer societies obsolete.
This isn't really how the transition to agriculture worked. Historically agricultural elites captured lands with conscripted armies and forced people to farm. There are plenty of examples where central authority collapsed and the archeological evidence shows us that people largely stopped farming.
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When archaeological evidence shows that people largely stopped farming, it usually means that those people largely stopped existing. Or at least living in that area. Apart from a few rare exceptions, agriculture is the only viable way to support substantial populations.
Farming came first, and with it came larger communities and higher population density. That led to surplus, which enabled elites and other forms of existence beyond basic subsistence. And that lifestyle mostly spread organically. Not because the agricultural elites didn't try to conquer hunter-gatherer societies, but because there were so few hunter-gatherers to conquer. Conquered lands were mostly farmed by descendants of farmers from neighboring regions, because they formed the majority of the population.
This seems reasonable without negating the previous comment.
With no army to protect the farm, there can be no farm. A return to hunting and gathering would occur as an effect of warfare, regardless of whether or not the farmers have any choice. But hunting and gathering is still obsolete, whereupon agriculture is possible.
Obsolescence does not by definition imply permanence.
I’m not sure you’re disagreeing with me: Those who owned the land and didn’t have to migrate / soldier around or work someone else’s land to survive were doing well for themselves!