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What it argues
Christopher Ryan is the co-author of Sex at Dawn, a 2010 book that argued human beings are not naturally monogamous. Civilized to Death extends that project into a broader critique: the claim that civilization, understood as the complex of agriculture, hierarchy, sedentary settlement, and accumulation that has been the dominant form of human life for ten thousand years, has made people measurably unhappier and unhealthier than the forager existence it replaced.
Ryan's argument proceeds on two tracks. The first is anthropological and historical. Forager societies, the evidence suggests, had shorter average lifespans dominated by childhood mortality but long adult lifespans once you survived infancy; had diets that were diverse, nutritionally complete, and obtained in far fewer working hours than farming requires; lacked the chronic diseases — diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease — that characterize modern populations; and had social structures that were more egalitarian, more cooperative, and less violent than agricultural and industrial societies. Ryan is careful to distinguish "nasty, brutish, and short" mythology from what the actual evidence shows.
What it gets right
- 1.
Agriculture required substantially more work than foraging for a less nutritionally complete diet and greater vulnerability to famines from crop failure.
- 2.
Forager adults who survived childhood typically lived long lives — rates of degenerative disease, not violent death, distinguish modern from forager populations most sharply.
- 3.
Chronic diseases — type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity — are diseases of civilization, essentially absent from populations that don't eat processed carbohydrates and refined foods.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Christopher Ryan holds a PhD in psychology from Saybrook University and is the co-author, with Cacilda Jetha, of Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality (2010), which became an unexpected bestseller and sparked significant public debate about evolutionary psychology and human sexuality. Civilized to Death, published in 2019, extends the argument of Sex at Dawn into a broader critique of civilization and its costs. Ryan has also hosted a podcast called Tangentially Speaking and writes widely on psychology, evolution, and culture. He lives between the United States and Spain.
