First a few tucked-away bits of hidden dirt where seeds, usually trash, are planted. It’s nicer than hunting all over the forest for food, so they expand them. Eventually they get big enough to be found by enemies, but then they’re big enough to be worth defending. Plus, you gonna let the next tribe over insult you like that? If, around this time, the population has grown some, they’ll get lassoed by the fields.

That doesn’t sound right to me.

Clark says in Farewell To Alms that the Industrial Revolution was unique because productivity gains were turned into higher living standards for the common man, rather than just being used to produce more people. Productivity growth outstripped population growth for the first time.

Industrial Revolution workers benefited in the sense that they chose to move to the cities, Highland clearances notwithstanding. The Highland clearances might be an example of a genuine directed plan to force people into the cities, but this is likely unnecessary, because poor people still flock to the cities in poor countries (and indeed in rich ones).

However, I don’t think increased power or wealth for rulers explains the switch from hunter-gathering to agriculture. That would require that the switch be directed from the top, but in reality it wasn’t.

The reason for the switch is more likely that

1. sedentry peoples can exclude roving peoples from the land, thus forcing roving peoples to extinction. Roving Red Indians can’t hunt wild buffalo if there aren’t any wild buffalo left because the land has all been turned into farms.

2. agriculture is more productive. This productivity gets turned into more people instead of higher living standards.

For both reasons, sedentry agriculture Darwinianly outcompetes roving hunter-gatherers.