I heard this point of view from a history prof I highly regard.
His points, in short:
The hunter-gatherer lifestyle was much healthier for human, based on all kinds of nutrition elements, which was better suited to us. Basing nutrition on one type of grain have led to health and dietary problems.
The hunter-gatherer lifestyle was better suited for us and to our emotional structure. According to assumptions, we had (as a specie) richer and happier life in general.
Working in the fields took a much bigger toll on our body, extended the working hours and the energy expenditure. Our body wasn't built to work in the fields, findings from this era apparently reveal many more skeletons damages post the agricultural revolution than pre.
We became much more violent after the agricultural revolution. The reason is that in the pre-revolution, weak tribes would just migrate in case it was too 'hot' or dangerous for them to stay at the same place, or in case conflicts escalated beyond control. Sapiens didn't own a land "officially" or was depended on it, and could migrate rather easily. Post revolution humans were forced to defend their lands, who became the main source of their food. Apparently 15% of all human and 25% of the men deaths in this era, were because of violence.
Notable side-effects of this era is 'possession of things'. In the hunter-gatherer lifestyle we needed to be light and be able to move easily, so our possession could only be something that we can pick by hand or easily carry. After we settled down we begun owning and possessing stuff.
He claims that the agricultural revolution might be one of the biggest 'frauds' of all time, and it's literally the grain who domesticated us - i.e. made us inhabit lands permanently and build and live in houses - without too many visible benefits for us.
What's your view on this?
The hunter-gatherer lifestyle was much healthier for human, based on all kinds of nutrition elements, which was better suited to us. Basing nutrition on one type of grain have led to health and dietary problems.
It also means that there are a lot more of us. The real benefit of cereal based agriculture is that it supports a larger and denser population. This is because arable farming provides a higher calorie output per acre than traditional pastoral farming or hunting/gathering. We see something similar in the High Middle Ages: the spread of cereal monoculture has been blamed for both a decrease in average height and an increase in population density. (Bartlett, Making of Europe)
I can't comment on the other points. I'm sceptical of some (how do you measure the happiness of pre-agricultural societies) but will leave those to others.
At a high level, I think it's a bit ironic that your professor has such low regard for the "agricultural revolution" when it is exactly because of that revolution that he can hold the position he does. Pure hunter-gatherer cultures don't allow for large, complex societies. They are not able to settle down in one area and form settled cities and towns, without agriculture to support it. In essence, every member of the tribe must be involved in procuring, preparing, or disposing of the food stuffs. With so much time and energy being dedicated to getting food, there was little to no time for people to do things like art, science, philosophy, etc.
So, is he saying he would prefer we were all living on the land, hunting wild animals, with no electricity, running water, etc?
The decline of standard of living associated with the introduction of agriculture is extremely well documented both through ethnographic analysis of modern hunter gatherer populations and through archaeological recovery of health data from skeletons. This paper is a tad outdated but the data within it is still good. The other points are a bit shakier but generally defensible--although it is worth noting that the warfare statistic is, I believe, only from the "Hilly Flanks" and varies a great deal on location, much as violence rates in hunter gatherer societies do.
But what your professor is doing is playing a bit of a semantics game to break people out of the teleological progressive thinking that makes people automatically assume that all "progress" is good, and so agriculture must have been a Good Thing, because it led to the Good Thing that is the development of cities, then the Good thing that is the development of states, etc. These narratives are deeply embedded within our cultural consciousness, and so people often try to reframe the issue--a goof example of this would be Jared Diamond's famous "Worst Mistake in Human History".
There is a lot of debate on this issue, and I personally would not frame it as the wheat domesticating us, but it is a defensible line of argument.
The 25% of males dying from violence sounds like a number for hunter-gatherers. Lloyd Warner estimated 200 out of a total of 800 adult males amongst the Murngin Aborigines died of violence over the preceding two decades, and Burch established that it was very common amongst the Eskimos of Alaska.