I've always heard that agriculture took to root and spread 10,000 or so years ago because agricultural civilizations could bring more manpower to bear against enemies and had logistical advantages that come with having storable/moveable food surpluses.
Yet there are many examples where agriculturalists seem to have failed to outcompete their hunter-gatherer competitors.
The major ones I can think of all involve people of the steppe/plains - people who rode horses.
All throughout history, we hear of nomadic steppe peoples beating settled agriculturalists on the Asian/European steppe.
In the Americas, agriculturalists seem to have won out in Mexico/South America, but in north America, the agriculturalists were largely limited to the eastern and western coasts. The vast central part of the continent was ruled by horsemen.
Why was this?
Were the steppe peoples really hunter gatherers, or would we consider them more as farmers of animals, and so comparable to the agriculturalists in terms of population availability?
Hi there -- while this post is fine here, you may also want to consider x-posting it to r/AskAnthropology, as many of the questions you're asking take place before written history. Thanks!