Yes, we clearly have a lot more options. We could pick and choose the parts of the past that are worth reviving.

However, in general, most of the past really was terrible. More than half of the people who ever lived were subsistence farmers who, if they were lucky, grew enough food to live on and a little bit more.

Less than half of their children lived to adulthood. To make up for staggering mortality rates, women had to have roughly six live births for the population to replace itself.

And in peasant households, everyone has to work if they're able to, including children as soon as they were able.

More here:

https://acoup.blog/2025/07/18/collections-life-work-death-an...

You can read more about the drop in child mortality rates here:

https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-big-problem-in-br...

An aspect of this that always strikes me is 1940's or 1950's actors. They lived through the depression, where protein was a rarer commodity. Childhood diseases that we now have forgotten. Their frames are small, but their heads are normal sized.

Then, suddenly, a decade later, the men who are actors are all strapping young guys, fit and healthy.

It reminds of me of WWII era japanese, who, a decade or three earlier, had also been protein-starved. Their height and frames reflected this.

All this to say that while we see the downsides, the green revolution also had its health upsides, I guess.