I also saw a theory (not sure how credible) that the reason humans started doing agriculture was in fact because we killed all the megafauna we used to eat.
This was over 10,000 years ago. Well before the Industrial Revolution, indeed, before even the original Agricultural Revolution.
My original source for this was the book Sapiens, but here are two links I found with a quick web search: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/07/240701131808.h...
https://ourworldindata.org/quaternary-megafauna-extinction
I also saw a theory (not sure how credible) that the reason humans started doing agriculture was in fact because we killed all the megafauna we used to eat.
This was over 10,000 years ago. Well before the Industrial Revolution, indeed, before even the original Agricultural Revolution.