Main Body
1
Cynthia Smith and Eugene Berger
INTRODUCTION
DISCOVERY
The study of “human antiquity” or man’s earliest origins is surrounded by passion, controversy, and a deep well of curiosity. Our interest in our earliest origins has not only given birth to fictional characters like Indiana Jones and Captain Kirk, it is also largely responsible for the growth of archaeology in the early 20th century. Western scholars and explorers were not content with simply reaching remote places; they were curious about the Earth’s earliest human inhabitants. Archaeologists and paleoanthropologists eventually created an entirely new field of historical investigation: prehistory. Multiple pioneers hack through underbrush or spend months excavating Paleolithic sites and our understanding of the past is constantly changing based on new evidence discovered, as well as new perspectives and approaches, all of which lead to new interpretations. This is especially true as we attempt to trace the earliest beginnings of the human story.
Every year new findings, enhanced by application of new technologies, provide us a clearer view of ancient experiences and developments. Look at the newspaper any given week and you will find reports of new archeological discoveries, new theories proposed, or new insights gained from genetic analyses. For example recent archaeological findings of what appear to be ancient footprints in New Mexico raises the strong possibility human migration into the Americas took place far earlier than previously thought. Advanced genetic sequencing analysis has revealed far more complex human migration patterns into ancient Europe, as well as evidence of more interactions and interbreeding between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals.
Another intriguing recent find was the discovery of the oldest ‘deliberate’ human burial in Africa. Remains of a 2 ½ to 3 year old child were found buried, and evidence indicates the body was wrapped, perhaps with leaves, with the head supported on some form of pillow as the body was laid to rest. Clearly great care was given to the burial of this child. This physical evidence tells us humans took conscious care to bury their dead at least 80,000 years ago in Africa, the ‘cradle’ of homo sapiens (modern human) development. Burial reflects a conscious, ritual response to death and the loss of a family or community member. This is considered a distinctly ‘human’ behavior. Evidence of the earliest known beginnings of ritual burial enables us to better understand human cultural evolution. Based on evidence we continue to discover, and ongoing efforts to analyze and find meaning from this evidence, we can continually refine the fascinating story of human history and experiences.
OVERVIEW
History is the story of humans and telling this story depends entirely on the sources available. Without evidence of past events and experiences, we cannot make and support conclusions. Written texts are the sources most historians are trained to work with and what historians are most comfortable using. Yet written language is a relatively recent invention (around 5,000 years old), therefore much of what we know about human beginnings is based on the findings of other disciplines such as geology, botany, and archaeology. Archaeologists have done the fundamental work excavating and analyzing physical evidence relating to our prehistoric ancestors. Until the middle of the last century, it was difficult to understand migration patterns and chronology without a method to determine the age of relics such as a human skull or a cutting tool. Archaeologists in the 1930s and 40s used imprecise terms like “stone bowl cultures,” a nomenclature that referred more to details of the articles unearthed rather than their historical context (Sutton 2007, 313). This began to change with the advent of radiocarbon or C14 dating in the 1940s. Through this method, thousands of organic archaeological materials could be placed in their proper historical context even without textual evidence. For artifacts over 40,000 years old, the amount of radioactive carbon we can recover doesn’t permit accurate measurement. We do, however, have a number of techniques to trace human origins even further back, including aerial photography, side-scanning radar, and potassium-argon dating. All these techniques supplement the lack of radioactive carbon; they don’t date the organic material but the terrain in which they were found allows us to trace human origins back millions of years to the beginnings of bipedalism.
The goal of this chapter is not to trace human evolution from its beginnings but to set the scene for the beginnings of civilization. We explore why hominids moved, how they survived, and how they came to develop agriculture. We also address why humans in far flung parts of the world responded in similar ways to changing conditions, developing the structures that came to define ‘civilization’ at roughly the same time. This chapter begins with the origins of bipedalism some eight million years ago and brings us up to eight thousand years ago, the start of the Neolithic Era or “new stone age.” Bipedal hominids developed during the Pliocene era, and our closest ancestors were evident during the more recent Pleistocene era. Modern Homo sapiens appeared during the Holocene period. During the Holocene, humans perfected tool usage during the Paleolithic era, and ushered in agriculture during the Neolithic era. This chapter ends as humans entered the Bronze and Iron Ages.
- Identify the important early hominid migrations.
- Describe the defining characteristics of the Paleolithic lifestyle.
- Explain reasons for the shift from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to settled agriculture.
- Describe significant changes in human societies that resulted from the reliance on cultivated agricultural and permanent settlements.
- Identify critical differences between the Paleolithic lifestyle and agricultural based societies.
Chapter Terms:
Holocene, Anthropocene, Homo Sapiens, Berengia, Paleolithic Era, Lascaux Caves, Neolithic Revolution, Fertile Crescent, Çatal Hüyük, Specialization, Zoonotic diseases
HUMAN BEGINNINGS IN AFRICA
Think about it…
- Where did the first humans live? Where and why did they migrate?
Climate, Hominin Evolution, and Migrations
“Hominids” refers to all Great Apes, including humans and their ancestors. “Hominins” is often used when speaking more specifically about modern humans and their more recently extinct ancestors. The fossil record in Africa clearly establishes that a human lineage diverged there from African apes sometime between eight to six million years ago. Beginning as far back as eight million years ago, various species of hominids (ancestors of modern humans or Homo sapiens) began to walk upright. This bipedalism allowed these hominids to use their hands to develop, craft, and use tools. Bipedalism also eventually contributed to a move out of forests into the savanna, and turned hominids into big game hunters and gatherers. Paleoanthropologists once theorized hominids became bipedal to adapt to life in the grasslands. However, the fact that fossils of bipedal hominids were found alongside fossil remains of wood, seeds, and other forest dwellers has cast some doubt on that theory. Bipedal hominids may have lived in the forest for some time. While some bipedal hominids may have stayed in the forest, climate changes did drive others to move into new areas within Africa and beyond it.
During the Pliocene epoch (5–1.6 million years ago), a series of environmental changes made grasslands even more prevalent, leading to a transformation geologists call the “turnover-pulse hypothesis.” Animals with adaptations such as angled knee joints and arched feet survived on the grasslands, while those with longer arms or curved fingers who were better suited to the woodlands did not. For hominids, this favorable grassland environment meant the “development of several closely related species. Large-toothed hominids known as robust australopithecines appeared in Southern and Eastern Africa” (Ristvet 2007, 4). Towards the end of the Pliocene, around 2.4 million years ago, the first members of our genus – homo (Homo habilis) – appeared, the first hominid to make stone tools.
The Pleistocene epoch (1.6 million–10,000 years ago) saw at least twenty-five periods of glaciation and warming. Glaciation resulted from dips in global temperature and had two major effects on hominid development. First, with sea levels dropping due to glaciation, hominids migrated to Australia and the Americas for the first time. Second, many migrated out of colder climates while those that remained developed physical adaptations. Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals), a hominid that disappeared 28,000 years ago, became stockier and more powerful to deal with the difficulties of this icy climate.
While not as dramatic as previous developments, the Holocene period encompassed significant climatic events. The Younger Dryas event (c. 12,000 BCE) was a drop in global temperatures accompanied by a corresponding change in vegetation distribution. Reduced rainfall from 2200–1900 BCE made conditions very difficult for those living in the Eastern Mediterranean. Finally, the Medieval Warm Period (approximately the 19th-14th centuries CE) represents “one of the most recent periods of climate change” (Ristvet 2007, 3-5).
Despite these fluctuations, the Holocene era was a period when climate conditions made possible the agricultural revolution, and thus settled civilizations. Some scientists now argue the Holocene period is over, replaced by the Anthropocene – a period during which human activities, rather than natural systems, have become the dominant influence on the earth’s climate and environmental functions. Those who agree that our species is currently living in an Anthropocene era point to the many ways human activities increasingly impacted global environmental and climate functions.
Questions to answer:
- What are some ways humans directly impacted the climate and Earth’s environmental processes in the past?
- What human impacts on the climate are evident today?
Those who deal with the past, whether geologists, oceanographers, sociologists or historians, use dividing lines to identify differences and transitions between past events and experiences. Scientists and historians are currently debating whether we should refer to our present age as the ‘Anthropocene’, characterized as an era when humans replaced nature as the most impactful force on earth. The Oxford English Dictionary added this new word in 2014, defining the Anthropocene as the “…era of geological time during which human activity is considered to be the dominant influence on the environment, climate, and ecology of the earth” (Oxford English Dictionary 2014).
Those advocating the term Anthropocene point to decades of evidence about human impact on the environment, in particular through generation of greenhouse gasses. The first written reference to a possible ‘greenhouse’ effect dates back to the early 19th century. By the second half of the 20th century warnings issued by the scientific community had grown in number, urgency and impact. In 1985, climate scientists produced an influential report warning of dangerous effects of CO₂. In response, the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. The IPCC was charged with assessing and recommending policy to address climate change consequences, and has issued several reports over the past 35 years. In 1989 naturalist author Bill McKibben wrote The End of Nature, considered the first book about climate change and global warming written for a general audience. Numerous scientists, research groups and publications continued to draw attention to human-caused environmental effects, including the influential 2004 report from the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme titled “Global change and the Earth System”. This report presented evidence of human impacts on the changing atmosphere, decreased biodiversity, transformation and destruction of natural habitats, diversion of rivers, and pollution of the ocean.
Scientists Paul Cutzen and Eugene Stoermer are credited with first using the term Anthropocene, arguing the impact of humans on Earth’s natural systems has become so significant and consequential that this new era deserved a geological epoch name. Debate continues about whether this term should be accepted. Some critics feel the term Anthropocene overstates human effects versus the natural forces that contribute to environmental conditions, such as the Earth’s shifting rotational position. Other critics emphasize that for most of human history, human actions impacted regional ecosystems rather than produced global effects, for example contributing to species extinction specifically in the Americas, Australia, or the Pacific Islands. Another criticism is that all other geological epochs refer to vast stretches of time, usually millions of years, so the relatively brief period of humans (homo sapiens) and their impact does not match this traditional geological time span. Further, there is no agreed upon geological ‘marker’ to identify when this proposed new age begins, little physical evidence in the layers of ice or soil or tree rings where a clear dividing line can be identified. A geologically named epoch without a physical geological marker breaks with existing scientific practice. Finally, some point to the fact we are already in a formally identified epoch, the Holocene epoch, which began with the end of the last ice age. This is a geologically clearly marked division in Earth’s history and it is confusing to differentiate from this age.
Yet use of this term continues. For those who identify an Anthropocene era, the dilemma is when to start this era – what event or change marked the start of the ‘human’ era in Earth’s natural history? Some argue the Anthropocene began with the hunter-gathering phase since there is clear evidence human actions transformed local environments as early as the late Pleistocene, the beginning of the Holocene epoch, as humans mastered the use of fire. Fire was used to burn forests, creating grassy areas to increase the number of grazing animals to hunt as well as reduce cover for feared predators. As forests and existing flora were burnt, soil changed and new crops grew, changing ecosystems. Hunter-gatherers also contributed to, or were even a primary cause of, the extinction of large mammals (‘megafauna’) such as giant sloths and sabre tooth cats. The scientific consensus is the combined impact of humans and climate shifts caused the massive collapse in populations of large land mammals.
Others argue the Anthropocene epoch began with the Agricultural Revolution, as humans increasingly relied on cultivated agriculture and domesticated animals between 10,000 – 7,000 BCE. Native grasslands were plowed over and forests cleared for planting and grazing animals, leading to erosive effects on soil, diversion of waterways, and dense urban settlements that produced increased waste and required heavier use of resources. Reliance on domestic animals meant displacement and decline of native animal species. All these consequences directly and significantly impacted ecosystems, as we address in later chapters.
Another compelling argument is the Industrial Revolution represented the start of the Anthropocene era, as humans dramatically accelerated their impact on the environment through advances in science, technology, production, mass consumption, and the insatiable hunger for power sources. Starting in the late 1700s and continuing to the present, reliance on fossil fuels resulted in transformative effects on the atmosphere and climate. Another proposal for the start of the Anthropocene era is quite specific – July 16, 1945 – when the first atomic bomb was tested, releasing radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere. This date is favored by scientific purists since identifiable geological markers from radiation fallout can be detected in nature. Finally, some feel the Anthropocene era should be identified as starting in 1950 since during the latter part of the 20th century, the intensity of human impacts dramatically escalated, referred to as the Great Acceleration. As human population and consumption significantly increased, consequences of human actions were far more evident globally.
While it is difficult to point to a consistent global ‘marker’, clearly humans have had a major impact on the environment, an impact that is escalating with growing populations and intensive consumption patterns. In later Chapters we touch on examples of ways societies impacted, and were impacted by, changes in soil, water, forests, species extinctions, diseases and climate change. We are acutely aware of the fact that today the planet’s natural processes are undergoing dramatic changes which directly impact the natural world and human conditions. More intensive and destructive forest fires, droughts, and floods are devastating communities across the globe. Island and coastal communities such as Pacific societies find themselves vulnerable to devastating effects of rising seas and more extreme weather events. Sea levels in the western Pacific are increasing two to three times faster than the global average, intensifying flooding, contamination of fresh water supplies, and destruction of agricultural lands and essential habitats. Entire communities are displaced as islands and atolls shrink. The Hawaiian islands, for example, are predicted to undergo sea-level rises of 1 foot by 2050, and 3 feet by the end of the 21st century. Such dramatic changes mean significant disruption and dislocation, transforming communities as well as impacting island plants and animals.
Whether the term Anthropocene is used officially or not, we are today certainly more aware of the impact human actions have on the environment. The need for mitigation and resilience is paramount in the face of new realities of this Anthropocene era. How we respond to serious challenges of climate change and other environmental crises is one of the most important tasks for us as 21st century citizens of the globe. The study of history, including the earliest beginnings of human societies, provides us valuable lessons to learn from to support that goal.
Like neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and other hominids all reacted to changing climate conditions. Homo erectus and Homo habilis migrated, hunted, and used fire, while neanderthalensis had some use of language and tools and buried their dead. For millions of years, hominids had been using slivers of volcanic stone and cutters, probably to hack through animal skin. The cutters were often found close together, suggesting early hominids had a division of labor between hunters who would pursue their prey and butchers who could wait nearby at the butchering site.
There is evidence of task division by gender among neanderthalensis. Multiple sites in Europe show different patterns of wear on male and female teeth, indicating a gendered task division in tasks where teeth were used to hold, break, or strip objects (Estalrrich and Rosas 2015, 51-63). By 25,000 years ago, only Homo sapiens sapiens, our species, survived; all other hominins were extinct. Paleoanthropologists attribute this survival to larger brains, durability, and the ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Based on migration patterns and archaeological evidence, Homo sapiens sapiens appear to have been the only hominids to build sea-worthy boats, create art, have organized religion, and find ways to live in any climate (Ristvet 2007, 24-26).
Homo Sapiens Migration
While Homo sapiens were decidedly more advanced than other hominids, when they first moved out of Africa some 45,000 years ago they were only equipped with stone tools for hunting and cutting. Yet despite initial limitations, 30,000 years later Homo sapiens inhabited almost every environment on earth, with a presence in every continent except Antarctica. Homo sapiens moved further and faster than all other hominids, with their migration accelerating close to 40,000 years ago. Modern humans (50,000–10,000 years ago) migrated to all the continents except Antarctica, moving first into Australia, Eastern Siberia, the Pacific margins, Japan, and the Americas. Then from 10,000 years ago to 1,500 CE, humans arrived in the Arctic, the Indian Ocean, the deep Pacific, and tropical rainforests. Migration occurred in a “staccato” pattern with the “easiest” areas colonized quickly, while more “difficult” areas remained uninhabited for thousands of years. For example, tropical savannas and grasslands of East Africa were colonized first, as the biomass there effectively sustained the first bipedal hominids.
Reading the Past – Human Odyssey Interactive Map
View the interactive map: “Human Odyssey Interactive Map,” California Academy of Sciences.
Link: https://legacy.calacademy.org//human-odyssey/map/
Questions to answer:
- Around 50,000 years ago, what were the climate conditions that facilitated migrations?
- Approximately when did human migrants reach Australia?
- What is considered the oldest archaeological site in North America?
Hominids first left “sub-Saharan Africa … through the northern savannahs, up the Nile corridor or across the straits of Bab el Mandeb to the Arabian Peninsula” (Gamble 1993, 125-128). Evidence exists of Homo erectus in Morocco, Chad, and Algeria, and it appears they eventually left Africa via the Arabian Peninsula. After leaving Africa about 1.5 million years ago, choppers, handaxes, and spheroids found at sites like Ubeidiya in Israel put Homo erectus in the Levant. Some scholars argue for the existence of a second migration out of Africa and into the Jordan Valley 500 to 600 thousand years ago.
Learning in Action – Human Species
Watch the video: “One Species, Living World Wide,” Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
Link: https://humanorigins.si.edu/multimedia/videos/one-species-living-worldwide
Questions to answer:
- By what approximate date or time period were Homo Sapiens the only surviving human species?
- How closely linked is the DNA of all humans on the planet?
Asia
Some evidence suggests the presence of Homo ergaster and Homo erectus as having occurred in Java over a million years ago. Chinese Homo erectus fossils date between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago. Homo sapiens began to leave Africa around 40,000 years ago, and hunter gatherers appeared in China by the end of the last Ice Age (36,000 to 16,000 BCE) as continental ice in central Asia began to melt.
Europe
Animal bones and pebble tools place hominids near Italy just before the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene (730,000 years ago). This seems to be the first hominid incursion into Europe. Hominid remains in Spain suggest colonization in Iberia up to two million years ago, but there are not nearly enough remains (no more than twenty inhabitants in any given site) to provide any certainty regarding which hominids they correspond to or when they lived there. Either way, colonization of Europe can be considered “late.” This tardiness may have been related to a lack of animal food sources. Not until around 500,000 years ago did “new species of deer, bovid, rhino, and horse appear” in Europe (Gamble 1993, 135). Around the same time, the numbers of cheetah, saber-tooth tiger, and dirk-tooth cat declined in the region, making more carcasses from the prey species available to hominid foragers.
Australia, Papua New Guinea, Sahul
Evidence of tools from 30,000 years ago exists in Australia, and from even longer ago in New Guinea. The lack of an established land crossing meant that an ocean journey of somewhere between 65 and 100 kilometers was required from mainland Asia. This made Australians and New Guineans the first sea-going colonizers. How humans populated Australia is still the subject of some debate between those who support the “coastal hugger” theory and those who support the idea of population by “overlanders.” The more difficult means of populating Australia is overland, as it is more arid than the coasts, and the evidence for tools overland is not as advanced as that for the coast.
Peopling the ‘New World’
North and South America were the last continents to be settled by humans. Most scholars think that the Americas were populated from Beringia over land. Around 12,000 years ago, mammoth hunting became more common and supported larger populations on both the Asian and American sides of Beringia, a landmass that at that time connected North America and Asia, now divided by the Bering Strait. On the Asian side, outlines of houses with stone-lined hearths have been found, indicating permanent settlement that didn’t necessarily have colonization as an end goal. But colonize they did, one group pushing southward between 10,000 and 3,000 years ago and establishing settlements that would become the origins of modern Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Inuit populations. Another group migrated southeast through Alaska, their descendants making it as far as Chile and Argentina.
While we know roughly when American colonization began, the pace and means of colonization are still debated. Complicating the discussion of timing is the fact the Late Wisconsin Ice sheet blocked the overland route from about 30,000 years ago, when two sheets merged, up until about 12,000 years ago when they opened after a thaw. Currently only a handful of sites support possible pre-10,000 BCE occupation: Monte Verde in Chile, Meadowcraft near Pittsburgh, and Page-Ladson in Florida. As recently as 2015, excavations at Monte Verde and Chinchihuapi strengthened the possible dating of an earlier human presence to as far back as 17,000 BCE. This date has continued to move back in time as archeologists seek and consider evidence of nomadic humans who did not leave large artifact clusters but may have been present before more sedentary groups.
For now, the clearest evidence for when the Americas were widely populated comes through the Clovis point, a specific arrowhead shape unique in its ubiquity and sophistication. The Clovis point was found in mammoths that had become extinct by 10,500 years ago; this discovery thus means humans were common in North America by then. From Beringia, humans moved at a rate of roughly 10 miles a year until they reached Tierra del Fuego and fully populated the Americas, with the exception of some tropical areas mentioned above (Dillehay et al. 2015, 208).
The Arctic
The first Paleo-Eskimo populations appeared around 4,000 years ago after arriving from Eastern Siberia, populations left behind by the American colonists discussed above. The Arctic climate is harsh and these populations needed sophisticated weapons and tools to be able to survive it, which explains their late arrival. The Arctic colonists expanded rapidly across Alaska, through Canada, and into Greenland, assisted by their arctic tools that included the important toggle headed harpoons to kill walrus and seal.
Moananuiākea (the Pacific)
The origins of Polynesian humans are still debated. Groups of Polynesian mariners existed 50,000 years ago, but they were not colonizers. In fact, many scholars argue that eventual colonization began as exploration. Around 2,500 years ago, we see more permanent settlements in Fiji, Tonga, and other areas of the “remote” Pacific, as remnants of pottery have been found there. Based on linguistic and technological similarities among Polynesian cultures, some scholars argue that Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga were a cultural crucible of sorts. These populations began to colonize Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Hawaiʻi, and Autearoa (New Zealand) about and beyond 1,000 CE.
The Pacific was a marine highway, where currents and winds were well-known and frequently used by mariners. Migrating humans were much more likely to wander aimlessly on land than they were to let currents take them to unknown parts of the ocean. Pacific mariners tacked to use the winds in their favor and Pacific mariners were too adept at seafaring to suggest a simple casting out of people into the Pacific in hopes of finding land. Once Pacific colonization did commence, settlers were very deliberate about it, taking with them families, and plants, and animals. It seems that they had every intention of recreating “home.”
By 20,000 years BCE, evidence clearly shows Homo Sapiens inhabited all the major continental land masses of the earth, including Africa, Australia, Eurasia, and the Americas, but excluding Antarctica which has never had a self-sustaining human population for obvious reasons. Tests on contemporary human females show them to have enough similarity in their mitochondrial DNA for biologists to claim we may all be descended from a single woman who lived in Africa thousands of years ago. Mitochondrial DNA is a portion of human DNA passed only from female to female, and it mutates minimally from generation to generation. Scientists called this supposed first female ancestor “Eve.” However, new theories based on evidence of human development on a global scale suggest modern humans may not actually have developed in Africa and moved outward, but instead may have developed simultaneously in various places. This is one of the great debates in the field of Anthropology.
Reading the Past – Climate and Human Evolution
Watch the video: “Climate and Human Evolution”, PBS LearningMedia, adapted from NOVA: “Becoming Human, Part 1: First Steps” 2010
Question to answer:
- What do these scientists argue is the relationship between periods of dramatic climate change and volatility, and the resulting effects on human evolution?
HUNTER-GATHERERS
Think about it…
- What did it mean to live a lifestyle based on hunting and gathering?
Farming was only invented 13,000 years ago, thus for most of human history, our food came through foraging. Early hominids like australopithecines, Homo habilis, and Homo erectus ate mostly plant food. Homo sapiens became more sophisticated foragers as they began to fish with hooks and, more recently, nets. Our early Paleolithic ancestors lived in very different situations from those we now take for granted. They initially had no settled, permanent homes, no secure food supply and faced a continual struggle to survive. Humans are really quite weak in comparison to most other animals. Most domestic dogs fend for themselves by the time they are six months old, walking within minutes after birth. Human babies do not walk until they are between 10 months to 2 years, and are unable to care for themselves for at least 12 to 14 years. Humans do not reach their physical peak until about age 16 for females and 18 for males. Even when humans reach their peak age, they can maintain a top running speed of only a few miles per hour for long distances. Humans are no match for the cheetah, clocked at 60 miles per hour. Gorillas, with their diet of 90 percent leaves, have almost 10 times the physical strength of humans on a per-pound basis. Humans also have no natural armor for protection from the teeth of predators. Much of the credit for our species’ survival then, despite these limits, is attributable to the creative human brain, cooperative tribal communities, and the physical attributes of flexible hands and sharp eyes.
Humans quite early put their brains to use, devising means to survive by hunting and gathering. They took their food from nature, wherever they could find it. Experiential knowledge acquired over generations was incredibly useful. Modern hunter-gatherer groups reflect how complex and comprehensive this knowledge of the natural world could be. Hunter-gatherers in New Guinea, for example, have an encyclopedic knowledge of wild mushrooms and their toxicity dangers. The Baka people in Africa can find roots which, when beaten and floated in a stream, paralyze all of the fish but have no effect on the humans who eat them later. For most of human history, hunter-gatherers were remarkably successful in discovering creative ways to to feed, clothe, and protect the members of the human species.
As food gathering techniques evolved for these Paleolithic foragers, so did their behavior as organized groups. These humans became mobile to prevent resource depletion; they controlled population through dispersion or infanticide. And they began to emphasize cooperation. Foragers also began to divide tasks and share food with others, a feature that distinguishes them from other animals like chimpanzees that live in communities but feed individually.
Sharing food is, of course, much easier to do when there is a surplus. With increased tool use, Paleolithic humans became even more adept at foraging, leading to higher likelihood of food surpluses. Paleolithic peoples had material goods – they created, kept and even traded rudimentary tools, valuing those items which enabled survival. But accumulation of tools and goods was not a priority, not an end in itself. For a population that must move, in some cases migrating often and across long distances, material goods had value only if they served a specific and immediate purpose. What we consider today a measure of wealth – lots of things – was a burden for a nomadic population. Accumulation of goods was not valued because it was not an asset to survival in a nomadic lifestyle. As a result, no structured distinctions developed between peoples based on the goods they possessed.
Property or land ownership also made little sense for Paleolithic peoples. Tribes might lay claim to a particular territory for resources during a specific season but a claim was temporary. Permanent claims to a plot of land made no sense when a tribe might roam miles to gather or hunt, and move to a new region on a seasonal basis. Individual land ownership was unknown in a communal, nomadic tribal setting where reciprocity was the norm. Fundamental aspects of economic life taken for granted in later civilizations did not exist for a nomadic Paleolithic population. There was no emphasis on individual land ownership nor an emphasis on the accumulation of things. The shift to agriculture which led to more complicated economic and social systems in settled civilizations dramatically changed these societal patterns.
Use of tools not only helped humans live cooperatively but may have helped hominids develop abstract thought; evidence of tool use may give us a clue as to when this development began. As far back as 2.6 million years ago, we see evidence of the creative thinking required to make more effective tools. Homo habilis in fact takes its name (“handy man”) from the fact they were the first known hominid tool-makers. Soon after individual tools appeared, the Oldowan Industry became the first widely used toolset, “consisting of flaked and smashed quartz riverside pebbles made into poorly formed choppers and sharp stone flakes, [and] lasted for 1 million years with little change [from 2.6 to 1.5 million years ago]” (Ristvet 2007, 17-22). The Oldowan were followed about 1.5 million years ago by hand axes that remained unchanged for more than a million years. Many scholars argue these smaller-brained hominids like Homo habilis, homo ergaster, and Australopithecus were both unable and unwilling to innovate much beyond their simple but effective tools, especially considering how harsh their environment could become. Fire was another important tool, first used by Homo erectus about 1.6 million years ago. Fire became important for migrants to colder climes in Europe and Asia, and to foragers who could now eat foods that were poisonous if ingested raw. Homo erectus also cooked foods they had previously eaten raw, thereby expanding their lifespan by eliminating toxins found in raw meats.
Homo sapiens would add more meat to their diet when advances in tool-making led to an increase in big game hunting during the late Pleistocene. For example, excavations near Dolni Vetoniçein the Czech Republic have helped reveal a society that made multiple uses of downed mammoths: meat, fuel, building material, and for the creation of art such as jewelry. The inhabitants of Dolni Vetoniçe also made thousands of ceramic figurines, bird bone flutes, and ivory carvings of human heads.
The famed paintings of the Lascaux caves vividly reflect increased skills as hunters and painters. The colors and types of paint used were vibrant and durable, and the scenes depicted demonstrated the use of diverse hunting techniques. On these walls we see depictions of humans hunting not only deer, but also woolly rhinoceros and mammoths. Lascaux paintings provide evidence that hunter-gatherers had religious beliefs, as well as the existence of gender specific tasks, reflecting a sophistication usually only attributed to sedentary humans. The fact humans and animals were depicted together so often at Lascaux may be evidence of their belief man descended from these animals. Or perhaps the bison, rhinoceri, and birds were painted on walls to produce “hunting magic” to make expeditions more successful. Mostly men were depicted in these higher-risk hunting activities, suggesting perhaps women were the artists, or participated less in the hunt, or both. Increased sophistication was not limited to big game hunters. Campsites, rock art, and burial sites near Lake Mungo in Australia reveal how these early humans used pottery for cooking and had a diverse diet of birds, fish, and shellfish, a diet that seems to have kept them well-nourished (Ristvet 2007, 27-30). Later Paleolithic women likely began to experience a growing role, reflected in the female representation of the “Venus” statuettes. As we get closer to the Neolithic era, we see the rising relative importance of women: their place in rituals increased, their stature increased, their economic importance increased, and their childbearing uniqueness became more emphasized.
Reading the Past – Visiting the Lascaux caves
Watch the video: “Virtual tour of prehistoric caves at Lascaux, France,” Musee DʻArcheologie Nationale.
Link: https://archeologie.culture.fr/lascaux/en/node/9028/puits
Questions to answer:
- What kinds of animals are depicted and why do you think these animals were important to Paleolithic peoples?
- What do you think was the purpose and importance of these paintings to the Paleolithic artists who created them?
AGRICULTURE AND THE “NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION”
Think about it…
- Why did people change from a hunting and gathering lifestyle to one based on growing crops and raising domestic animals?
Historian Lauren Ristvet defines agriculture as the “‘domestication’ of plants… causing it to change genetically from its wild ancestor in ways [that make] it more useful to human consumers” (Ristvet 2007, 36). She and hundreds of other scholars, from Hobbes to Marx, have pointed to the Neolithic Revolution, the move from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural lifestyle as the root of what we today refer to as civilization. Without agriculture, there would not have been the emergence of written languages, empires, currencies, universities, factories or railroads. Yet, despite its importance, much remains unclear about why and where agricultural reliance began. Instead, scholars hold a handful of well-regarded theories about the roots (pun intended) of agriculture.
Most scholars agree the Ice Age played a fundamental role in the rise of agriculture, since cultivation was impossible during the much colder and often tundra-covered period of the Pleistocene. Only 4,000 years before the origins of agriculture, the planting of anything would have been an exercise in futility. During the Last Glacial Maximum (24,000–16,000 years ago), average temperatures dropped “by as much as 57˚ F near the great ice sheets…” (Ristvet 2007, 36-37). This glaciation meant not only that today’s fertile farmlands were increasingly covered in ice, but also other areas around the world could not depend on constant temperatures or rainfall from year to year. Pleistocene foragers had to be flexible. The warming trend of the Holocene, by contrast, resulted in consistent rainfall amounts and more predictable temperatures. The warming also altered the habitats of the megafauna that humans hunted, alterations that in some cases contributed to their extinction. As animal populations declined, humans were further encouraged to plant and cultivate seeds in newly-thawed soil.
When we start to examine other factors that allowed humans to transition to agriculture, we find causal links to both human developments and the climate. Agriculture was usually accompanied by sedentary communities, but we also see communal living and permanent settlements among multiple groups of earlier hunter-gatherers. Homo sapiens had begun to domesticate animals and plants alike during the Pleistocene. Humans were being buried alongside dogs as early as 14,000 years ago (Scarre 2009, 183-184). Gatherers were developing an increasing taste for grains long before they abandoned a foraging lifestyle. Essentially, humans were ready for agriculture when climate permitted it
We discuss in future Chapters the timing of cultivated agriculture’s appearance in all of the continents, but generally speaking by about 8,000 years ago, farmers in West Asia were growing rye, barley, and wheat. In northern China, millet was common 8,500 years ago. In the Americas, the domestication of maize began around 8,000 years ago in Mesoamerica, while at about the same time, Andean residents began cultivating potatoes. Once all of these areas realized agriculture’s potential as a permanent food source, they began to adapt their societies to increase crop consistency and crop yields.
Between about 12,000-10,000 BCE, after thousands of years of a Paleolithic lifestyle, humans developed the abilities to cultivate crops rather than depend on gathering what nature happened to provide. Communities also domesticated animals for food and labor, rather than relying solely on hunting. Given the centuries during which this change occurred, it is hard to call it a revolution nevertheless, most historians now call the move from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to farming the “Agricultural Revolution.” This shift was the most significant historical change ever experienced in human history. It made civilization possible, and in turn led to every other aspect of the lifestyles we now exhibit.
What caused humans to change from a hunter-gather social organization to create the structures and patterns we call civilization? What made humans change from hunter-gatherers to farmers who gathered together in large, complex societies characterized by city life, hierarchical political organization, specialization of crafts and occupations, formal laws, written languages, and standardized cultural and religious behavior? Although all continents were inhabited by humans by 20,000 BCE, no community began to actively engage in agriculture until 8500 BCE, and the first civilization did not arise until around 3,500 BCE. What took us so long?
The first, and simplest, answer to this question is that until 8500 BCE farming did not appear to be appreciably better than hunting and gathering as a lifestyle. As Jared Diamond has pointed out in his book Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, despite the amount of effort and time hunter-gatherers put into their search for food on a daily basis, early farmers probably had to work far harder, with no more guarantee they would not starve given the vagaries of weather. With this kind of risk-reward ratio, it is no surprise the switch to farming took so long. If farming was no guarantee of survival, the idea of combining large numbers of people in one place would be, for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, a sure recipe for starvation.
When they did attempt to control their food sources, domesticating plants was not an overnight nor an abrupt shift and in some cases, was not done consciously. Seeds disperse by attaching themselves to clothing, feathers, and fur, or drift in the wind, or are attractive to eat due to the colorful, tasty fruit that surrounds them. Animals and humans eat them and either spit seeds out, or seeds pass through the digestive system and germinate. Thus many plants humans ate likely followed them around along the tribe’s migration route. Almonds are an excellent example. Wild almonds are bitter and contain the chemical compound of cyanide. A handful of wild almonds can be lethal. However, in a very small percentage of almond trees, mutations produce almonds without this bitter chemical. Humans would have raided trees where sweet almonds grew, and perhaps dropped a few on the way back to camp causing more mutant trees. Such unconscious acts created a kind of natural selection by which mutant plants humans found most useful tended to have their seeds better distributed due to human consumption patterns, so humans were modifying plants from very early times.
The need to more actively control food supplies and pursue conscious cultivation was likely driven by climate changes. Around 10,000 BCE as the last ice age was receding, anthropologists and archeologists have found evidence the area known as the Fertile Crescent had a very different climate than it has today. At that time, as temperatures worldwide rose, rain in the area of the Zagros Mountains in Turkey and Iran was common, feeding two major river systems, the Tigris and the Euphrates. At the same time, cool, temperate conditions that prevailed in the areas that are today Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan gave way to a climate that was more arid. Pollen samples show areas that had been covered with oak forests, good for hunting and gathering grounds, subsequently experienced less rainfall. Increasingly arid conditions meant forests, and the plants and animals that go with them, retreated to more temperate zones such as mountains, meaning hunter-gatherer tribes had to go farther and farther in search of food. They likely were driven to supplement their food supplies, leading to advances in cultivation.
Evidence shows that about 9,000 years BCE, during the Neolithic Age, hunter gatherer groups in this region had begun a kind of crude agriculture. They farmed via a slash and burn method. They would clear a piece of land, burn the stumps and weeds left, then sow seeds of wild wheat or barley amongst ashes rich in nutrients. Fields were usually left untended and the tribe would leave to forage over the growing season, coming back when the crop was near ready for harvest. Stone scythes found in the area and dated from 9,000 to 10,000 BCE still show the sheen of silica left by wild wheat and barley.
It is unclear how long it took but eventually selective cultivation led strains of wild grains to evolve into plants more suitable for human cultivation and consumption. For example, rather than producing small grains protected by armored stalks which were very hard to harvest, grains humans began planting by around 8,500 BCE were larger, easy to grind, unarmored, and stayed on the stalk until cut, making harvest far easier. One estimate indicates by 8,500 BCE, in the area that became the city of Jericho, crop domestication changed the productivity of land from 2% edible biomass to 90% edible biomass on a cultivated tract of land. This huge jump in productivity made it possible to support an increasingly dense population, laying the foundation for settled civilizations.
Learning in Action – Early Cultivation
View the interactive map: “Where Our Food Crops Come From,” International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).
Link: https://blog.ciat.cgiar.org/origin-of-crops/
Questions to answer:
- What were some regions that grew lemons?
- Where were macadamia nuts cultivated?
- What regions cultivated carrots?
First Farmers of West Asia – the Fertile Crescent
In later chapters we discuss Mesopotamia, the area between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers where agriculture fostered the “cradle of civilization.” But the incubator of Mesopotamian and Fertile Crescent agriculture dated back earlier, to the foragers of the nearby Eastern Mediterranean thousands of years before. The rye, barley, and wheat in West Asia were first harvested by late Pleistocene foragers called the Kebarans who ground wild wheat and barley into a porridge (Ristvet 2007, 41). Kebarans consumed the porridge as part of their broad spectrum diet that also included land mammals, birds, and fish. Advancing into the Holocene we see the “Natufian Adaptation,” where residents of this same area began to embrace the benefits of sedentary living, a precursor to the advent of agriculture. The Natufians consumed the same rye, barley, and wheat their Kebaran predecessors had, but because their teeth were well-worn, it appears they ate relatively more of it. Having a constant source of these grains enabled them to eschew long hunting or gathering sojourns; instead, the Natufians drew more of their meat from in and around Lake Huleh in modern Israel. Near Lake Huleh was Ain Mallaha, one of the earliest examples of year-round human settlement and an important precursor to sedentary agriculture.
Another permanent settlement in Southwest Asia seems to have been more directly responsible for the decision to domesticate grain rather than simply cultivate wild varieties. Abu Hureya in Syria was deeply affected by the Younger Dryas event of 11,000 years ago, an event which caused many of their wild food staples to disappear. Rather than migrating out of the area, the Abu Hureyrans cultivated rye. Soon afterward, other sites in the Levant began to see the planting of barley, while wheat was cultivated in both the Levant and Anatolia (Ristvet 2007, 41-42).
The transition from foraging, to collecting, to cultivating took place over several centuries, but these gradual changes did mark a very distinct era of permanent settlement during the Neolithic Period. Increased rainfall around 9,600 BCE meant that the Jordan River would swell yearly, in the process depositing layers of fertile soil along its banks. This fertile soil allowed locals to rely on agriculture for survival. Soon after they founded Jericho just north of the Dead Sea, “…perhaps the very first time in human history that a completely viable population was living in the same place at the same time” (Mithen 2003, 59). By the time of Jericho’s height, around 9,000 BCE, the settlement’s population reached the hundreds. This increase cannot be considered an urban boom and the transition away from foraging occurred gradually, for example, excavations from this area have unearthed no separation of tasks or dwellings by gender or skill. By the end of Jericho’s development, however, maintaining large populations in one place would produce other extensive adjustments (Strayer 2013, 40).
Jericho’s residents did distinguish themselves from their hunter-gatherer predecessors through their relatively extensive construction projects. They used mud bricks to build a wall that encircled the settlement – probably for flood control – a tower, and separate buildings for grain storage. The former foragers now living at Jericho could rely on fish or other aquatic creatures for meat as they experimented with permanent settlement, but those foragers living further away from large bodies of water would need another source of meat. This need was increasingly met by animal domestication.
Domestication would prove to be a slow process, as humans learned the hard way that zebras bite, impalas are claustrophobic, and bighorn sheep do not obey orders. In other words, some animals cannot be domesticated, but this is information only understood through trial and error. By about 7,500 BCE, humans in the Taurus and Zagros mountains employed selective breeding to eventually domesticate mountain sheep and goats. The temperament and size of pigs and cows delayed their domestication until the 6,000s BCE, but this process proved equally, if not more, important than that of sheep and goats.
As agriculture and animal domestication progressed, settlements around the Mediterranean became larger and more sophisticated. By 7,000 BCE on the Anatolian plateau, the population of Çatal Huyuk reached several thousand inhabitants. The residents at Çatal Huyuk buried their dead, constructed uniform adjacent houses with elaborate designs painted on their interior walls, and had multiple workshops where, among other activities, they wove baskets, and made obsidian mirrors as well as daggers with “carved bone handles” (Mithen 2003, 94). Çatal Huyuk denizens wove wool into cloth. They also developed a varied diet of peas, nuts, vegetable oil, apples, honey, and the usual grains, while also improving weapons technology with sharper arrows to add to their use of daggers and lances. These gains may seem modest by our standards, but the legacy of communal living and ultimately political centralization that they introduced was extraordinary.
Jericho and Çatal Huyuk were surely some of the most notable early settlements, but they were not alone. The appearances of these two settlements were accompanied by the increasing presence of village life across the world. Most early agricultural villages in Southwest Asia and around the world were very similar in appearance with about twenty residents organized around grain cultivation and storage. Small huts were organized in a circular organization, with grain silos placed between each hut. Labor was a communal activity, and village members all spent time hoeing the fields or hunting. The most valuable asset to a community was the grain itself, but neither it nor the land where it grew belonged to one individual.
This model existed for hundreds and even thousands of years in some areas, until the villagers stopped hunting and domesticated animals. For many scholars, the abandonment of hunting represents the “real” Neolithic Revolution. As communities completely abandoned hunting and gathering, they dedicated more energy to warfare, religion, and construction; in consequence, dwellings and settlements grew, along with a concomitant focus on tool and weapon making (Ristvet 2007, 66).
LEAVING PALEOLITHIC CULTURE BEHIND
Think about it…
- What significant changes followed once people settled permanently?
The emerging differences between the nomadic Paleolithic and settled Neolithic lifestyles could not be more stark. Agriculture contributed to the development of formal, structured classes, along with religion and trade. Before agriculture, hunter-gatherers divided tasks like seed gathering, grinding, or tool-making. However, without large scale building projects like the aqueducts or canals required for agriculture, hierarchies were much less pronounced. The intensification of agriculture during the Neolithic required irrigation, plowing, and terracing, all of which were labor intensive. The amount of labor required could not be met through simple task division; someone had to be in charge. This meant the establishment of ruling elites, a societal grouping that did not exist during the Paleolithic.
While violence certainly existed during the Paleolithic period, organized warfare was apparently another invention of the Neolithic era. Agriculture meant larger populations and settlements that were more tightly packed and closer to one another. These closer quarters created new social and economic pressures that could produce organized violence. Agricultural intensification produced stores of food and valuables that could be seized by neighbors. During the 9,000s BCE, settlements like Jericho began to build defensive walls, while skeletons unearthed in the area reveal wounds from new types of projectiles developed during the era (Scarre 2009, 192, 215). Family life also changed significantly during the Neolithic period. Sedentary communities invested more time and resources in the construction of permanent homes housing nuclear families. People spent less time with the community as a whole; within homes it became easier to accumulate wealth and keep secrets.
The shift in gender roles after the advent of agriculture seems to be even more pronounced; the role of women became more important as humans moved out of the Paleolithic and into the Neolithic era. During the Paleolithic Era, and in fact until recently, a child would be breastfed until he or she was three or four years old, preventing mothers from joining long-distance hunting expeditions without their toddlers. A breastfeeding woman, however, could complete tasks that “…don’t require rapt concentration, are relatively dull and repetitive; they are easily interrupted, don’t place the child in danger, and don’t require the participant to stray far from home” (Barber 1995, 30). Spinning, weaving, and sewing were some of these tasks. Also, the essential tasks of preparing food and clothing could be accomplished with a nursing toddler nearby. These tasks that may be considered “women’s work” today are among the most important tasks that a human could perform, and were very time consuming ones before the industrial revolution. In fact, women would spend most of their day on them, often being assisted by men.
Over time, Paleolithic women gathered new species of berries as well as bird eggs, and learned which mushrooms were nontoxic. Women also were the principal gatherers of mosses for sleeping mats and other plants for shelter. When men returned with a kill, the women carried out an involved process of dressing and butchering it. Sinews from animals and fibers from plants became rope to tie or fasten the hides and baskets. Women used sinews and fibers to create netting for transport and for hunting and fishing. Women were essential to any kind of productivity or progress associated with hunting. In hunting societies with elements of horticulture, women were responsible for providing food such as legumes, eggs, and grains. Food gathering and weaving, especially in the dry Mediterranean, was an outdoor and community activity that also served as a preschool and apprentice system for children. So women were also community educators.
Neolithic Women
While Paleolithic women certainly had important responsibilities, the added tasks of herding and animal domestication significantly expanded their roles in the Neolithic era. Neolithic survival required not only effective food storage but also increased production. Children on a farm can be more helpful and be put in less danger than those on a hunt. Neolithic women increasingly bore more children, either because of increased food production or to help augment it. This increase in child bearing may also have offset an increase in mortality due to disease. Dangers from disease increased in new villages due to the ease with which deadly diseases spread in close quarters as well as the proximity of domesticated animals whose diseases spread from animal to humans. More children would be necessary to replace those who had succumbed to illness.
While Neolithic women carried an increased child-bearing responsibility, their other responsibilities did not necessarily wane. Though women may not have fired pottery when it began to appear some 6,000 years ago, female fertility images did appear on the pottery as decorative symbols. Around 4,000 BCE, gendered tasks shifted further with the domestication of draft animals. Food production again became men’s domain, as herding was incompatible with child rearing. Later, in Neolithic herding societies, women were often responsible for the domestication of feral babies, nursing and raising them. Men would shear sheep, help weave, market the textiles, and cultivate the food that was prepared in the home.
We should say that this was not the case with all agricultural societies, as many horticulturalists who were able to cultivate crops closer to home were able to remain matrilineal, for example Minoan women on the Mediterranean island of Crete. On Crete’s hilly terrain, women were able to cultivate terraced horticulture and keep herds of sheep and goats nearby. Whereas women lost power and influence elsewhere due to more intensive agriculture, Minoan women actually expanded their control over Crete’s economic and cultural life and helped give rise to Classical Greece.
Societal Changes
By 8,500 BCE, cultivated agriculture was used by some groups as the primary means of providing food. But other groups who likely saw agriculture in practice refused to adopt it for hundreds or even thousands of years. Others adopted agriculture, abandoned it, and finally adopted it again hundreds of years later. The shift from hunter-gatherer to agriculturally based communities was not rapid nor universal nor consistently pursued in early centuries of this revolution. This was a slow, piecemeal, but in the end epic, revolution.
History is not a story of uninterrupted progress or a journey to a certain goal. History is the story of a constant chain of problems humans confronted and solutions they attempted. There were many problems humans faced as a result of abandoning their system of foraging and informal tribal social organization as they embarked on the road to settled agriculture and complex social systems. Human populations began to grow rapidly once people created and stored food surpluses. Even during the transitional Neolithic period, as humans made partial steps to control their food supply, human populations soared. Once humans began to completely rely on cultivated food, global populations entered a period of escalation still evident today. The ability to cultivate agriculture enabled humans to breach natural population limits, establishing the foundation for the myriad achievements of human societies – but at a price. Human population growth led to ancient as well as contemporary problems, including intense pressures on natural resources, threats to the ecosystems, and social and political tensions, consequences seen in the past and acutely in the present. In the 21st century, we confront many dilemmas related to the still dramatic growth in human population set in motion at the start of human history.
Learning in Action – ‘World Population – An Interactive Experience’
View the website: “Exploring Population Growth From 1 C.E. to 2050”, World Population History.Org.
Link: https://worldpopulationhistory.org/map/1/mercator/1/0/25/
1. Go to menu and link to ‘Watch the Video’
Questions to answer:
- What parts of the globe had high population densities early on?
- What is the projected global population by the year 2050?
2. On the same site, link to ‘Explore the Map and Timeline’. View the interactive animated maps; you can adjust for Themes and Overlays to retrieve different information.
Question to answer:
- Identify one example of a significant change occurring between 1 CE and 1000 CE displayed by this interactive map.
The benefits of agriculture, as well as the problems it causes, are many. The vast increase in the percentage of biomass per acre consumable by humans meant farming groups could feed 10 to 100 times the number of people they could feed from the same region as hunter-gatherers. Since farming can be practiced near home by both sexes, the more hands on the farm the better. In farming cultures, the number of children increased as the spacing between having children decreased and food supplies became more reliable. Agriculture was both caused by, and was the cause of, increased population densities. Once farming secured much larger yields than food supplied by nature in the wild, the availability of food and need for working hands encouraged groups to increase their size. The labor intensive nature of farming encouraged people to settle in one place to watch over their farms and guard the produce harvested as well as corralled domestic animals.
An agricultural surplus provided for specialization of roles and tasks, and therefore a more complex society. Now only some members of the society were responsible for producing food surpluses that fed the entire community, leaving other societal members free to focus on additional tasks and roles. Some produced tools, some produced clothing or tools. Others became traders. Not all specialized jobs or roles were valued equally and the most powerful jobs were the political, military and religious leaders. No longer were all members of a social group relatively equal to one another, creating the roots of social hierarchy and a variety of structured class systems across agriculturally based civilizations.
The sedentary nature of new villages and farms, and need for careful planning, irrigation, and building projects, necessitated organization and long term planning, leading to the creation of formal governmental systems. Surpluses also meant more trade, and the emergence of taxation systems, which then meant the need for record keeping. This need to record economic interactions prompted creation of numerical and currency systems, as well as led to the invention of writing. These significant and substantive changes in social and political organization introduced problems as well as benefits over the next 8,000 years of human history.
Agriculture demands constant labor and attention, good soil, good weather, and plentiful water. Humans can fully control only one of the above factors: the amount of effort they invest. Efforts to ensure adequate water, arable (farm-able) soil and productive agriculture necessitated advances in technology and social organization. For example, the area around Jericho was relatively well watered by rainfall, but as a result of climate change became warmer and drier over time. Irrigation canals had to be dug and farms tended carefully to maximize production while conserving water. To maximize use of arable land, communities of farmers like those in Çatal Hüyük lived together in villages so they could maximize agricultural use of surrounding good land. To feed growing urban populations, organized activities were necessary to maximize labor efficiency. Houses had to be built, seeds stored and distributed, and everyone receive a share of the produce. Structured organization also required oversight to create and manage public work projects such as irrigation and defense fortifications. All these efforts required coordination of labor and resources, thus the need for structured, formal leadership. Emerging governmental authorities derived and justified control based on addressing needs of the community such as defending against threats of violence. Governments also justified their authority to plan, create laws, and distribute wealth on the basis of religious links, duties or support. In some cases governmental and religious authorities cooperated, or vied for power.
Hunter-gatherer groups, small in population and bound by kinship, had functioned with a very simple code of ethics. Everything was based on the value of all members of a family group who worked at essentially the same tasks – gathering food and survival. Social relations were moderated by known and accepted tribal traditions and customs. But in emerging agricultural societies, occupational specialization meant a differentiated value of individuals, leading to class differences and conflicts. Eventually the social structure of egalitarianism gave way to hierarchical and formally structured communities, and the formal law codes to regulate them. Dense settlements were no longer made up of those with kinship relations or shared customs. And there were now many issues causing conflicts, such as competition over land, class status, wealth, and power. Problems resulting from an increased number of strangers living together led to the need for laws, and formal governments to oversee and enforce those laws. Formalization of systems of morality and law became critical to prevent people from harming others with whom they had no social connection.
Having more goods and identified wealth than was necessary to survive accelerated divisions of class along wealth and power lines. The more surplus controlled, the more one could command and pay for labor. Since control of the land was the basis for agriculture, land ownership became the primary form of wealth, the center of ancient economies and power. Rather than the dominance of trade-based economics seen in modern societies, ancient economies and the power structures that accompanied them, were based on who controlled agriculture and land tenure systems.
Surpluses also enabled increases in trade, and greater trade also meant humans had the need to record economic interchange. Evidence indicates the earliest uses of symbols were for keeping economic records; these symbols evolved into the first written language systems. Later this powerful tool of writing was used to record events and knowledge related to religion, politics, as well as cultural preservation and transmission. The development of writing had profound consequences for all developing human cultures.
Formal, structured religious systems, religious rituals, and specialized religious leaders emerged in the earliest civilizations, replacing informal tribal spiritual practices. A structured and shared religion became a means of maintaining stability in new, sprawling urban centers. In many cases religion reinforced obedience and subservience to growing states . In virtually all early civilizations, religious leaders, specialists who linked the people to their gods or god, secured significant power and influence, dictating and enforcing religious practices, taxes, and obligations.
Another significant problem humans faced as a result of the advent of civilization was intensified warfare. Certainly violence between tribes occurred throughout the Paleolithic era. But the incidence and costs of violent conflict between societies significantly increased with development of agricultural villages and later the larger civilizations. Not only did settled civilizations have far more things to fight about (land, wealth, natural resources, power, class, religion), but larger populations meant leaders were more willing to risk community members in wars.
Since societies were now settled, committed to living by their fields, herds and water supplies, communities could not simply move away from conflicts with hostile neighbors as nomadic tribes had done. Civilized city-states and empires throughout recorded history competed with each other militarily for resources, in particular land and water, and control of trade revenues. War and empire building started with the first civilization, Mesopotamia, and has continued to the present century. In all cases the means and motives of warfare were reflected the acquisition of, and desire for greater, wealth and agricultural surpluses.
Question to answer:
- What environmental problems resulted from cultivated agricultural practices?
In addition to the creation of stratified societies and consolidation of control by political authorities, settled and growing populations reliant on cultivated agriculture produced significantly negative consequences for the environment. Agricultural cultivation, though usually productive, focused on use of only a small proportion of the edible wild plants available on the planet. Agricultural populations became reliant on cultivating just a few staple crops such as wheat, barley or rice. An agriculturally-based society thus relied (and still relies) on fewer food choices than hunter-gatherer societies had done, making a settled society vulnerable to disasters caused by crop failures. Most agricultural societies, even today, rely on what is known as “mono-cropping” which means the vast majority of food produced is from one variety or one type of plant. If disease or weather adversely affects that strain of the plant, a society can be in danger of massive starvation; this has happened periodically in agriculturally based societies throughout history. Heavier pressure on the soil to feed larger, dense, settled populations also led to several problems with the soil. Contending with damage done to soil due to agricultural pressure has been a prominent factor in human history. Additionally, clearing trees and native grasses to plant, or to graze domestic animals, created less diverse and less robust ecological systems.
Farming, especially mono-cropping, puts a heavy burden on the land, frequently causing soil degradation due to depletion of nutrients in the soil, intensified soil salinization through irrigation practices, accelerated erosion of topsoil due to row-cropping, and increased infestations of insects feeding on specific crops. All these effects can, in the short or long term, result in disaster. Some historians conclude early agricultural societies were in fact more vulnerable to starvation than hunter-gatherers. This is likely why many groups resisted the shift to farming. By 3100 BCE, thousands of years after the Agricultural Revolution had begun, only 3% of all humans were farmers. The rest were still hunter-gatherers.
The Agricultural Revolution meant not only attempts to control food supplies through cultivation but also domestication of animals. Like cultivation, successful domestication of animals for labor, food and resources took place over centuries. It is believed the relationship between humans and dogs goes back to about 40,000 BCE. Cows, goats, sheep, pigs, and other domestic animals appeared as domesticated livestock millennia later and significantly enhanced agricultural labor and food production. But greater control of food supplies also resulted in a dramatic increase in environmental impacts. Domestic animals had and have destructive impacts on soil due to overgrazing and the prevention of forest regrowth. In addition, actions taken to displace or even eliminate other mammals to be replaced with large domestic herds did, and continues to, contribute to habitat loss and species extinctions.
Early farmers also lived close to and were in constant contact with domesticated animals, and the evidence is clear that many devastating diseases that have plagued humanity for millennia came from viruses and bacteria which mutated from animal hosts to infect humans. These are called zoonotic diseases. Human immune systems have had to contend with numerous infections and epidemics that originated in animal populations such as smallpox, diphtheria, rubella, anthrax, bubonic plague, influenza, smallpox, and anthrax. Since species of domesticated animals differed based on regional location, so too did experiences with diseases and the build-up of immune systems. The Agricultural Revolution, specifically domestication of animals, ushered in the grim and often deadly scourge of epidemic diseases that have periodically ravaged settled societies to the present day
Neolithic developments in sedentary agriculture and village life established the foundations for an explosion of cultural development three thousand years later in Egypt and Mesopotamia. By the 1500s CE, most of the world had adopted agriculture as a primary means of subsistence, providing the bases for the flourishing of civilizations across the planet which, while diverse in many ways, share this reliance on an agricultural lifestyle.
SUMMARY
The story of world civilizations began six to eight million years ago when the ancestors of modern humans began to walk upright. Millions of years of evolutionary response to changing climates and environment led to the existence of our species, Homo sapiens. While other hominids migrated out of Africa, had language, and made fire and tools, it was Homo sapiens who were able to survive, navigate open oceans and eventually populate the entire planet. Over the last 50,000 years (roughly), Homo sapiens became modern humans by improving their hunting, their building techniques, their community living, and their food gathering and storage. About 10,000 years ago, the Neolithic Era began. Humans began to live in larger, permanent settlements based on cultivated food sources nearby. These settlements represented the beginnings of agriculture. The Agricultural Revolution led to most humans over time abandoning their foraging lifestyle, and the resulting changes deeply affected gender relationships, class distinctions, religious beliefs, political systems, economic priorities, cultural developments and environmental conditions. The diverse examples of this shift across the globe will be the topics discussed in the rest of this textbook.
WORKS CITED AND FURTHER READING
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Bradley, Bruce, and Dennis Stanford. 2004. “The North Atlantic Ice-Edge Corridor: A Possible Palaeolithic Route to the New World.” World Archaeology 36 (4): 459–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/0043824042000303656.
Callaway, Ewen. 2021a. “Oldest DNA from a Homo Sapiens Reveals Surprisingly Recent Neanderthal Ancestry.” Nature 592 (7854): 339–339. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00916-0.
———. 2021b. “Ancient Footprints Could Be Oldest Traces of Humans in the Americas.” Nature 597 (7878): 601–2. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02597-1.
Crutzen, Paul J., and Christian Schwägerl. 2011. “Living in the Anthropocene: Toward a New Global Ethos.” Yale Environment 360, January 24, 2011. https://e360.yale.edu/features/living_in_the_anthropocene_toward_a_new_global_ethos.
Diamond, Jared M. 1997. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Dillehay, Tom D., Carlos Ocampo, José Saavedra, Andre Oliveira Sawakuchi, Rodrigo M. Vega, Mario Pino, Michael B. Collins, et al. 2015. “New Archaeological Evidence for an Early Human Presence at Monte Verde, Chile.” Edited by John P. Hart. PLOS ONE 10 (11): e0141923. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141923.
Estalrrich, Almudena, and Antonio Rosas. 2015. “Division of Labor by Sex and Age in Neandertals: An Approach through the Study of Activity-Related Dental Wear.” Journal of Human Evolution 80 (March): 51–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2014.07.007.
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LINKS TO PRIMARY SOURCES
Bering Land Bridge National Preserve: https://www.nps.gov/bela/index.htm
Dolni Vetoniçe: http://australianmuseum.net.au/dolni-vstonice-archaeological-site
IPCC Reports: https://www.ipcc.ch/about/history/
Natufian site of Eyan/Ain Mallaha: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/eyna/hd_eyna.htm
Oldowan & Acheulean Stone Tools: https://anthromuseum.missouri.edu/e-exhibits/oldowan-and-acheulean-stone-tools
UNESCO Site – Çatalhüyük: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1405
Media Attributions
- HuellasdeAcahualinca
- Ice Age Timelines
- fields_farming_tobacco_oftersheim_agriculture_nature_farm_rural-1071452
- Putative_migration_waves_out_of_Africa; Vva
- Peopling_of_America_through_Beringia
- 1599px-Upper_Paleolithic_art,_Prestigious_stone_tools,_Anthropos,_Brno,_187948
- Lascaux_II
- Naked_and_hulled_wheat
- Fertile_crescent_Neolithic_B_circa_7500_BC
- Çatalhöyük,_7400_BC,_Konya,_Turkey_-_UNESCO_World_Heritage_Site,_10
- Britishmuseumassyrianrelieftwohorsemennimrud
- Parthian_Temple_of_the_Gareus_(30572591920)