|
History 100World History to 1500 |
Why did people do it? Life was easy, people had to work only a few hours a day to feed themselves; why go to the bother of farming? A better way of seeing this is to ask, "Did people have to farm to survive?" An age-old question that has tortured scholars is, did the population grow, and so people needed to develop agriculture and domestic animals to survive, or did the population grow because of the development of agriculture and animal domestication? Do you want to know the answer? Well, so do I. We simply have not been able to definitively say. The correct answer is probably much more complex. For example, we know that the environment also played a role.
Paleoclimatologists—yep, people who study prehistoric climate and climatic change—have learned, through studying core samples taken primarily in Greenland, Antarctica, and the Mediterranean Sea, that the world's climate has not remained static, and many have studied how the changing climate has affected human populations.
One event that encouraged the development of domestication (plants and animals) was the end of the Ice Age. As the Ice Age ended, animals that had thrived in it also began to decline, making it hard to make a living hunting. Gathering probably became even more important; especially as the warmer weather between 6000 and 2000 BCE caused the rise in cereal grains and other food plants.
Another climatic event that influenced people was the spread of the Sahara Desert. Things got desperate around 5000 BCE for the inhabitants of the Sahara, and many of them migrated west to the Niger River area, many northward to the green lands on the banks of the Mediterranean, and many went to the Nile River to the east. All of these areas had plentiful food for hunting, gathering, and fishing. It has been suggested that people were able to live in these areas, and many others, following the Paleolithic lifestyle, without moving seasonally. In other words, they settled down. However, as the desertification increased, so did the refugee population, necessitating new food sources. One of the solutions was to initiate agriculture and animal domestication. Of course there's always my personal favorite theory: so that they could have a steady supply of grain to make beer.
It is important to note, that people did not wake up one day and say, “Hunting and gathering is no good, let’s invent agriculture.” The truth is, early agriculture did not replace hunting and gathering; it still hasn’t in many parts of the world today. Neolithic peoples continued to hunt and gather to supplement their diets, and to keep some variety on the table. Also, many peoples chose not to adopt the Neolithic lifestyle because their climate and environment still supported hunting and gathering. Farming and pastoralism were more dependable, but also more time consuming. Estimates are that Neolithic peoples worked up to 80% of their time in food acquisition, while Paleolithic peoples worked only 20% of their time for their less reliable livelihood.
And, you guessed it, Neolithic like Paleolithic, is a lifestyle and doesn’t conform to exact dates. There are still people today following the Neolithic lifestyle.
Farming developed differently in different places, and at different times. The first crop that we know of that was domesticated was wheat someplace in the Fertile Crescent. Many scholars pinpoint the region occupied by present day Turkey for the origin of Einkorn and Emmer wheat, both believed to be the ancestors of Bread Wheat. Einkorn wheat grew prolifically in the area, and as people harvested it, they chose the largest seed heads, those in particular with seeds that stayed fastened to the stalk after harvesting. Those seeds that didn’t stay attached fell on the ground to be eaten by birds or other animals, leaving fewer of those to reseed. Those larger, more stable seeds could be easily transported and then made into bread, or saved to be planted later. This process selected for attributes that people wanted, which may have facilitated the transition to agriculture in that area in a mere 300 years, and that’s fast for history.
Though the Fertile Crescent is often sited as the first place grains were domesticated, some people look to Southeast Asia where rice may have been domesticated as early as 10,000 BCE, even though the Chinese would later take credit for it. Africans domesticated sorghum in 8000BCE. The Greeks were farming by 6000 BCE. Americans domesticated maize (corn) in 5000BCE.
All of this farming had a dramatic impact on the world’s population. Scholars estimate that the human population may have been at about10 million in 5000 BCE, but then boomed to between 50 million and 100 million by 1000 BCE.
 |
| Women agriculturalists in modern Madagascar |
So who exactly developed agriculture? Well, scholars assert that agriculture, the single most important development in all of human history, was invented by women. It only makes sense really. Women were the ones who did the gathering. They knew what plants were good to eat, and what ones were dangerous, where the plants were, their growth habits, and when they became ripe; it isn’t a far stretch to imagine women beginning to tend the plants they gathered, shaking the plants to encourage the scattering of dry seeds, watering delicate seedlings during droughts, cutting down competing trees or plants to facilitate the growth of desirable ones. Eventually, agriculture became a priority. We think that the fields were owned and tended by women, and passed to their daughters. Men probably cleared the land, but didn’t have any claim to it. Remember, women’s role in child bearing was pretty clear, but men’s role in conception appears to have remained mysterious. It was only natural that women would pass the land along to their daughters. They knew how to work the land and women of course knew who their children were, even if the men didn’t.
And how do we know all of this? Through ethnographic studies, contact period observation, and some ancient peoples writing about Neolithic memories, and people with whom they came in contact.
The domestication of animals receives much less attention than the domestication of plants. So, who domesticated animals? Men of course--just like women were experts on plants through their gathering activities, men were experts on animal behavior through their hunting experiences.
Scholars have hypothesized that sometimes during hunts, men killed the mother of young animals. Instead of killing the young, they apparently took them back to camp and tamed them. In some cases, the animals bred, and people discovered that raising the animals for food, milk, and leather was more efficient than merely hunting. We do believe that men continued to hunt, both to keep their military skills honed, and for the pleasure of hunting.
Many agriculturalists kept animals for milk, leather, and meat, and they also began to use them for plowing the fields. In fact one theory holds that as men used domesticated animals to plow fields, they began to assert control and ownership over those fields and those who claimed them. Some scholars say that this is the beginning of patriarchy, or male domination of women. This may also be how and when men discovered that they too had a role in child bearing, and men may have begun to demand fidelity from women at this point, but this is purely conjecture. Men have dominated women for so long, it is simply impossible to know.
 |
| Pastoralists in Tanzania |
Herding animals, or pastoralism, developed right along side agriculture, maybe by about 7000 BCE. Pastoralism was different than the keeping of animals as practiced by agriculturalists. Agriculturalists kept animals to supplement their livelihood, pastoralists kept animals as their livelihood. Like other herd animals, the herds of pastoralists needed to be kept fed by migrating seasonally. It was also a difficult lifestyle. People had few possessions, and spent a lot of their time traveling. They lived almost completely off of what their animals produced: food, drink, clothing, shelter, and sometimes transportation were provided by their animals. Most scholars do not think that people took up this way of life voluntarily. As agricultural populations grew, both through migration and birth, eventually there was just not enough land to support everybody. Some people got pushed off to marginal land where agriculture was difficult. As things got crowded there, more people got pushed onto land that was not viable for agriculture, and so many developed a pastoral lifestyle.
Pastoral peoples and settled peoples often came into conflict over land and other resources. But their relationship was not always antagonistic. In fact their relationship would be better characterized as symbiotic. Nomadic pastoralists traded goods with each other and with settled peoples. Pastoralists also traded animals to agriculturalists, especially horses. Settled peoples traded agricultural products and finished goods such as cloth and luxury goods. Each could not really survive without the other, and neither would even exist without the other; the two lifestyles developed simultaneously; they are two sides of the same coin—the Neolithic coin.
If pastoral peoples got the short end of the stick, and the agriculturalists got all of the good land and wealth and all, why is it so hard to get pastoralists to settle down and become agriculturalists?
It’s actually not that hard to figure out. Yes, agriculturalists won in the land grab, and eventually got wealthy in the end, but pastoralists got more freedom. Pastoralists also became experts at warfare, and so got goods and excitement that way. Farming was dull. Farming was unpredictable. Farming meant that you ate grain, day after day, after day; well, you get the picture.
Why do that when you can eat what you kill, find wild berries, trade for exotic goods and kill people? Well, the answer is obvious.
In addition to that, the relations between settled and nomadic peoples rarely went smoothly. Pastoralists tended to think that agriculturalists were very wealthy, and pastoralists had a share the wealth attitude about the wealth of farmers, one with which farmers did not agree. So, pastoralists figured out pretty early that attempts by settled peoples to get them to farm were not offered out of the goodness of their heart, but were rather a method of social control, and an unappealing one at that, since land offered to pastoralists by agriculturalists was often quite marginal, and so no one could make a living from it. If someone could, it would already be in production by an agriculturalist.
See?
 |
Skara Brae is a Neolithic village located in the Orkney Islands, off the northern coast of Scotland. |
A village is a gathering of dwellings inhabited by and probably owned by agriculturalists. They tended to be rather small, and often circular in form. Many of the dwellings themselves were circular. Most of the people in the villages worked in agriculture, although a few may have had side jobs in ceramics, blacksmithing, or cloth production.
Villages were insular. Everybody within a village knew each other. Villagers tended to intermarry, and everyone within the village tended to be related by blood or marriage. People rarely traveled outside of the village, and were distrusting of those who did. A village was an interconnected and interdependent community, with all of the pressures and advantages that accompany such an institution.
Villages are associated with the Neolithic period. Some scholars believe that villages simply grew larger to become cities, but others believe that cities were different in character than villages.
On the subject of matriarchy, students always ask me if in a long ago Golden Age all societies were run by women, and then some mysterious event took place, men took over, and it’s essentially been downhill for women’s power ever since.
This theory has been popular for sometime, at least until the Romantic Era of the 19th century, but you can see it even in the legend of the Amazons and Nubians.
In fact, there is no evidence that worldwide women were ever in charge. Women have always been essential to the survival of humans, from child bearing to providing up to 80% of the community’s diet. Women worked as shamans, political leaders, and even warriors. There are societies still today that are similar to the ones discussed by Heide Goettner-Abendroth in your reading below. But female leaders have always been an anomaly, surrounded by and controlled by men when they did exist.
What of goddesses you say? Wasn’t there a time when female goddesses reigned supreme? Yes, but that’s really no indication of de facto (actual) power of women. I refer you here to modern day India, where female goddess are quite common and popular, and India has not yet attained equality for women.
Matriarchal Society: Definition and Theory
By Heide Goettner-Abendroth
You may use the optional material to start discussion threads if you like.