Ancient and ArchaeologyÌý permalink
Hunter gatherer to farmer, why?
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Friday, 1st October 2010
I was reading a book while on holiday, and although fiction, it made me ask the question, why did we go from being Hunter gatherers to farmers. A huntergatherer would spend a couple of hours a day collecting or hunting food. The rest of the day would be spent as free time in which he could work in leather or wood. When he switched to being a farmer, he would be forced to spend almost all of the day working in the field. The result was his life expectancy decreased, and also things his ancestors had made in their free time, was now being made by the developing specialist, for which the new farmers would have to pay either in cash or kind. So it makes you wonder who woke up one morning and decided that he would rather spend all day working than a few hours a day hunting. Thus setting out our future.
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Message 2
Posted by ±«Óãtv auto-messages (U294) on Friday, 1st October 2010
Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'History Hub' to 'Ancient and Archaeology'.
Hi there,
This is probably most at home in A&A.
Cheers
Andrew -
Message 3
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Friday, 1st October 2010
Sorry Grumpyfred, personal theory only and not based on much knowledge but I assumed that the change from hunter/gatherer to farmer was due to climate more than anything.
In places that experience harsh and/or snowbound winters the need to store enough food to enable survival for months at a time would have been imperative. Hunting and gathering alone would not yield enough to last during the winter months for an extended family or small community. Planting extra seeds, of those foods that store easily, to help yield would be the next logical step to ensure enough quantity to last.
But not everyone found the need to farm. The Aboriginal remained semi-nomadic hunter/gatherers for the 40,000 years they inhabited Australia, where there is not the extreme variation in seasonal temperatures that Europe experiences. Aboriginals found that by managing the land, controlling what was taken from it and then moving on to a new area after a period of time, allowed the land to regenerate and ensured a continual food supply.
And of course, Australia has the room to allow this practice. Possibly population growth meaning less available land in Europe also played a part in the development of farming? -
Message 4
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Friday, 1st October 2010
Hi fred,
Well, you've stepped into a minefield of conflicting theories here. The real answer is - your guess is probably as good as anyone else's. The process appears to have started in the Near East, in the Levant, where the hunter-gather-fisher peoples over a long period from about 12000BC began herding gazelles and storing wild grains which developed into basic farming practices. This may have been exacerbated by climate change. This spread westward along the Mediterranean coast and up the Danube valley but to what extent this was by people migrating or by the adoption of these ideas by the indigenous population is not clear. In many places the two systems co existed for a long time, mostly peacefully it seems but sometimes there is evidence of conflict.
As to why a farming lifestyle was adopted throughout is heatedly debated. Some theorists have suggested that, in places like Turkey at least, it was associated with a change of ideology which placed the 'wild' in opposition to the 'home'. Others have thought that it spread almost like a religion with 'missionaries' or that it became the fashionable thing to do or the result of a flood of incomers. Certainly in Britain the domesticates, if not the actual farmers, were brought in along with the other identifiers of the Neolithic like monumentalism, long distance trade and polished stone axes, so it was not a straightforward change of subsistence practice.
In reality it was probably a mixture of different factors but you are right, the change was not simply a pragmatic choice. The mesolithic has often been portrayed as the last Eden and their lives were not an endless struggle for existence so why they opted for the toil of farming and the subjugation of their lives to the vagaries of the weather and the rule of the seasons is still a pretty mysterious question. -
Message 5
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Friday, 1st October 2010
Sorry, should have qualified this as being an entirely Euro/Near Eastern-centric view. I'm afraid that's about as far as I can say anything even slightly relevant!
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Message 6
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Friday, 1st October 2010
Population pressure? Farming may be more labour-intensive, but it does allow an increased population.
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Message 7
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Friday, 1st October 2010
This takes us into todays third world where families need to be big to farm, and because thefamilies are big, they then need to farm more land, so they need more children to work the land. We should have stuck to huntergathering.
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Message 8
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Friday, 1st October 2010
Re: Message 6.
Gil,
did some quick research with "agricultural revolution" as I translated it from my Dutch speaking mind. But not as intended I came on some recent British agricultural revolution...
Had to start in Google with "neolithic revolution" before I received something "reasonable"...
Reminds me of a French history messageboard, where I started to explain "le sentiment bourguignon" (the Burgundian feeling), which they seemed to take literally as tendency to the Burgundian cause, into, what we call in Dutch the well known "bourgondisch gevoel", the life of good food and cosy well being, a lifestyle not afraid to spent money especially on food and drink and easy life...but that concept don't exist in the French language, as I saw from the reactions and after a quick search in Google...now there is a Frenchman, speaking about teh North of Belgium and the South...and he seems to know a bit about the animosities in todays Belgium...and there are mostly Francophone Belgians on this messageboard...and I as a "Belgicist", who thinks that the "sentiment bourguignon" is common in the whole! of Belgium...
But there as overhere I have tried to stay neutral, historic and not biased. And until now I succeeded even in the most "vitriolic" discussions...
And that expanding from one topic to quite another topic I think I have from my grandma and ancestors on my father's side...
And about the causes of the neolithic revolution:
You seems to have pointed to one of them.
Kind regards from your friend,
Paul. -
Message 9
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Saturday, 2nd October 2010
Paul, thank you for that, and for the rest of you who have added to my limited knowlage on the subject. I am normaly found on either the History or War and conflicts sites. It is strange (Though understandable) that the farmers lost around 8 inches in hight. A hunter gatherer would need those inches for reaching up into the trees, or for the strength to use his weapons. A farmer would need to be closer to the earth and the extra hight would become a burden.(And a pain in the back) Again as pointed out, the native Australian survived quite well as hunter gatherers until the white man arrived. As did the native American. In both cases, their families/tribes matched the size of the land needed to support them. We have much to learn from these people.
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Message 10
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Saturday, 2nd October 2010
GF: I reckon pastoralists like the Maasai and some of the Bantu peoples also have lessons for us.
Paul.
Just need to find the appropriate treaty and away we go as per -
Message 11
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Saturday, 2nd October 2010
" the native Australian survived quite well as hunter gatherers until the white man arrived. As did the native American. In both cases, their families/tribes matched the size of the land needed to support them. We have much to learn from these people."
Yes, I've always thought so too. The Aboriginals believe that they belong to earth or land, i.e the earth ownes them and not, as is the European belief or custom, that it is the people who own the land. I'm not sure what is the belief of the native American concerning land ownership but, unlike the indigenous Australian, many native American tribes did not depend entirely on a hunting and gathering existance. Some tribes did plant crops of grain and vegetables to supplement their food supply.
Although as carefree as a gathering and hunting existance sounds it does leave a family or community vulnerable and completely dependant on the elements. An extended period of drought, heavy rain or low temperatures ensures a scarce food supply and eventual starvation. In this light it is understandable that many have attempted to exert some control over their enviroment by farming food crops and the domestication of live stock. Food carefully stored away from years of plenty would enable survival through a lean year or two. -
Message 12
Posted by WickerMan (U14275309) on Saturday, 2nd October 2010
Much might depend on the type of land these tribes live on. Then of course there was always some kind of Climate Change. The Sahara was grassland, trees and a large lake early in human history.
Where the land cannot easily sustain repeatable use (farming) the tribes likely maintain a hunter-gatherer existance. But where land is moist with easy access to water hunter-gatherers can adopt farming.
Wickerman. -
Message 13
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Saturday, 2nd October 2010
I wonder how ancient the apparent antipathy of settled peoples to nomadic ones is. It seems a general attitude that, once a degree of social organisation has appeared among those have adopted a sedentary lifestyle, they begin to despise the mobile life and attempt to curtail it. Is this because they feel threatened by the freedom it allows and their inability to exercise control over the nomads? It can't be simply an altruistic impulse to improve lives otherwise the overt discrimination that is so often apparent would surely not occur?
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Message 14
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Saturday, 2nd October 2010
The result was his life expectancy decreased, and also things his ancestors had made in their free time, was now being made by the developing specialist, for which the new farmers would have to pay either in cash or kind.Ìý
The specialist might have made things which were better, or done an unpleasant job such as flint mining. So not necessarily a bad thing. In modern hunter-gatherer societies the specialization is there already anyway, with hunters primarily hunting, and avoiding most of the gathering.
In Peru, the earliest settled communities were fishing (hunters) in areas where the Pacific was particularly rich in fish. It was only later that the gathering part developed into agriculture (initially to supplement the fish) as it was a more reliable than wandering and hoping for the right tree. For them, agriculture came to predominate without anyone ever planning it! -
Message 15
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Sunday, 3rd October 2010
Re: Message 12.
Wickerman,
if I understood you well, you stick, as I, to an evolution of adaptation to the environment leading in some cases to domestication and agricultural attempts?
As such, from the several theories in the wiki article, I find the most logical one the David Rindos approach, again if I understood it well...
From wiki:
"The evolutionary/intentionality theory, developed by David Rindos[12] and others, views agriculture as an evolutionary adaptation of plants and humans. Starting with domestication by protection of wild plants, it led to specialization of location and then full-fledged domestication."
About David Rindos:
And that specific work:
Coincidentally and as an aside I found this personal tragedy of David Rindos leading perhaps to his death. I mention it for Therese, Wollemi (Julie) and Caro. But I completely agree that such infighting can happen at whatever university of the world outside Australia too.
For those interested read the link:
Kind regards and with esteem,
Paul. -
Message 16
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Sunday, 3rd October 2010
Re: Message 10.
Gilgamesh,
"Paul.
Just need to find the appropriate treaty and away we go as per en.wikipedia.org/wik..."
The keyword to extend was "Burgundy"...Gil, I thank you so much for enabling me to view the whole film...one word: splendid...
For the interested ones: 12 episodes of about 7 minuts (I see now that it is "minutes"...and what are then the "minutes" of a conference?)
And from this I came on another aside:
1666 previlege (charter) from Charles II for Bruges: 50 fisherboats have the right ad aeternum to fish near the British coast. This document is one of the important assets in the town's archive of Bruges.
In 1963 a Brugean shipowner, Victor De Paepe, tried to enforce the act, but was entered by the British coast guard. I remember still all the fuss about the event in the daily press of that year.
On 16 December 1999 there was a question about the incident in the Senate of teh Belgian parliament, as it seemed that the laywers of the British government had asked to not proceed in this trial, while it was obvious that the act was still law...as there had been no trial the minister asked to provide some evidence about the trial and the aftermath...and as there were now EU rules and all costal fishing grounds for non-British were now established...
Gil, the keyword here is a small town Bruges, fighting the mighty United Kingdom...
And it is not appropriate for the "Ancients" messageboard (I once asked Priscilla in my innocence, what A&A were...we Belgians, not so used to abbreviations), but nevertheless it is all history...
Kind regards and with esteem for all your short and to the point messages,
Paul. -
Message 17
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Monday, 4th October 2010
There should be no wonder over the transition from hunter gathering into agricultural societies : it happened for the same reason all matriarchal societies evolved into patriarchal. I.e. pressure and necessity. There was rarely any question of personal convenience no matter if in certain cases agriculture indeed seemed a more secure way of obtaining food (but the quality!?). Agricultural-based patriarchal societies were in the long run the ones that provided communities with more power. Hence with the lapse of time they expanded and overlapped with those hunter-gathering and those matriarchal ones and 9 out of 10 times either "converted" them prior to conquest, conquered them and enslaved them or conquered and obliterrated them.
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Message 18
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Monday, 4th October 2010
is strange (Though understandable) that the farmers lost around 8 inches in hight. A hunter gatherer would need those inches for reaching up into the treesÌý
I doubt very much that this, essentially evolutionary, change occurred in the way you describe. That would take a reasonably long period of time, in human history terms, I think. Even allowing for the 'punctuated equilibrium' effect.
More likely is that the type of labour affected the physical growth of individuals.
Possibly, there is an ethnic difference, with new racial groups coming in to a region and bringing different practices with them.
Possibly a mixture of both. -
Message 19
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Monday, 4th October 2010
No Tim, I am really wondering why you jumped over "nutritional habits" to explain the height difference.
Evidently, a hunter-gathering lifestyle provides much more protein than the agricultural lifestyle. No protein no height. The very same populations changed height with changing lifestyle and diet habbits.
There is no magic over it. Perhaps the most interesting research can be done in Greece. You have the same people going on for at least more than 10,000 years (in a continuity attested both anthropologically as well as culturally), yet the height differentiated considerably:
Hunter gatherers like elsewhere were taller than the later 10,000-3000 B.C. agriculturers whose height had fallen visibly before rising up again during Mycenean times due to the massive import of wheat that enabled the local cultivation of animal feedstock and thus increase the number of cows, goats and sheeps. However by the end of the Mycenean era the financial collapse brought an abrupt end and the life conditions deteriorated with people subsisting their needs only mainly ue to local production, hence the average hieght had fallen at times seven below to 1,60 for men (I do not want even to know for women...). Even at the end of classical times the average citizens had never reached again the lifestyle Myceneans had and continued to eat less meat, thus having less height. Things might have got better in hellenistic times but mainly speaking about the higher classes (as a part of the Greek middle class went to the east and became there the higher class) - it is known that Greeks in the east were described as tall, handsome people. During Roman times this trend somewhat slowed down but during Byzantine times, it seems that Greeks not only ate well but actually presented a high class cuisine based on meat rather than vegetables and it is known that during most periods (apart wars and destruction - which occured of course relatively often) middle class people had standard presence of meat on their table much more than people in the east or even west, yet known for its vast fields and large flocks of animals (at the end oft the day Italian cuisine is based on the by now lost Byzantine fragments of which survive in a part of the modern Greek, Ottoman/turkish, Armenian and Lebanese cuisines).
From there on, Greeks went wars, famine, oppresive occupation which reduced height against below 1,60 reaching the 20th century as one of the most short European nations. Yet from the 1960s onwards the nation did an Olympics record-style height-leap jumping to an average height for men of about 1,79 which is about the average in all Europe which more than 15cm increase in about 40 years (from 1960 to 2000). And this is no measurement out of some research measuring 2000-3000 people around the country, or no hospital measuring its vicinity: these are the measurements taken in the medical examination at entry point in the military service, an exam that even those who are not finally serving for whatever reason (the usual...) are taking part and as such you have the quasitotality of the adult male population.
So if Greeks returned from the shortest nation in Europe to the average European and internationally relatively tall nation in less than 50 years of changing diet, then one can only imagine what 100-200 or 1000 years of agricultural lifestyle could cause in ex-hunter-gatherers.
One has to note that the height of hunter gatherers also was highly dependent on the affluence of their region and their diets. Some hunter-gatherers were more hunters than gahterers others the opposite. -
Message 20
Posted by TimTrack (U1730472) on Monday, 4th October 2010
No Tim, I am really wondering why you jumped over "nutritional habits" to explain the height difference.Ìý
So am I.
Yes, nutrition, specially in childhood, would immediately affect height.
This is demonstrable in poor urban eras even quite recently in history. -
Message 21
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Monday, 4th October 2010
It's also instructive to consider the height changes in Japan post WWII.
The "evolution" bit sounds so very like the utterly discredited Lamarckian theories that it's difficult to take it as a serious suggestion. -
Message 22
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Monday, 4th October 2010
the native Australian survived quite well as hunter gatherers until the white man arrived. As did the native American.Ìý
If it is possible to speak of a representative American Indian then the odds were that he would have been a farmer, not a hunter-gatherer. Agriculture was firmly established throughout the the eastern half and the south-west of what would become the USA several hundreds of years before the arrival of Europeans. -
Message 23
Posted by Poldertijger (U11154078) on Monday, 11th October 2010
Hello Fred,
The Sub-Atlanticum that made temperatures reach values, which are two degrees higher than they are today, brought hardship to the hunters. Wild animals became sparse in relation to the number of hunters in Europe at the time. The hunters might have seen to novel ways to ensure a regular supply of proteins. They came up with farming.
Some of the contributors of your thread have wondered how the farmers could persevere against the resistance of the hunters, given that the hunters were healthier than the farmers. I wonder if evolution theory might provide the answer. It is a known fact that hunters need vast areas per head, e.g. a small number of lions to a large number of wildebeast. Farmers, on the other hand use far less area per head.
So even if the hunter gatherers were healthier than farmers, the hunters were still beaten by the farmers, who possessed superiority in numbers.
Regards,
Poldertijger -
Message 24
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Tuesday, 12th October 2010
While the communities of hunters were numbering on average from 50 to 150 people, the first agricultural communities soon rose to be at minimum 200-300 people. However, what played even more in favour of agriculturers was that the higher number and the differential in food-retrival and food-consumption enabled the creation of other full-time professions and among them the very nice profession of professional leader and his troops. One also needs to pinpoint that in those early agricultural societies, the leading class and the full-time guards remained actually hunters as back then military capacity was tightly linked with hunting skills - something which remained a tradition till quite late times into history. Hunting offered protein which was much need for building taller and stronger men. In certain cases you even had the example of hunters actually not being conquered or pushed back by agriculturers but actually winning over them and then becoming their leadership, i.e. moving from the profession of full-time hunter to the profession of leader & guardian/soldier and occasional hunter - half for the quality high-protein food half for the pleasure of it.
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Message 25
Posted by englishvote (U5473482) on Tuesday, 12th October 2010
In answer to Grumpyfred’s initial question of “who woke up one morning and decided that he would rather spend all day working than a few hours a day huntingâ€, the facts are that nobody ever made that choice.
Hunter gatherers grew crops and farmers hunted and gathered, in fact this has not changed with even our modern industrial society still obtaining a large portion of its food by hunter gathering.
Farming started with the simple harvesting, transporting and planting of seeds by hunter gatherers, and this probably carried on for thousands of years.
Migrating hunters would plant areas with crops and know that when they returned to those areas could be harvested.
Human intelligence led to cultivation, we simple reasoned that reliable crops could be harvested in greater amounts if we cultivated the crop rather than searched for them in the open environment.
The idea that hunter gatherers are healthier than farmers is out of date and ignores the fact that for the last 12,000 years humans in Europe, Asia and the Middle East have been both hunter gathers and farmers.
Humans did not evolve into farmers, quite the opposite, evolution created superb hunters with the intelligence to reason and control their food sources.
This intelligence has given us the ability to pen animals and cultivate crops because we can reason and act on our ideas unlike any other species.
Farmers took over from hunter gathering because it provided greater food resources and could support a larger community.
From these settlements grew tribes and nations, mainly because a fixed food source is vulnerable to being stolen and thus needs defending.
A farmer needs to be able to defend his crops more than a hunter gatherer needs to be able to defend his territory. -
Message 26
Posted by Poldertijger (U11154078) on Tuesday, 12th October 2010
Hello Englishvote,
You write that:
In answer to Grumpyfred's initial question of 'who woke up one morning and decided that he would rather spend all day working than a few hours a day hunting', the facts are that nobody ever made that choice.Ìý
I beg to differ, the facts are that we can pinpoint exactly who made that choice in Europe; it was the people of the LBK culture This culture thrived in the Atlantic In this entry of Wikipedia you can find the inverse relationship between the abundance of wild life and the appearance of farming cultures:
Northeast Europe was uninhabited in the Early Atlantic. When the Mesolithic Sertayan Culture appeared there in the Middle Atlantic, around 7000 BP, it already had pottery and was more sedentary than earlier hunter-gatherers, depending on the great abundance of wild-life. Pottery was being used around the lower Don and Volga from about 8000 BP.
In the Late Atlantic the Sertayan evolved into the Rudnyaian, which used pottery like that of the Narvian and Dnieper Cultures. This use of pottery upsets the idea that pottery belongs to the Neolithic. Further to the south the Linear Pottery culture had already spread into the riverlands of central Europe and was working a great transformation of the land. On the steppe to the east the Samara culture was deeply involved with large numbers of horses although in what capacity is not yet clear.
Source: Ìý
Your assertion that the great jumps that mankind has made, viz. the Neolithic Revolution, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the civilizations that rose out of the four great religions, the Western civilization and the Industrial Revolution,
were not made to overcome stress is quite wrong; all these transitions were forced upon mankind to overcome problems that, if unsolved, would have sent civilization into a tailspin downwards. Cf. the Bronze Age Collapse: for an example of the outcome, if the problems of society can't be solved.
This is the reason that the Aboriginals never took up farming; they were never forced to do so.
Your assertion that health and height are not related is at odds with current thinking.
On the reason that farmers took over you write:
Farmers took over from hunter gathering because it provided greater food resources and could support a larger community.Ìý
Like I said:
The hunters might have seen to novel ways to ensure a regular supply of proteins. They came up with farming.Ìý
You statement that farmers took over from hunter gathering because it provided greater food resources seems to be at odds with your initial statement:
the facts are that nobody ever made that choice.Ìý
What is it englishvote: did hunter gatherers make a choice or didn't they?
Regards,
Poldertijger -
Message 27
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Tuesday, 12th October 2010
EV, much of this is plausible but still smacks of the kind of just so stories that seems to be prevalent in many explanations. It must be pointed out that the mechanisms behind state formation are just as complex as those behind the initial adoption of farming and probably should not be brought into the discussion otherwise it will wind up confusing the whole issue. Suffice to say I am not convinced that the impetus for this process was the defence of farmland and grain because as a commodity it appears to be too bulky and lacking in overall value for the effort required in carrying it away as spoils. Late Mesolithic aggregates seem to have shown an increasing complexity despite not having crops to tend in any case.
While I would agree that the notion of hunter-gatherers lead healthier lifestyles is something of an oversimplification of the apparent decrease in height between Mesolithic and Neolithic communities there is a suggestion that there was a major difference between the quality of the level of nutrition during their childhood. Certainly the assumption that the more varied a diet the greater its overall nutritional value would seem to hold true. Even in the Near East where Nitrogen isotope analysis of the composition of human remains suggests that populations were increasingly reliant on grains for most of their calorific intake from around twenty thousand years ago, the transition to fully domesticated varieties was accompanied by a dramatic decrease in the number of species that were being exploited.
It may well be the case that the more varied diet of Mesolithic populations was allied to lower population densities thus calorific intake was higher overall despite less intensive use of the land. One would also presume that the exploitation of a wide variety of foodstuffs over reliance on a few intensely managed crops allowed for greater insurance against the failure of one staple. Thus the difference in average height over time may have been influenced by the fact that poor harvests in larger agricultural communities would have lead to an increase in the likely hood of malnutrition during childhood and adolescence, restricting their growth. That said the number of burials and the timescale they are spread over may well mask the difference between the level of nutrition at the point of transition in the Near East. -
Message 28
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Tuesday, 12th October 2010
Having said that, given grains were commonly used as the basis for alcoholic drinks it may be that Neolithic communities were too busy getting smashed to bother looking after the kids. Seriously, the value of alcohol as a source of calories among Eurasian farming communities probably should not be discounted. It may also have been the spur for other communities to adopt grain cultivation. Ethnographic evidence certainly suggests that alcohol tends to have a detrimental effect on existing cultural norms when it is first introduced to new populations while specific customs of use develop.
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Message 29
Posted by englishvote (U5473482) on Wednesday, 13th October 2010
Hi Poldertijger
My point was that it was not the choice one sunny day of any individual to suddenly give up hunter gathering and become the world’s first farmer.
Mankind as a whole has indeed made the choice and many cultures have embraced farming and civilisation for many differing reasons, but not purely because of pressure.
I beg to differ, the facts are that we can pinpoint exactly who made that choice in Europe; it was the people of the LBK culture
Ìý
This article basically supports my premise that the switch from hunter gatherer to farmer was a slow process and is still ongoing.
The human population of Europe before the arrival of the LBK culture was in some places already sedentary, if not farming the land. The abundance of food resources in certain regions meant that hunter gatherers had it very easy and had no need to migrate.
But the people of the LBK culture certainly did a good deal of hunter gathering.
All this of course took place thousands of years after humans had first started to farm so bears little relevance to the question of why farming started in the first place.
Your assertion that the great jumps that mankind has made, viz. the Neolithic Revolution, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the civilizations that rose out of the four great religions, the Western civilization and the Industrial Revolution,
were not made to overcome stress is quite wrong;
Ìý
I don’t recall making any such assertion and I don’t see the relevance of modern religion or cultural change to the discussion.
Farming became popular because it was successful and easier than hunter gathering, not because humans were under any stress. Quite the opposite in fact, the climate had warmed and humans benefited from it and exploited the environment by the use of farming.
My argument is that humans never gave up hunter gathering totally and that farming was introduced slowly by people who were still primarily hunter gatherers. -
Message 30
Posted by englishvote (U5473482) on Wednesday, 13th October 2010
Hi lolbeeble
It must be pointed out that the mechanisms behind state formation are just as complex as those behind the initial adoption of farming and probably should not be brought into the discussion otherwise it will wind up confusing the whole issue.
Ìý
very true and I should probably have avoided mentioning anything about it.
Suffice to say I am not convinced that the impetus for this process was the defence of farmland and grain because as a commodity it appears to be too bulky and lacking in overall value for the effort required in carrying it away as spoils.
Ìý
Actually I meant the stealing of the land itself rather than the crop.
People who lived in a productive region have been under the threat of eviction by stronger neighbours long before farming forced people to remain on the land that they farmed and thus under much greater risk from anybody who wished the land for themselves.
I’m not convinced by the height equals healthy equation or even that the evidence suggests such.
Farmers work harder than hunter gatherers and have access to larger food resources, if the equation was that simple then farmers would be healthy and tall and hunter gatherers short.
I tend to agree with Nik in message 24 that early farming communities had a male population that were primarily hunters and that most early farming was the preserve of women as had the gathering been before cultivation. -
Message 31
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Wednesday, 13th October 2010
I think we may need to distinguish between the conditions of first settlement and what developed later. The first people who decided to give agriculture a try (spontaneously, or because they heard of it from others) would have selected plots of fertile land with abundant water, and in the first years many would have enjoyed crops. Later they would probably have experienced a rapid population increase, the loss of nutrients from the soil, and climate changes if they were unlucky. Then agriculture may start to look inferior to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but there was no way back for the agricultural communities: Their population densities could only be maintained by agriculture, and anyway the hunter-gatherer 'niche' would already have been taken by other people. So survival depended on continuing on the chosen way, regardless of the difficulties.
But settled farmers and nomadic hunter-gatherer groups would not have existed as entirely separate people: Co-existence would have developed to mutual dependency and trade. Settled communities can indulge in specialized skills and set up workshops to manufacture goods from which hunter-gatherer societies benefit, but which they can't produce themselves. More recent experience shows that nominal hunter-gatherers readily adopt the products of farming or even industrial societies (such as guns) and quickly become dependent on having them. The hunter-gatherer groups might have offered "luxury foods" and hunting products such as furs, and probably discovered the benefits of long-distance trade links.
Of course, there is also a tendency for hunter-gatherer communities to regard the food stores of settled farmers as just one more source of food that can be gathered; especially in bad years. And the farmers would put pressure on hunter-gatherers by occupying more and more fertile land. In the long run, the farming communities would win the wars: Hunters may be individually more skilled at warfare, but are the losers in a prolonged conflict because of the their low population densities and lower rates of birth and survival to adulthood. -
Message 32
Posted by Poldertijger (U11154078) on Wednesday, 13th October 2010
Hello englishvote,
I wrote:
Your assertion that the great jumps that mankind has made, viz. the Neolithic Revolution, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the civilizations that rose out of the four great religions, the Western civilization and the Industrial Revolution, were not made to overcome stress is quite wrong;Ìý
To which you replied:
Mankind as a whole has indeed made the choice and many cultures have embraced farming and civilisation for many differing reasons, but not purely because of pressure.Ìý
I was referring to your statements:
...the facts are that nobody ever made that choice.
Hunter gatherers grew crops and farmers hunted and gathered, in fact this has not changed with even our modern industrial society still obtaining a large portion of its food by hunter gathering.
Human intelligence led to cultivation...
Farmers took over from hunter gathering because it provided greater food resources and could support a larger community.Ìý
, which I think are not dealing with the origin of farming at all.
I am justified by your statements in message 29:
Farming became popular because it was successful and easier than hunter gathering, not because humans were under any stress. Quite the opposite in fact, the climate had warmed and humans benefited from it and exploited the environment by the use of farming.
My argument is that humans never gave up hunter gathering totally and that farming was introduced slowly by people who were still primarily hunter gatherers.Ìý
Your statement that farming is easier than hunter gathering is factually wrong, so one must ask oneself what made people make the transition from hunter gathering to farming?
The historian A.J. Toynbee has discovered the law of civilization:
...a society...is confronted in the course of its life by a succession of problems... ...the presentation of each problem is a challenge to undergo an ordeal.Ìý
On this website I have written about such ordeals:
about why the Egyptians built pyramids and the Sub Saharan Peoples not:
about why the British set off the Industrial Revolution and not the Dutch: sixth, seventh and eighth paragraphs.
I feel that arguably the most important transition mankind ever made, viz. the Neolithic Revolution must have went along the path that Toynbee has described.
So what would have been the ordeal that the European hunter gatherers were facing?
You don't see an ordeal as you have written:
Farming became popular because it was successful and easier than hunter gathering, not because humans were under any stress. Quite the opposite in fact, the climate had warmed and humans benefited from it and exploited the environment by the use of farming.Ìý
Did the hunter gatherer really profit from the warming climate?
Remember that hunter gatherers are people of the plains. Game animal that live on the plains are abundant at temperatures that are lower than today's temperatures in Europe's Temperate Climate Zone. This would mean that during Dryas hunter gatherers had an abundant supply of protein see
The presence of game animal that live on the plains is scarce in a climate that has temperatures that are higher than today's temperatures in Europe's Temperate Climate Zone because of the forestation. In general, hunter gatherers are not adept at living in the forests. Forestation would have been the case in the Atlantic. Put differently: in the Atlantic the hunter gatherer would loose his source of proteins! See:
That situation is exactly the opposite of what you have described:
The abundance of food resources in certain regions meant that hunter gatherers had it very easy and had no need to migrate.Ìý
The Atlantic offered scarce resources to the hunter gatherer, notably proteins. Sources of proteins were available in the forests, but the hunter gatherer had no means to penetrate the forests. The European hunter gatherer was nothing like the Amazon Indian or Pygmies that know how to live in the forest. European hunter gatherers had lived on the plains for thousands of years.
That is why the hunter gatherer took up farming; the scarcity of proteins forced him to take up livestock farming.
You observe:
All this of course took place thousands of years after humans had first started to farm...
My argument is that humans never gave up hunter gathering totally and that farming was introduced slowly by people who were still primarily hunter gatherers.Ìý
The reason that it took so long was that it took thousands of years to domesticate the new source of protein: the pig!
Wikipedia says:
The domestic pig (Sus scrofa domesticus) is usually given the scientific name Sus scrofa, although some authors call it S. domesticus, reserving S. scrofa for the wild boar. It was domesticated approximately 5,000 to 7,000 years ago.
Source: Ìý
That is in the Age of the LBK culture!
Regards,
Poldertijger -
Message 33
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Wednesday, 13th October 2010
One cannot deduce easily which lifestyle was more easy. Certainly a hunter at the end of the day would grow up taller since even a failed hunter would eat meat more times per month than a successful farmer if the latter did not own animals on the side. But that does not mean that the hunter would have a better overall lifestyle. I agree that if we compare the case of a hunter living within an area of aboudance of animals and the case of a farmer who lives in a very fertile area during an era of ideal climatic conditions - then indeed the hunter has a more relaxed lifestyle. But these are idealised cases. Animals came and went and the hunter had always to cope. Even in cases of aboundance, the following overconsumption meant that critical reduction and even extinction would eventually come and there there was nothing much to eat afterwards while in the case of agriculturers the future was more predictable in the sense that the seasons were known while the yield of a given land could also be calculated by experience. Even the case of a bad year could be absorbed by stocks of food than people could have because of their sedentary lifestyle. Certainly, a bad year for farmers would be extremely depressive but who dare compare that to the case of hunters not able to find animals in numbers and sizes required to maintain their communities?
You have to note that back then as much as later on, people did not consider their lifestyle as religion: i.e. they would not chose "I am hunterer" or "I am an agriculter" as a political choice or something. It was a choice of convenience. We even know cases of tribes with a long past in agricultre who eventually turned to a hunting gathering lifestyle altogether like the first Bantu tribes that descended in modern Namimbia where they met the local Bushmen. They did so because in the new lands they arrived, that was the most convenient way of life. -
Message 34
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Wednesday, 13th October 2010
I am not saying that one pattern of subsistence was healthier than another and had already suggested it was an oversimplification.. Your intuition about the difference in height between farming and non farming populations appears to be based more on comparison of rural peasantry with urban, mercantile and aristocratic groups in agricultural societies rather than evidence from Mesolithic or Neolithic burials. It had certainly been noticed that those engaged in agricultural labour tended to be stockier than people in service industries not to mention the aristocracy contributing to the idealisation of the farmer soldier. In some parts of eastern Europe it is still claimed that one can tell the level of a person's origins by the thickness of their ankles.
As it stands there is a fair amount of evidence from Europe to suggest that overall stature decreased as communities adopted the trappings of a neolithic lifestyle. The process of gracialisation, where the height and stature of both sexes decreased, is apparent in the southern Mediterranean, the Ukrainian steppes and the LBK zones. This is generally presumed to be related to changes in nutrition more than the migration of populations. There is some argument that it was less noticeable in the Iberian peninsular but this may be due to the continuity of Mesolithic subsistence patterns in the centre. Whatever the case, the basic pattern of human stature among European farmers appears to be more or less continuous up to the nineteenth century. -
Message 35
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Sunday, 17th October 2010
I can't find anything other than this 'press release' version of this piece of research, has anyone come across a more authoritative and referenced version or may know where it has been published in an academic journal? -
Message 36
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Sunday, 17th October 2010
I am glad my post on a site I don't use sparked off such goos debate. i have found on the other two ±«Óãtv sites the same thing happens. Thank you all for helping me on thnis point. It shows what happens when you pick up a book.
-
Message 37
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Sunday, 17th October 2010
Re: Message 35.
ferval,
thanks for the information. Did some research with the names and linear pottery and it all came down on the whole internet to that same "Der Spiegel" article.
But with the separate names I had with the third one: "Joachim Burger" more success:
Kind regards,
Paul. -
Message 38
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Sunday, 17th October 2010
Thanks Paul, I find that a more measured opinion with regard to the genetic origins question. The Der Speigel article is rather prone to sweeping statements without any evidence, for example it states that the Catalhoyuk statuettes are part of a goddess cult, a conclusion that is seriously questioned now by a number of archaeologists, including Pamela Russel and by Hodder himself. I do however find the idea that a lactose tolerant mutation would confer significant evolutionary advantage quite persuasive but I'll wait to see a proper report with interest.
-
Message 39
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Sunday, 17th October 2010
There was a reference in the early part of the "100 Objects", about the Egyptian cattle models, that their owner would not have been able to drink their milk. Not sure if following that up might help on the lactose tolerance bit.
-
Message 40
Posted by Eliza (U14650257) on Monday, 18th October 2010
"My argument is that humans never gave up hunter gathering totally"
The big example of this must be ocean fishing - and presumably that continues to be a hunter-gatherer activity only because the oceans are not territorialised, so it's a free-for-all beyond the 12 mile limit. -
Message 41
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Monday, 18th October 2010
Surely anyone who picks a few blackberries for jam, sweet chestnuts to roast, or field mushrooms is still showing some trace of gatherer/hunter behaviour.
-
Message 42
Posted by Eliza (U14650257) on Monday, 18th October 2010
Yes indeed! Plus presumably shrimping and musselling at the seaside.
What is noteworthy is that both these environments - hedgerows and seashore - are not owned as property (other than the crown).
Although I appreciate that hunter-gatherer societies must, obviously, have had concepts of territory, so tribes (or whatever!) didn't incurse into each other's territory (ie, without conflict!), it seems to be that it is the concept of land ownership - legal title - that causes conflicted areas like the Amazon forest to be so problematical for their indigenous inhabitants. They don't 'own' the land, so they can't control who moves in on them... -
Message 43
Posted by lolbeeble (U1662865) on Monday, 18th October 2010
Paul and Ferval, there was a brief report on Radio 4's Material World last year.
The research was published in Science 326, "Genetic Discontinuity Between Local Hunter-Gatherers and Central Europe's First Farmers". The abstract is linked below.
This appears to follow on from research on the co-evolution of humans and cattle published by Beja-Pereira et al in Nature Genetics 35. A draft of their work is available online.
The way Der Spiegel presents the evidence is eerily redolent of the way Germany's conservative press encouraged Von Trotha to wipe out the Herero, it is possible that translation has not been too kind. I think the most serious problem with the way Der Spiegel has reported this is their assumption that the change in the frequency of a particular gene in a region equates directly to the replacement of one population by another. As Ferval has noted, they are prone to sweeping statements such as the assertion that the genetic discontinuity observed between the Mesolithic and Neolithic DNA samples therefore means that there was no intermarriage between hunter gatherers and farmers in the LBK zone. Other studies had highlighted the marked difference between the genetics of Neolithic populations and those that came before them, not to mention later Europeans given the common appearance of the N1a1 allele in this time period when it is only found in around 0.2% of modern Europeans. It certainly suggests that the genetic history of Europe is far more complicated than the basic models of direct European mitochondrial descent from either the initial advances into Europe or the Early Neolithic.
It has also been pointed out that the skeletons that provided samples for the study of Neolithic mitochondrial DNA in Central Europe do not display the allele responsible for Lactose tolerance either. It would certainly seem to nullify the suggestion that the rapid LBK expansion after the apparent stalling of agriculture's progress in South Eastern Europe and Anatolia was caused by a surge in population in the Carpathian basin as humans began to digest milk. In truth it would appear that the methodology used to arrive at this conclusion was flawed if the Material world discussion is any indication. The team used computer modeling to create possible scenarios of how the modern distribution of the allele responsible for lactose tolerance in Europeans arrived and seemingly attempted to fit the most appropriate model to the earliest signs of cattle pastoralism in Europe. -
Message 44
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Monday, 18th October 2010
Re: Message 43.
lol beeble,
thank you very much for this interesting reply.
Have now read your whole message and the links. Didn't have access to the link from Radio 4. Although I can hear all the other programmes, this particular one says: "The content doesn't seem to be working. Try again later. After half an hour trials and research on Radio 4 I suddenly saw Caro on "Word of mouth" and asked her to try if she could listen to the programme here. But now my reply to Caro overthere is: "on moderation queue...).
Interesting about this "co-evolution of humans and cattle"
It is a pity that I couldn't listen to the Radio 4 Programme, while that is perhaps important in your reasoning and arguments.
Thanks again for putting the "Der Spiegel" article in "perspective"...
Kind regards and with esteem,
Paul. -
Message 45
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Monday, 18th October 2010
It comes up with the same message for me, Paul. But I don't ever listen to Radio 4 except when I am in Britain, so don't know what it usually would say. (Just go to WOM for the language discussions, which don't stick to Radio 4 bits - certainly not if I open a thread which will be just about whatever I fancy writing about.)
Cheers, Caro.
I don't ever come here, since I don't know ancient history, but there are some quite interesting threads and many familiar 'faces'. -
Message 46
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Monday, 18th October 2010
Re: Message 45.
Thank you very much Caro for your immediate reply. Kind regards, Paul. -
Message 47
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Tuesday, 19th October 2010
Hunter gatherer to farmer, why?Ìý
Why? The usual. Glorious human opportunism. The early Bronze Age Delboy noticed that some grass was useful and thought: 'This time next year we'll be Pharoahs!'
Or at least, came to rely on agriculture to such an extent that a hand-to-mouth nomadic existence was no longer compatible with the demands of the crop cycle.
This shift from nomad to settled culture created the hierarchies and concepts of property and reasons for war we still use today. -
Message 48
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Tuesday, 19th October 2010
Still think we may be missing / underplaying the pastoralist/nomadic herder bit. Still common amongst such groups to tap their flocks for blood - nowadays often mixed with milk, but before the genetic twist discussed above, it might have been even more important.
As an aside, does fermenting mare's milk into kumiss change the lactose into its constituent parts, galactose and glucose? Is galactose more generally metabolisable than lactose? Presumably the glucose would ferment into ethyl alcohol? -
Message 49
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Tuesday, 19th October 2010
But the hunter gather fisher lifestyle, especially when complex, was not just hand to mouth and probably a lot more reliable at providing foodstuffs than early attempts at farming when practised by the inexperienced.
Although there are some examples of pragmatic change, such as the Ertebolle when the marine resources disappeared and there were available substitutes close by in the farming communities, in many places the adoption of the neolithic package seems to have been driven by ideology. After all people like Bradley suggest that monumentally was adopted before agriculture and drove, rather than followed, the change to sedentary lifestyles. -
Message 50
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Tuesday, 19th October 2010
Message posted by Urnungal
Still think we may be missing / underplaying the pastoralist/nomadic herder bit. </quote>
One episode of Bronowski's Ascent of Man features the life of a nomadic tribe somewhere in the central Asian plain. Their annual route took them across several rivers, in both spring and autumn. The severity of each crossing decided how many old and infirm were left to die by its banks. The old man filmed being left behind was not significantly mourned or memorialised by those who left him, his life had simply run its course, and the community had no more need of him.
And he expressed no great anguish at his forthcoming slow death, merely quiet resignation.
This is an entirely different attitude to life than the post-agricultural one, which has some sense of its own control over nature.
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