RE: Do you think that one day religion will become a thing of the past
December 14, 2015 at 3:45 pm
(This post was last modified: December 14, 2015 at 4:16 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
H/G's -did not- have to keep constantly on the move, it become so as time progressed, or could be so in particular environments at particular times, but at the big changeover event all they needed was a fertile area teeming with life, same kind of place you'd need to farm, later.
It's undeniably true that agriculture has been (and was) responsible for the largest and most permanent cities and civilizations. However, the "ag first" model hides it's assumptions in plain site when it refers to the "hunter gatherer sites" later evolving into cities with the advent of ag. There were already people congregating there, and in many cases building permanent structures in those sites. Essentially, deciding that ag came first is just an issue of defining a city as a settlement well-post agriculture.
Catal Hayuk, for example...not built by farmers at all. Eventually filled with them, driven by it, sure...but not built by it or for it. The major value of that city, from the POV of anthropology, is that it shows our transition from h/g to ag. Had they not been congregating in that city beforehand it would not offer such a glimpse (nor would they have had the later manpower to farm). The glimpse it offers is counter-intuitive, early agriculture was a disaster incapable of supporting populations- it would have taken even more land than h/g took, and much more than any of the earliest agriculturists could work. For this reason, there's a blurry line between ag and h/g.....and that line stays blurry well beyond the advent of "civilization proper". It's probably better to think of the first cities (and their populations) as quasi-pastoralists who ate native grain (just like the animals they'd followed in)- and those grains didn't resemble our current grains at all. It would take time to develop the tools, but more than that..the cultivars, to successfully farm. By the time that had occurred, those settlements already existed and were already permanent, or semi permanent..which wouldn't change after the advent of ag either, as people left them whenever the grass wasn't tall enough, or later, whenever crops failed....which was often, ag being -at that time-...at its very best, stirring the dirt with sticks and planting meager weeds while the global environment shifted around them - forever locking out hunter gatherer societies.
It's undeniably true that agriculture has been (and was) responsible for the largest and most permanent cities and civilizations. However, the "ag first" model hides it's assumptions in plain site when it refers to the "hunter gatherer sites" later evolving into cities with the advent of ag. There were already people congregating there, and in many cases building permanent structures in those sites. Essentially, deciding that ag came first is just an issue of defining a city as a settlement well-post agriculture.
Catal Hayuk, for example...not built by farmers at all. Eventually filled with them, driven by it, sure...but not built by it or for it. The major value of that city, from the POV of anthropology, is that it shows our transition from h/g to ag. Had they not been congregating in that city beforehand it would not offer such a glimpse (nor would they have had the later manpower to farm). The glimpse it offers is counter-intuitive, early agriculture was a disaster incapable of supporting populations- it would have taken even more land than h/g took, and much more than any of the earliest agriculturists could work. For this reason, there's a blurry line between ag and h/g.....and that line stays blurry well beyond the advent of "civilization proper". It's probably better to think of the first cities (and their populations) as quasi-pastoralists who ate native grain (just like the animals they'd followed in)- and those grains didn't resemble our current grains at all. It would take time to develop the tools, but more than that..the cultivars, to successfully farm. By the time that had occurred, those settlements already existed and were already permanent, or semi permanent..which wouldn't change after the advent of ag either, as people left them whenever the grass wasn't tall enough, or later, whenever crops failed....which was often, ag being -at that time-...at its very best, stirring the dirt with sticks and planting meager weeds while the global environment shifted around them - forever locking out hunter gatherer societies.
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