Page 75 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

Acceleration:

The Agrarian

Era

he agrarian era began ten thousand to eleven thou- and economic exchanges known as “agrarian civiliza-
Tsand years ago with the appearance of the first agri- tions” emerged, and through time these civilizations
cultural communities. We can define the agrarian era as linked with other agrarian civilizations and with peoples
“the era of human history when agriculture was the most living between the main zones of agrarian civilization.
important of all productive technologies and the foun- However, we know of no significant contacts between the
dation for most human societies.” It ended during the last different world zones before 1500 CE.The great diversity
250 years as modern industrial technologies overtook of lifeways and the relative isolation of different regions
agriculture in productivity and began to transform explain why we have more difficulty making generaliza-
human lifeways. Although the agrarian era lasted a mere tions that apply to the entire world during this era than
ten thousand years, in contrast to the 250,000 years of during the era of foragers or the modern era.
the era of foragers, 70 percent of all humanity may have Despite this diversity, striking parallels exist between
lived during the agrarian era, their burgeoning numbers the historical trajectories of different parts of the world.
sustained by the era’s productive technologies. Agriculture appeared quite independently in several
The agrarian era was characterized by greater diversity regions; so did states, cities, monumental architecture,
than either the era of foragers or the modern era. Para- and writing. These parallels raise deep questions about
doxically, diversity was a product both of technological long-term patterns of historical change. Does human his-
innovations and of technological sluggishness because tory have a fundamental shape, a large trajectory that is
although new technologies such as agriculture and pas- apparent in all regions and under diverse social and eco-
toralism (livestock raising) created new ways of living, the logical conditions? If such a shape exists, does it arise
limits of communications technologies ensured that dif- from the nature of our species or from basic principles of
ferent parts of the world remained separate enough to cultural evolution? Or are the similarities misleading?
evolve along independent trajectories.At the largest scale Do the diversity and open-endedness of human histori-
we can identify several distinct “world zones,” or regions cal experience deserve most emphasis on the large scales
that had no significant contact with each other before of world history?
about 1500 CE. The most important were the Afro-
Eurasian landmass from the far south of Africa to the far Origins of Agriculture
northeast of Siberia, the Americas, Australia, and the The word agriculture is used here to describe an evolving
islands of the Pacific. cluster of technologies that enabled humans to increase
Within each world zone long and sometimes tenuous the production of favored plant and animal species. Eco-
webs of cultural and material exchanges linked local com- logically speaking, agriculture is a more efficient way than
munities into larger networks of exchanges. In some of foraging to harvest the energy and resources stored in the
the world zones the dense networks of political, cultural, natural environment as a result of photosynthesis.

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