Page 79 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

this fleeting world / acceleration: the agrarian era tfw-19

The end of the last ice age also coincided with the final
For more on these topics, please see the following articles:
stages of the great global migrations of the era of for-
Agricultural Societies p. 52 (v1)
agers. As the anthropologist Mark Cohen has pointed
Cereals p. 321 (v1)
out, by the end of the last ice age few parts of the world
Population p. 1484 (v4)
were unoccupied, and some parts of the world may
Water Management p. 2036 (v5)
have been overpopulated, at least by the standards of for-
agers. Perhaps the coincidence of warmer, wetter, and ditional, nomadic lifeways may have found that in just a
more productive climates with increasing population few generations they had lost access to the lands used by
pressure in some regions explains why, in several parts of their foraging ancestors and had also lost their traditional
the world beginning ten thousand to eleven thousand skills as nomadic foragers.Those communities that chose
years ago, some communities of foragers began to settle to intensify had to apply already-existing skills to the task
down.The classic example of this change comes from the of increasing productivity.They already had much of the
Natufian communities of the fertile highlands around knowledge they needed:They knew how to weed, how to
Mesopotamia fourteen thousand to twelve thousand water plants, and how to tame prey species of animals.
years ago. Natufian communities were largely sedentary The stimulus to apply such knowledge more precisely and
but lived as foragers, harvesting wild grains and gazelle. more systematically was provided by overpopulation,
Similar communities, harvesting wild sorghum, may whereas global warming made intensification feasible.
have existed even earlier in modern Ethiopia, east of the These arguments appear to explain the curious near-
Nile River. simultaneity of the transition to agriculture at the end of
the last ice age. They also fit moderately well what is
Full-Blown Agriculture known of the transition to agriculture in several regions,
Eventually some sedentary or semisedentary foragers particularly temperate regions where agriculture was
became agriculturalists.The best explanation for this sec- based primarily on grains. They also help explain why,
ond stage in the emergence of agriculture may be demo- even in regions where developed agriculture did not
graphic.As mentioned earlier, modern studies of nomadic appear, such as Australia, many of the preliminary steps
foragers suggest that they can systematically limit popu- toward agriculture do show up in the archaeological
lation growth through prolonged breast feeding (which record, including the appearance of affluent, semiseden-
inhibits ovulation) and other practices, including infanti- tary foragers.
cide and senilicide (killing of the very young and the very
old, respectively). However, in sedentary communities in Seeds of Change
regions of ecological abundance such restraints were no After agriculture had appeared in any one region, it
longer necessary and may have been relaxed. If so, then spread, primarily because the populations of farming
within just two or three generations sedentary foraging communities grew much faster.Although agriculture may
communities that had lived in regions of abundance for have seemed an unattractive option to many foragers,
a generation or two may have found that they were out- farming communities usually had more resources and
stripping available resources once again. more people than foraging communities. When conflict
Overpopulation would have posed a clear choice: occurred, more resources and more people usually meant
Migrate or intensify (produce more food from the same that farming communities also had more power. Agri-
area). Where land was scarce and neighboring commu- culture spread most easily in regions that bordered estab-
nities were also feeling the pinch, people may have had lished agricultural zones and that had similar soils,
no choice at all; sedentary foragers had to intensify. climates, and ecologies. Where environmental condi-
However, even those foragers able to return to their tra- tions were different, the spread of agriculture had to await