Page 80 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

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new techniques such as irrigation or new crops better
adapted to the regions of new settlement.
Such changes are apparent, for example, as agriculture
spread from southwestern Asia into the cooler and usu-
ally wetter environments of eastern, central, and northern
Europe or as maize cultivation spread northward from
Mesoamerica, a process that depended in part on subtle
genetic changes in local varieties of maize. Where new
techniques were not available, foragers survived much
longer, and the spread of agriculture could be checked,
sometimes for thousands of years, as it was at the edge This drawing shows what an ancient lake-
of the Eurasian steppes, which were not brought into cul- dweller community in Denmark might have
tivation until modern times. Usually agriculture spread looked like.
through a process of budding off as villages became over-
populated and young families cleared and settled suitable
land beyond the borders of their home villages. cooperation within and among households, and the
need to manage relations with outside communities.
General Characteristics
and Long Trends Demographic Dynamism
Agricultural communities share important characteris- The increased productivity of agriculture ensured that
tics that give the agrarian era an underlying coherence populations grew much faster than they had during the
despite its extraordinary cultural diversity. These charac- era of foragers. Rapid population growth ensured that vil-
teristics include societies based on villages, demographic lages and the technologies that sustained them would
dynamism, accelerated technological innovation, the pres- eventually spread to all regions in which agriculture was
ence of epidemic disease, new forms of power and hier- viable. Modern estimates suggest that during the agrarian
archy, and enduring relations with nonagrarian peoples. era world populations rose from 6 million ten thousand
years ago to 770 million in 1750.Although these figures
Village-Based Societies hide enormous regional and chronological differences,
At the base of all agrarian societies were villages, more or they are equivalent to an average growth rate of approx-
less stable communities of farming households.Although imately 0.05 percent per annum; on average, populations
the crops, the technologies, and the rituals of villagers were doubling every fourteen hundred years.This rate can
varied greatly from region to region, all such peasant be compared with doubling times of eight thousand to
communities were affected by the annual rhythms of har- nine thousand years during the era of foragers and
vesting and sowing, the demands of storage, the need for approximately eighty-five years during the modern era.

For more on these topics, please see the following articles:
Agricultural Societies p. 52 (v1) Long Cycles p. 1160 (v3)
Carrying Capacity p. 297 (v1) Matriarchy and Patriarchy p. 1218 (v3)
Disease and Nutrition p. 538 (v2) Population p. 1484 (v4)
Diseases—Overview p. 543 (v2) Secondary-Products Revolution p. 1680 (v4)
Diseases, Animal p. 551 (v2) Water Management p. 2036 (v4)
Diseases, Plant p. 558 (v2)