Page 186 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

population 1487

created quite different life patterns and inaugurated a sentiments, just as bands of foragers had done before
new era of human population history. them.
Traditional division of labor between men and women
made marriage necessary to conduct a household, and
Agrarian Societies children learned everything they needed to know simply
The fundamental difference between settled farmers and by growing up in the village, and watching everyone on
wandering foragers was that a family of farmers needed his or her daily rounds. From a very early age, youngsters
far less land to feed themselves. Far denser populations added to family income by scaring birds from the ripen-
thus became possible, and denser farming populations ing grain, herding animals, or picking berries and other
steadily expanded their domain by supplanting foragers wild foods. Moreover, custom obligated children to look
on suitably fertile lands. Soon they also began to sustain after their parents in old age, when they became unable
cities and civilizations, centered in different parts of Afro- to work as before. So numerous children were an advan-
Eurasia and the Americas.That inaugurated an agrarian tage to parents and the best possible insurance against a
era, when the majority of humankind—something be- helpless and hopeless old age.
tween 85 to 95 percent—lived in villages, farmed fields In practice then, village populations tended to grow
nearby, and exported part of their harvest and some of much faster than foraging populations had done. This
their children to cities which were, in effect, parasites implied crisis whenever local landscapes came to be fully
upon the rural population. occupied, so that some grown-up children could no
Farmers who support city folk with rent and taxes are longer find enough land to cultivate for themselves as
called peasants, and from many points of view peasant their parents had done. Emigration was one possibility,
life was less attractive than the freer life of foragers. First heading either toward some distant frontier where land
of all, peasant diets were usually restricted to a few sta- might still be available, or into a city, where unskilled
ples, and their exposure to famine from crop failure con- labor perhaps could support a different, marginalized
sequently increased. Moreover, cultivating the soil and style of living. Intensified cultivation of smaller portions
harvesting crops required more work than foragers usu- of land was a second, equally awkward choice, since it
ally spent finding food. Infections also increased when usually lowered standards of living that were already mar-
human and other wastes remained close by to pollute ginal.A third alternative was to resort to violence by join-
water supplies. Finally, human violence and organized ing a robber band or organized army.These responses to
warfare increased in scope because stored harvests could population pressure on the land acted together in differ-
and did attract robbers from far and wide. ent parts of the civilized world to create recurrent out-
Yet these disadvantages did not prevent peasant vil- breaks of peasant rebellion and civil disorder that often
lages from maintaining themselves generation after gen- cut back local populations drastically.
eration, and when war, famine, or pestilence destroyed Local rhythms of growth and decline among agrarian
local populations, as often happened in agrarian soci- populations, shaped largely by violence, were compli-
eties, new settlers quickly formed new villages and re- cated by changing incidence of infectious diseases.When
sumed daily routines almost as before.The central reason foraging bands first penetrated cooler climates by enter-
for this resilience was that village custom defined a way ing Asia and Europe, they left many tropical infections
of life that seemed meaningful, natural, and inevitable to and infestations behind. Disease organisms and the in-
those born to it.Within the village, everyone had definite sects that spread them in Africa could not adjust to new
roles to play and rules to obey, and on festival occasions environs as flexibly as humans did.This presumably pro-
the whole population gathered together to sing and moted population growth and accelerated the spread of
dance, dissipating hard feelings and arousing shared foragers around the earth, since it took a long time for