The First Agrarian Societies

The First Agrarian Societies

Lecture 26

The encounter between newly arrived humans and indigenous species that had no experience of humans and no understanding of how dangerous they could be may help explain the massive extent of the die-off of large mammals in Sahul in the millennia after the arrival of humans.

This lecture surveys the 5,000 years of the “early Agrarian” era, a period that is often neglected by historians because it left no written records and lacks the glamour of the great civilizations. We will see that in reality many important changes occurred during this era. We will also discuss how most people lived during the early Agrarian era. We de ne the “early Agrarian” era as the period beginning with the appearance of agriculture and ending with the appearance of cities and states. Globally, it lasted for 5,000 to 6,000 years, but locally, its duration varies. For example, it never began in Australia, while in neighboring Papua New Guinea, it began early and has lasted to the present day. Historians often neglect this era, but this is a mistake. It embraced at least half of the last 10,000 years and laid the foundations for the eventual appearance of Agrarian civilizations. During this era, the largest and most powerful communities were villages or small towns.

Many important changes occurred in the early Agrarian era. The most important large-scale change was the spread of agriculture in the AfroEurasian and American world zones. For the most part, agriculture seems to have spread by diffusion from a few initial centers.

About 10,000 years ago, agriculture was con ned to the Fertile

Crescent and maybe Papua New Guinea.

About 8,000 years ago, it could be found in China, in Southeast

Asia, and along the Nile.

About 5,000 years ago, it could be found in West Africa,

Mesoamerica, the Andes, Central Asia, and parts of Europe. By then, most humans lived as small peasant farmers, and that way of life would dominate the history of the next 5,000 years.

Within just 5,000 years, agriculture had become the dominant technology of most human societies on Earth. This was a revolutionary change in human history.

Agriculture did not necessarily spread because it was attractive to foragers. It spread, rather, because agricultural communities could generate more resources than foraging communities and could therefore support larger populations. Even the simplest farming communities could support 20–30 times as many people per square kilometer as most foraging communities. As agriculture spread, world populations rose from about 6 million to 50 million between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago. The population of Southwest Asia alone may have increased from 100,000 to 5 million between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago (Bellwood, First Farmers, p. 15). This meant that, though Agrarian and foraging societies often traded and lived together peacefully, when there were con icts, Agrarian societies had more people and more resources than their foraging neighbors. This is why the Agrarian frontier slowly advanced at the expense of foragers, as farmers began to cultivate more and more regions with easily worked soils and adequate rainfall and sunlight.

Agriculture introduced a new technological dynamism into human history because it stimulated collective learning. How? With larger populations, there were more people to exchange ideas within and between communities. Population growth forced those at the margins of society to experiment with new techniques and crops. Population growth generated con icts over land and resources, and warfare began to drive technological and social change in new ways.

For the most part, technological change took the form of micro-innovations, each adapted to particular environments. Two fundamental Agrarian techniques in this era were horticulture and swidden agriculture, each of which evolved with many local variations. “Horticulture” means farming

based purely on human labor power using implements such as hoes or digging sticks, mortars, and sickles. Many horticultural communities exist even today in regions such as the Amazon basin or Papua New Guinea. In forest regions, “swidden” (or “slash-andburn”) farmers used stone axes and re to Jericho may be the clear trees before planting crops in the rich, oldest known Agrarian ashy soil. As fertility declined within a few settlement. Lying about years, the process had to be repeated in a slow, Agrarian version of nomadism. So swidden 20 kilometers east of farming initiated global deforestation.

Jerusalem, it has been

excavated since the Most early Agrarian communities can be mid-19th century by thought of as villages, but some were large archaeologists looking enough to be thought of as small towns. Villages and small towns were the most for its famous walls. important and complex types of communities throughout the early Agrarian era. Jericho may be the oldest known Agrarian settlement. Lying about 20 kilometers east of Jerusalem, it has been excavated since the mid-19th century by archaeologists looking for its famous walls. Jericho’s rst occupants were Natu ans. But by 11,000 years ago, about 1,000 people lived in 70 mud-brick dwellings, supporting themselves by farming. Few permanent communities this large had ever existed before. Even more densely settled was Catal Huyuk in Anatolia, which ourished 9,000 years ago. Here, mud-brick houses were built with adjoining walls, a bit like cells in a beehive, so houses were entered from the roof. Each house contained a hearth, a storage area, and exotic bull-headed statues. The inhabitants exported the tough volcanic glass known as obsidian, which was used to make ne blades. Most early Agrarian villages were smaller. Modern anthropological studies of regions such as the Papua New Guinea highlands or the Amazon basin today may give an impression of how most people lived in the early Agrarian era. How well did the rst farmers live? Did agriculture necessarily mean “progress”? We saw in Lecture Twenty-Two that, by some criteria, Paleolithic

foragers lived quite well. The evidence on early farmers is mixed. The rst generation or two probably lived well, enjoying improved food supplies. However, within a few generations, population growth created problems that nomadic foragers had never faced. Sedentary villages attracted vermin and rubbish, and diseases spread more easily with a larger pool of potential victims to infect, particularly after the introduction of domesticated animals, which passed many of their parasites on to humans. Studies of human bones from early Agrarian communities hint at new forms of stress, caused by the intense labor of harvest times, or by periodic crop failures, which became more common because farmers generally relied on a more limited range of foodstuffs than foragers. Periodic shortages may explain why skeletons seem to get shorter in early Agrarian villages. On the other hand, early Agrarian communities were probably fairly egalitarian. Relative equality is apparent even in large sites such as Catal Huyuk, where buildings are similar in size, though differences in burials show there were some, possibly hereditary, differences in wealth.

The early Agrarian era transformed a world of foragers into a world of peasant farmers. Within these denser communities new forms of complexity would begin to emerge. Yet by some criteria, living standards may have declined. Complexity does not necessarily mean progress!

Essential Reading

Supplementary Reading

Brown, Big History, chaps. 4–5. Christian, Maps of Time, chap. 8. Fagan, People of the Earth, chaps. 9–13.

Bellwood, First Farmers. Coatsworth, “Welfare.” Mithen, After the Ice.

Questions to Consider

1. What were the most revolutionary developments during the “early

Agrarian” era of human history?

2. Why have historians often neglected the “early Agrarian” era of human history?