{"id":854,"date":"2003-06-24T13:53:39","date_gmt":"2003-06-24T17:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dbnews\/the-origins-of-civilization\/"},"modified":"2003-06-24T13:53:39","modified_gmt":"2003-06-24T17:53:39","slug":"the-origins-of-civilization","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/the-origins-of-civilization\/","title":{"rendered":"The Origins of Civilization"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the abiding mysteries and polemics in Anthropology and Earth Science has
\nlong been the almost simultaneous appearance of agriculture in the Middle East,
\nSouth America, and China, among other areas. It seems to me the answer is simple;
\nclimate stability.<\/p>\n

The question of
\nthe origin of agriculture<\/a> is key to understanding the beginning
\nof civilization, language, culture and basically everything we associate with
\nour lives on this planet. The question of why it happened and why it happened
\nwhen it did, after humans had been wandering over significant portions of the
\nplanet for tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, with no
\napparent need or desire to settle down and get civilized, has generated many
\ntheories.<\/p>\n

Most scientists agree that the discovery of agriculture was the origin of civilization.
\nSuddenly, people didn’t need to spend all their time following herds of hapless
\nanimals, grouting around for roots and wild berries, and eating insects. They
\ncould stay in one place, or at least the women could, which gave them time, while
\nthe men were still out hunting (like secret societies and pissing contests, men
\nhave been very slow to give up hunting), to invent things like embroidery and
\naromatherapy.<\/p>\n

Agriculture also allowed the production and accumulation of food surpluses, allowing
\nhumans to survive periods of low or no food collection, and requiring people
\nto think about preserving their food surpluses, as well as protecting them. This
\nneed
\nto
\nprotect
\nthe food, together with the populations explosion engendered by the newly reliable
\nfood supply, led to the building of fixed, defendable structures, thicker walls,
\nstronger foundations. In adition, the dynamic of social organization had changed.
\nNo
\nlonger
\nwas the
\nmost successful model the mobile tribe or clan, a lean unclean foraging machine.
\nSuddenly larger groups, capable of building huge structures and defending a fixed
\narea,
\nwere
\nadvantageous. These groups didn’t require that all of their members be capable
\nof running hard after
\na herd of antelopes, enabling the survival of old people,
\ncowards and slow runners. This in turn gave us respect for elders, accumulated
\nwisdom, and geeks with enough time on their hands to invent stuff like the lost
\nwax method and the internet.<\/p>\n

Researchers also agree that it was most likely women who invented or discovered
\nagriculture. Left at camp, pregnant or with small children in tow, they obviously
\nnoticed that when a person happened to swallow a seed from some fruit or vegetable
\nthey had scavenged, and it emerged undigested in the communal shitpile, it would
\nsometimes crack open and tiny green stems and leaves would emerge. It’s not much
\nof a leap from there to the brilliant idea of actually PLACING the seeds in the
\nground, perhaps with some shit for luck, and watching the baby food plants grow.<\/p>\n

Of course, if the seed in question was a peach pit, it would be a long wait for
\nit to grow into a tree and bear fruit. Probably most groups of Paleolithic hunter\/gatherers
\nwouldn’t wait that long. However, other seeds would certainly emerge soon enough
\nfor people to capture the concept (my green bean seeds came up in 8 days!)<\/p>\n

The question remains – why didn’t our wandering ancestors get the point a bit
\nquicker? A hundred thousand years ago, people were pretty much the way they are
\ntoday,
\nin stature, intelligence and physical ability. So why were they content to eke
\nout an existence from buffalo droppings for so many centuries, when the comprehensible
\ncornucopia of fruits and veggies was left to lie fallow? And why did folks figure
\nit out at almost the same time, in separate, isolated areas around the world.<\/p>\n

Other scientists have suspected a link between climate change and agriculture.
\nOfer Bar-Yosef, an Israeli
\narcheologist now at Harvard<\/a> who’s spent his career
\nstudying the origin of agriculture in the Middle East, thinks a cooling trend
\ncaused a decline in food availability, which induced our forebears to start sowing
\nand harvesting wheat and other cereal crops. However, this theory does not address
\nthe question of why the effect did not occur during previous cooling trends,
\nsuch as the ice ages, and presupposes a global cooldown about 10,000 years ago
\nwhich affected all of the areas which developed early agriculture. This is not
\nsupported by the scientific record.<\/p>\n

The only possible answer, as far as I am concerned, is the lack of climatic stability
\non the planet up until about 10,000 years ago. An accumulating body of scientific
\nevidence, such as the Greenland Ice Core studies, have shown that for most of
\nthe readable history of the planet the average temperature and rainfall was highly
\nvariable from year to year and decade to decade. The Greenland studies pulled
\nice cores from deep in the glaciers, reaching back over 400,00 years, revealing
\ninformation on temperature,
\natmospheric chemistry, net ice accumulation , dust in the atmosphere, vegetative
\nchanges, volcanic history and anthropogenic emissions<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Today we are deeply disturbed by a global warming trend which has produced a
\n2-3 degree increase during the past century. Imagine that the average temperature
\nof the planet could change by 5 or even 10 degrees within a period of a few years.
\nAverage annual rainfall could double or triple from year to year, or disappear
\naltogether. It seems to be a no-brainer that it would be difficult to develop
\nagriculture under those conditions.
\nMany scientists now believe that the current situation, where although localized
\nweather is variable and notoriously hard to predict, the global climate is relatively
\nstable from year to year, is a historical anomaly on the planetary timeline,
\nand could conceivably end on short notice, especially as we humans keep messing
\naround with the planet’s thermostat.<\/p>\n

According to Dr
\nTas van Ommen<\/a>, who is attached to the Antarctic Co-operative
\nResearch Centre at the University of Tasmania "Since the end of the Ice Age,
\nthe
\nclimate has been relatively stable, but the rapid changes that we are looking
\nat are a warning that it has not always been this way. The stability of the present
\nclimate might actually be quite sensitive to any changes forced upon it."<\/p>\n

Dr van Ommen further noted, "Some computer models suggest that the greenhouse
\neffect may cause instability and possible abrupt changes in the future – a compelling
\nreason to learn
\nas much as possible<\/a>." <\/p>\n

So what would happen if this idyllic moment in planetary climatology were to
\nend, and the more common extreme weather variability were to return? I don’t
\nthink it would mean the extinction of the human race after all, we have survived
\nseveral
\nice ages already. On the other hand, it would certainly cause a collapse of world
\nagriculture and food production, widespread starvation, panic, riots and epidemics.
\nProbably only 90% of the world’s population would die.<\/p>\n

But with our vast and sophisticated scientific knowledge, pockets of well-prepared
\nor paranoid people would engineer a way to adapt. Perhaps subsisting on canned
\ntuna and Ramen noodles until they construct secret underground greenhouses and
\nprotect their stash against the starving hordes, they would attempt to preserve
\nman’s technological achievements and civilization in the face of Nature’s dismissive
\nindifference.<\/p>\n

But that remains to be seen. In the meantime, I am satisfied that I have solved
\nthe mystery of why agriculture sprang up around the globe around 10,000 years
\nago – just when the planet’s climate stabilized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the abiding mysteries and polemics in Anthropology and Earth Science has long been the almost simultaneous appearance of agriculture in the Middle East, South America, and China, among other areas. It seems to me the answer is simple; … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-854","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}