From foraging to farming: the 10,000-year revolution

PhysOrg ^ | March 26, 2012 | U of Cambridge

[SunkenCiv]

The moment when the hunter-gatherers laid down their spears and began farming around 11,000 years ago is often interpreted as one of the most rapid and significant transitions in human history -- the 'Neolithic Revolution'.

By producing and storing food, Homo sapiens both mastered the natural world and took the first significant steps towards thousands of years of runaway technological development. The advent of specialist craftsmen, an increase in fertility and the construction of permanent architecture are just some of the profound changes that followed.

Of course, the transition to agriculture was far from rapid. The period around 14,500 years ago has been regarded as the point at which the first indications appear of cultural change associated with agriculture: the exploitation of wild grains and the construction of stone buildings. Farming is believed to have begun in what is known as the Fertile Crescent in the Levant region, which stretches from northern Egypt through Israel and Jordan to the shores of the Persian Gulf, and then occurred independently in other regions of the world at different times from 11,000 years ago.

Recent evidence, however, has suggested that the first stirrings of the revolution began even earlier, perhaps as far back as 19,000 years ago. Stimulating this reinterpretation of human prehistory are discoveries by the Epipalaeolithic Foragers in Azraq Project (EFAP), a group of archaeologists and bioarchaeologists working in the Jordanian desert comprising University of Cambridge's Dr. Jay Stock, Dr. Lisa Maher (University of California, Berkeley) and Dr. Tobias Richter (University of Copenhagen).

Over the past four years, their research has uncovered dramatic evidence of changes in the behaviour of hunter-gatherers that casts new light on agriculture's origins...

[SunkenCiv]

Kharaneh shells. Credit: EFAP/L.Maher

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Two things -- one, I think I should be thanking someone for sending the link in FReepmail, and two, was there a recent topic about this? To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[exDemMom]

Interesting. I suppose farming was a prerequisite to writing.

Human teeth have been decreasing in size over the past 10,000 years. That is probably a result of farming, as well.

[GraceG]

This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time.

Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

We call the above people Liberals or "Progressives"

[BIGLOOK]

.....and of course it led to regulation and zoning laws. That’s evolution.

[muawiyah]

Seems like the idea advanced about the origins of culture and civilization in Ancient Japan ~ to wit; Temperate zone forests were able to provide sufficient nuts, berries, grains and other edible plants to fully supplement a hunter's diet ~ leaving sufficient spare time to create elaborate villages and graveyards (etc.).

In short, they didn't need agriculture to move into the Neolithic.

Glad the guys working in the field are beginning to think that approach over and apply it elsewhere.

Let me take this opportunity to point out that professional archaeologists may have been making a mistake in failing to recognize tree domestication as having preceded herding and other forms of agriculture. For example, the Sa'ami are believed to have been domesticating birch trees ~ this gave them a faster growing, healthier birch, with lots of trunk to create planks from. The planks gave them ski's, snowshoes, baskets/claypots, and seagoing boats! (I mentioned that the other night). There are other examples.

[21twelve]

Thanks for the ping. And all of these advances would not have occurred if not for Global Warming.

[Max in Utah]

Human teeth have been decreasing in size over the past 10,000 years. That is probably a result of farming, as well.

Just imagine what the consumption of easy-to-gobble fast food will do to them.

In 100 years we'll be eating Soylent Pink Slime out of feeding cartridges.

[exDemMom]

Just imagine what the consumption of easy-to-gobble fast food will do to them.

Hee hee. Apparently, it was our switch to an easy to eat cooked diet that allowed for our teeth to begin shrinking in the first place. Eventually, we'll just have gums!

[ARepublicanForAllReasons]

"In 100 years we'll be eating Soylent Pink Slime out of feeding cartridges."

Welcome to the future. That's called orange chicken, and it's best when the pink syrup is about the consistency of 50w motor oil.