Week Two: Due September 7

Chapter One: First Peoples; First Farmers
Breakthroughs to Agriculture

• The terms "Neolithic (New Stone Age) Revolution" to "Agricultural Revolution" refer to the deliberate cultivation of particular plants as well as the taming and breeding of particular animals
• There was a new relationship between humankind and other living things, for now men and women were not simply using what they found in nature but were actively changing nature as well
• Domestication - the taming, and the changing of nature for the benefit of humankind 
• Domestication created a new type of mutual dependence
• Plants and animals could no longer survive in the wild - similarly the people had lost the gatherer hunter skills
• Intensification - getting more for less 
• More food or resources 
• More food more people 

Common Patterns

• The end of the last ice age coincided with the migration of homo sapiens across the planet and created new conditions that made agriculture more possible
• The climate change in some areas helped to push into extinction various species of large mammals on which Paleolithic people had depended 
• The warmer, wetter, and more stable conditions permitted the flourishing of more wild plants, especially cereal grasses
• Many of the breakthroughs to agriculture occurred only after gathering and hunting peoples had already green substantially in numbers and had established a sedentary way of life
• New opportunities appeared with the improved climatic conditions at the end of the ice age.
• The disappearance of many large mammals, growing populations, newly settled ways of life, and fluctuations in the process of global warmed - represented the pressures  or incentives to increase food production and minimize the risks of life in a new era 

Variations

• Everyone initially started with a simple tool - the digging stick or hoe(horticulture) - Plows were developed much later 
• The kind of Agricultural Revolution that unfolded in particular places depended very much on what happened to be available locally, and that in turn depended on sheer luck
• Yet another pattern of agricultural development took shape in the Americas - the domestication of plants in the Americas occur separately in a number of locations - its most distinctive feature lay in the absence of animals that could be domesticated
•  Without goats, sheep, pigs, cattle, or horses the peoples of the americas lacked sources of proteins, manure, and power

The Globalization of Agriculture

• The extension of farming occurred in two ways
• Diffusion - gradual spread of agricultural techniques but without the movement of the people
• Slow colonization or migration of agricultural peoples as growing populations pushed them outward

Triumph and Resistance

• Combination of diffusion and migration took over original agricultural package
• Within Africa, the development of agricultural studies societies in the southern half of the continent is associated with the migration of the peoples speaking one or another of the languages
• The globalization of agriculture was a prolonged process, lasting 10,000 years of more after its first emergence in the Fertile Crescent 
• Some of the few who resisted the swelling tide of agriculture lived in areas unsuitable to farming, such as harsh desert or arctic environments
• Nevertheless, by the beginning of the common era, the global spread of agriculture had reduced gathering and hunting peoples to a small and dwindling minority of humankind 
• After the Agricultural Revolution, the future, almost everywhere, lay with the farmers and herders and with the distinctive societies that they created

The Culture of Agriculture

• The agricultural Revolution led to an increase in human population, as the greater productivity of agriculture was able to support much larger numbers
• Here was the beginning of human dominance over other forms of life on the planet
• The dominance was reflected in major environmental transformations - in a growing number of places, forests, and grasslands became cultivated fields and grazing lands
• Human life too changed dramatically in farming communities, and not necessarily for the better
• The remaining early agricultural people show some deteriorating health - more tooth decay, malnutrition, anemia, a shorter physical stature, and diminished life expectancy 
• Living in larger communities generated epidemics for the first time
• Agriculture also imposed constraints on human communities 
• A large central space suggests an area for public religious or political activity, and a trench surrounding the village indicates some common effort to defend the community
• Metallurgy - the working of gold and silver, then bronze, and later iron 
• Weaving  - textiles
• Secondary products revolution - new uses for domesticated animals, beyond their meat and hides
• Milk their animals, harvest their wool, enrich the soil with manure
• Ride horses and camels and to hitch various animals to plows and carts
• Wine and beer - beer was regarded as a gift from the Gods - could turn a savage into a civilized person

Social Variations in the Age of Agriculture

• Opened up vast new positions for the construction of human societies 

Pastoral Societies

• Difference between the domestication of plants and animals - some people came to depend far more extensively on their animals, such as sheep, goats, cattle, horses, camels, or reindeer
• The relationship between nomadic herders and their farming neighbors has been one of the enduring themes of Afro-Eurasian history
• Relationship of conflict as pastoral peoples, unable to produce their own agricultural products, were attracted to the wealth and sophistication agrarian societies and sought to access their richer grazing lands as well as food crops and manufactured products
• Conflict between Cain and Abel

Agricultural Village Societies

• Many societies also retained much of their social and gender equality of gathering and hunting communities, as they continued without kings, chiefs, or aristocracies 
• Both men and women could carry out a series of roles and enjoy a range of positions, from making tools to grinding grains and baking to heading to a household
• Many village based agricultural societies flourished well into the modern era, usually organizing themselves in terms of kinship groups or lineages, which incorporated large numbers of people well beyond immediate or extended family
• Given the frequent oppressiveness of organized political power in human history, agricultural village societies represent an intriguing alternative to states, kingdoms, and empires
• Pioneered human settlement of vast areas; adapted to a variety of environments; maintained a substantial degree of social and gender equality; created numerous cultural, artistic, and religious traditions; and interacted continuously with their neighbors

Chiefdoms

• In other places, agricultural village societies came to be organized politically as chiefdoms, in which inherited positions of power and privilege introduced a more distinct element on inequality, but unlike later kings, chiefs could seldom use force to compel the obedience of their subjects
• Relied on the generosity or gift giving, their ritual status, or their personal charisma to persuade their followers
• Chiefdoms emerged everywhere in the Pacific Islands, which had been colonized by agricultural Polynesian peoples 
• Chiefs led important rituals and ceremonies, organized the community  for warfare, directed its economic life, and sought to resolve internal conflicts
• In North America as well a remarkable series of chiefdoms  emerged in eastern woodlands, where an extensive array of large earthen mounds testify to the organizational capacity of these early societies 
• The Agricultural Revolution radically transformed both the trajectory of the human journey and the evolution of life on the planet
• Agriculture provided humankind with the power to dominate nature; it also increasingly, enabled some people to dominate others
• Slowly, any of the resources released by the Agricultural Revolution accumulated in the hands of a few - rich and poor, chiefs and commoners, landowners and dependent peasants, rulers and subjects, dominate men and subordinate women, slaves and free people

Documents: Considering the Evidence: History before Writing: How Do We Even Know?

• The absence of written records for earlier phases of human history is one of the reasons many world historians have neglected or avoided the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras.
• Historial linguistics, rooted in the changes that languages undergo, has also aided in tracking human movement and defining the character of particular cultures by analyzing their vocabularies 
• Gatherers and hunters in recent times have often mixed and mingled with agricultural societies, or made contact with elements of modern civilization 

Document 1.1: A Paleolithic Woman in the Twentieth Century

• Fifty year old woman, Nisa
• Had interacted with neighboring cattle-keeping people and with Europeans
• Fully participated in the gathering and hunting culture of her ancestors

Nisa: The Life and Words of an !Kung Woman

Life in the Bush

• People would share what little they had; whether it be meat or honey, but there were also stingy people 

Marriage 

• Very simple - A husband was like a father or older brother who provided you food and took care of you 

Loss

• The amount of pain you feel is all equal when you lose them- Parents, husband, or children
• When they all die though, and you have no family left, you really feel the pain
• God is the one who destroys, not the people

Lovers

• Affairs are something that even people from a long time ago knew
• Picked up lovers - Having affairs are one thing that God gave us
• When you are a woman, you don't just sit still and do nothing - you take lovers
• You don't just sit with one man-one man can give you very little- when  you have lovers one brings you something and so does another
• You don't just sit with one man. Does one man have enough thoughts for you?

A Healing Ritual

• N/um
• The trance that in the healing power sitting inside the healers body starts to work
• Both men and women learn how to cure with it
• Learned form mother when young

What do you think of Nissa's account as a description of what Paleolithic peoples might have been like?
I think that Nissa's account as a description of what Paleolithic peoples might have been like is both interesting and makes a lot of sense. From both the text reading, and Nissa's account: the people were treated with equality, both male and females took lovers, and people would share what little they had.