Trying to fathom farming's origins

[Three Of Five]

On the related article is said that: "Continuing population growth put stress on local food supplies, which, in turn, led to farming as a way of artificially boosting food production."

I don't agree with this statement. For sure to colect food is always easier than produce it but population will grow only if we can increase food supplies on a based knowledge. And this will only work on a short term. Agriculture was not an of the shelf invention, for sure it took many years to perfect the process of seed selection, harvesting, irrigation and crops selection. On the other side, we can also admit that population grow was not the cause but the result of agriculture development. Farming can also be drived by climate changes.


But the main point here is why farming suddenly appears as a state of the art technique is several places around the world. It seems that this tecnhique was developed before the end of the ice age and the survivors took the know-how with them to several places where they could live.

I said survivors because it's already an accepted fact that the end of the last ice age was violent in some way so several cultures.

[Beagle]

http://www.dispatch.com/dispatch/conten ... 7ILI3.html

Given that the civilizations of the Old and New Worlds developed independently, there is no reason to expect that peoples on opposite sides of the globe all would adopt agriculture within a short period of time.

And yet, we've known for some time that they did. Mark Nathan Cohen, anthropologist at the State University of New York, Plattsburg, wrote in 1977 that "the problem is not just to account for the beginnings of agriculture, but to account for the fact that so many human populations made this economic transition in so short a time."

Welcome to the forum Three of Five. Here is the article you're talking about. Interesting.

[Rokcet Scientist]

I said survivors because it's already an accepted fact that the end of the last ice age was violent in some way so several cultures.

If that is so, is it not equally notable how some of the surviving cultures did not take up agriculture with anything remotely resembling the 'popularity', nor the effects, it garnered in other continents?
I'm thinking post-Clovis/Solutrean NA indians.

[Minimalist]

Climate effects from the end of the Ice Age may have made farming an extremely tricky business.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Climate effects from the end of the Ice Age may have made farming an extremely tricky business.

Hang on! Are you saying NA post-glacial climate(s) prevented agriculture from being successful there? For the whole 10,000 years?
Yeah, and Santa comes every Xmas!

[kbs2244]

I think there may be a need to define terms here.
Storing a few seeds so you can plant them at the sunny side of a rock outside your cave next spring is a far cry from planting a 1/2 acre field.
When do you start "farming"?

[Rokcet Scientist]

I think there may be a need to define terms here.
Storing a few seeds so you can plant them at the sunny side of a rock outside your cave next spring is a far cry from planting a 1/2 acre field.
When do you start "farming"?

When you plant a 1/2 acre field, tend to it carefully, harvest the crop, can keep your family alive through the winter (or the dry season) on it, and repeat the whole process year after year.
Then you're farming, imo.

[Mayonaze]

Cultivating medicinal plants should also qualify as farming. You certaintly wouldn't need 1/2 acre of it though.

[Minimalist]

Climate effects from the end of the Ice Age may have made farming an extremely tricky business.

Hang on! Are you saying NA post-glacial climate(s) prevented agriculture from being successful there? For the whole 10,000 years?
Yeah, and Santa comes every Xmas!

YOu continue to ignore the fact that agriculture was not unknown among Native Americans, R/S. The Iroquois were organized into farming villages in New York as were the Cherokee in the South East. The Anasazi in the SW were agricultural until drought forced them to move elsewhere.

It is a good case study of how different groups reacted differently to their environment. You really have to lose this idea that all Native American tribes were at the same stage of development. It just isn't true.

[Leona Conner]

Right on Min. Agriculture was used my many NA's in both the East and West coasts. Seems only the Plains Natives did not develop the need and IMO it was because they didn't feel it was needed. They were too busy following the herds of bison to stay in one place long enough to sow and tend the plants.

[Minimalist]

Seems only the Plains Natives did not develop the need and IMO it was because they didn't feel it was needed.

That's a very good point, Leona. I'm willing to bet that Custer didn't think there weren't enough Indians to sustain themselves through H/G methods.

[Digit]

Based on the known reluctance of modern day hunter gatherers to take to farming I think Leona must be correct. Farming was a second choice where a choice was possible.
I can't see the transition being due to population pressure, many people have found a way to control their populations, and in fact farming would seem to need at least three generations on the land at the same time.

[kbs2244]

Back to my point of defining terms:
I can see saving a few seeds for later planting in a small one or two plant spot, and then picking the results “agriculture“. It is an artificial planting with a planed result. It is not just going out and finding naturally occurring plants. You could think of it a encouraging a natural process. It could be practiced by a semi-nomadic people that regularly came back to the same places.
But I would not call it “farming“.
In my mind the word “farming” means somewhat large scale clearing or preparation of land, planting and tending the crop through the growing season, and collecting a relatively large harvest. It implies long range planning and continuous presence.
These reports seem to use the words interchangeably. I do not think that is correct. It is a big jump from one to the other.

[daybrown]

Jared Diamond reports that the New Guinea Highlanders had been practicing transhumescence for 20,000 years in the same place. prolly moving up or down in elevation along with the climate shifts. The mountains provided a wide variety of ecosystems as the elevation changed in a very short distance.

And while they grew what they could they relied on foraging much more until other crops were introduced, which they rapidly adopted.

Whatever the abundance of game, Sass "The Substance of Civiliation" reports that the shift to agriculture reduced the amount of territory that needed to be defended by a factor of 500. Until the white man arrived with new crops, the struggle for control over hunting territory resulted in 25% of the men dying in battle. this is 20 times the death rate for yeoman farmers.

Both at Carcal Peru and Chatal Hoyuk, the population rose rapidly into the thousands, which was sufficent to deter attacks from hunting tribes that could only put 50 men into a battle.

Hodder reports that after a house was abandoned, it was used for a latrine. this is a clue to the limit of a community. Without a sanitation system, the population would have leveled off under 10,000.

The earliest I know of is Minoan, at Knossus & Akrotiri. Which both had flushing toilets and sewers with a separate system for fresh water. This would have been an enormous advantage to the matriarchies, which liked bathrooms the same as women today. Whereas even the 12th dynasty pharoahs hadda shit in a pot.

Pandemics routinely decimated patriarchic cultures. And their armies.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Climate effects from the end of the Ice Age may have made farming an extremely tricky business.

Hang on! Are you saying NA post-glacial climate(s) prevented agriculture from being successful there? For the whole 10,000 years?
Yeah, and Santa comes every Xmas!

YOu continue to ignore the fact that agriculture was not unknown among Native Americans, R/S. The Iroquois were organized into farming villages in New York as were the Cherokee in the South East. The Anasazi in the SW were agricultural until drought forced them to move elsewhere.

It is a good case study of how different groups reacted differently to their environment. You really have to lose this idea that all Native American tribes were at the same stage of development. It just isn't true.

Sorry, Min, but I think you continue to ignore that agriculture in NA had not nearly the scale, nor the effects, it had in the old world.

I'm not saying NA indians didn't know agriculture. They did. I am saying, however, that they never developed it on the scale and with the impact on societal (civilisational) development that it had in the old world. They never realised agriculture's full potential. Thus their societies never benefited (to the extent old world societies did) from agriculture's driving force to shape and develop their societies to the next level.