Challenge=Agriculture 10000+ years early

Let’s say that you have access to a time machine. You can go back up to 40,000 years ago but not less than 20,000 years and arrive anywhere in the world. For this exercise hand-wave away those pesky paradoxes that make changing your past problematic. You can stay there for up to a year. Your goal is to accelerate human technology development so that Neolithic cultures will develop within a very short time—a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand years after you leave. You can observe the target population of people long enough to thoroughly learn their language, understand their taboos, and analyze how to get them to change before you go. You can bring as much knowledge as you want to, but you can’t take anything physical back beyond what is necessary to sustain your life.

Piece of cake, right? Probably very wrong. There are natural constraints. Let’s try a few innovations to show what I mean. Try introducing agriculture. That probably won’t take. Your people are nomadic. They can’t stay in one place long enough to protect a crop form marauding animals, and even if they could stay in one place long enough, chances are that they don’t want to. Also, if you are trying to introduce grains, you’ll need to introduce an infrastructure of food storage technology, food preparation technology—including new types of grinding tools to grind up the grain, and you’ll have to get the people involved to accept a whole new range of tastes. Chances are that the current foods are tightly bound up with their religion and the rituals of their lives. Also, climate was both considerably colder and considerably less stable over

Even if you could overcome those obstacles, you’d face political ones. The adults in your society have grown up in the current system and are comfortable with it. Chances are those expert hunters and expert gatherers have high prestige within the society. Chances are that expert makers of the current set of tools have high prestige too. They’ll probably resist any change that reduces that prestige. Wait until about ten thousand years ago, when the infrastructure of food preparation and storage is already in place, and people are already starting to settle down in areas with rich food resources, and your job would be easy. Of course that’s when agriculture became established in many areas.

Try showing the locals how to use bows and arrows. They’ll be intrigued. They may even make their own or try to use yours. Then, chances are that they will go back to their spears. It takes years to become a competent enough bowman to make it worth switching over from the spear. Also, given the type of game that they hunt or other aspects of their environment, the bow may not be superior to the spear. In our time-line’s Australia, some Aborigines in the northern part of Australia knew about bows and arrows. Children even used them as toys. Adults didn’t use them though.

Try introducing pottery. It wouldn’t work. The pots are too heavy and breakable for a nomadic people. Try to introduce writing. Again, it probably wouldn’t work. Chances are that the group has people with well-trained memories who can pass along all of the tribe’s useful knowledge and history. You might teach them enough that they’ll paint letters on whatever surface they normally paint pictures, but they’ll probably see little or no application for it at their level of social and economic complexity.

I’m not saying that it would be impossible to set your society onto a path that would quickly take them into the Neolithic. I’m just saying that you would need a thorough understanding of how the society works and how it might develop in order to set them on that path. I’d be interested in hearing your ideas on how you would handle that challenge.

Well, step one is to engage the women. They're already dealing with the gathering part of hunter-gathering. It can't be that hard to persuade them there exists a more effective gathering system.

I suppose I could start out by finding a culture that's less nomadic than most, too. Perhaps a tribe that works within a limited territory for one reason or another.

Do the concepts have to be technological or can they be religious/metaphysical? Given that the point of this exercise seems to be to come to a concensus as to what the driving forces behind the agricultural/neolithic 'revolution' was I'll have a go with metaphysics and cosmology. Given that the neolithic saw more organised forms of religion grow up around settlements (household and village gods etc.) then I'll say that they are part of the Neolithic, and thereby are within the bounders of this exercise.

Therefore, I'd try and introduce abstract oncepts early on. Most religions transformed along the lines of 'mundane' (i.e. the Sun is God) to 'partially abstract' (i.e. the Sun is guided by God) to 'fully abstract' (i.e. God created the Sun, but he can't be seen or felt directly unless through a miracle or somesuch).
If I could bring stage 2 on faster then the results would be intriguing. Although, it must be said with this idea that one person, no matter how awesome and modern they are, could not change the attitudes of a large population that early on, especially in one year. Even the great prophets and teachers, who had advantages like desperate followers (outcasts etc.) and already existing civilisation (Rome, Persia, Imperial China etc. etc.) not to mention divine intercession if we're feeling particularly devout. So I don't think anything we do short of physically bringing back in time something like a sword or a steam pump (or whatever would change things much at that point. At any point, really. History's full of stuff that looks way ahead of its time (Hiero's steam engine, that mechanical device from Classical Greece etc. etc.) yet they did not really affect history that much.

1 word - alcohol.

Explain the link between agriculture and alcohol. That will spur development.

Why hello Dale Cozort. I enjoy your work. In fact, I believe I originally found this site by navigating from yours. I believe you posed this question nigh on six years ago, no?

Anywho. Antiseptic childbirth and martial arts.

If you could teach groups to sterilize anything that touches women giving birth or newborn infants it would dramatically increase population. Obviously childbirth is more likely to be successful, but women would also survive much longer. The end result would be a shift from the typical male-heavy society caused by women mostly dying before 25 to a slightly female-heavy society as men are more likely to die hunting and warring. It's an innovation that would be nearly impossible to abandon - the risk of death for the woman would just be too clear.

Now how to do it? You need to boil water, and you need to do it before the invention of clay or metal cookware. Depending on the available stone you miiiight be able to work something out, but animal skin bags are probably the way to go.

I'd also teach some of the kids some basic martial arts moves - flips and holds. Play-fighting seems to be a human universal in children, and it would be easy to teach them new moves if they were "cool" ones. And anyone who refuses to use the moves is more likely to lose fights, including more serious ones later in life.

The end result is a society with a higher birthrate and an advantage in conflicts with outside groups. Of course, the first thing that will happen when births go up is that the culture will try birth control tactics like prolonged nursing to bring it back down. Women will give birth a little less frequently when young, but remain alive and breeding 5-10 years longer.

That's still growth, though, and they'll only do this when resources are scarc. Given that they have a "military" advantage over their neighbors, it's safe to assume my culture will spread.

One of the contributing factors leading to early agriculture was the climate shift at the end of the ice age. There's no replicating that (and indeed this might be easier to achieve even further back). That said, another factor was that it became more necessary. Humans progressively lost easy sources of nutrition as their presence led to decline and extinction of fauna. Some useful plants were used up and fishing gradually depleted by growing efficiency. At the same time, gradually larger human populations were less and less sustainable on even the most stable food sources.

My tactic would lead to larger human populations, and earlier depletion of easy sources of nutrition. It wouldn't have anyone farming even a generation later, but one or two thousand years on....

Even in Australia there were places on the verge of agriculture that lacked a founding crop. The Condah Swamp in Victoria was one place where the locals improved their environment with wiers and dams to control the water. As a result they lived year round in huts on eels and fish and the abundant permanet water drew in game duyring the dry months, apparently there were several thousand hunter-gatherers living around a swamp with is a few km across and about 20-30 north to south, that's a lot of hunter-gatherers.

Places like this could use a founder crop, and wella you'd have early agriculture.

Basket weaving could be a way to go. Baskets are less fragile than pottery, but also make a simple stepping stone to it (i.e., baskets covered in clay).

As someone already said: Booze. Great fun, great antiseptic.

You can bring as much knowledge as you want to, but you can’t take anything physical back beyond what is necessary to sustain your life.

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This is the main sticking point in your WI.

It would be easy if you let me take back 20 pounds [3~4 pound ?each] of various seeds Corn, Wheat Barley Rye etc.
No they won't settle down rite away, But IIRC the earlier herders started planting crops along their migratory route, to gather when they returned several months later.
As the Gathering increased in efficiency they stayed longer and longer in each place, till they finally stayed year round.
Force give them better and more efficient crops to spread around several thousands of years earlier -- and you can have the natural settling down happen earlier.

If I can't take anything back then the second sticking point is the 1 year time limit.
Given several years [lifetime?] to work with, I could Introduce this replanting [part of] the tribe's Seeds, Berries & Tubers, to have to return to,
and it would slowly spread between tribes as Women and Men are exchanged between tribes.
It would take longer [than the taking back seeds] but given that I am now living 20~40 thousands years before it happen OTL I have the Time.

If I am to be living my life, among the Herder/Gathers I would also introduce the idea of Selective Breeding.
It would take thousands of years, but whe could get domesticated animals thousands of years earlier also.

Err, wouldn't this technically belong in ASB, as it involves time travel and all? What's a good non-ASB pod for introducing early agriculture?

Err, wouldn't this technically belong in ASB, as it involves time travel and all?

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NO - whe aren't talking about the travel, but about the difficulty of changing Historical Patterns

For this exercise hand-wave away those pesky paradoxes that make changing your past problematic.

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You want an alternate universe then.

Also, I think this is ASB. Someone with the hugely superior knowledge appearing 40000 BC and attempting to introduce things for a year doesn't sound like it could happen in our timeline.

I'd probably do something to make them think me a God, and make it some sort of awesome religion, so it'd spread. Then I'd be remembered throughout history! Yay!

RMcD94 said:

You want an alternate universe then.

Also, I think this is ASB. Someone with the hugely superior knowledge appearing 40000 BC and attempting to introduce things for a year doesn't sound like it could happen in our timeline.

I'd probably do something to make them think me a God, and make it some sort of awesome religion, so it'd spread. Then I'd be remembered throughout history! Yay!

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That sounds an awful lot like the plot to Stargate.

Admiral Matt said:

Why hello Dale Cozort. I enjoy your work. In fact, I believe I originally found this site by navigating from yours. I believe you posed this question nigh on six years ago, no?

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Wow! You have quite a memory. This was originally a comment to one of the other Point of Divergence people in one of my newsletters from 2001 or 2002. I usually put in a recycle alert at the beginning of these things, but I didn't this time for some reason.

Admiral Matt said:

Anywho. Antiseptic childbirth and martial arts.

If you could teach groups to sterilize anything that touches women giving birth or newborn infants it would dramatically increase population. Obviously childbirth is more likely to be successful, but women would also survive much longer. The end result would be a shift from the typical male-heavy society caused by women mostly dying before 25 to a slightly female-heavy society as men are more likely to die hunting and warring. It's an innovation that would be nearly impossible to abandon - the risk of death for the woman would just be too clear.

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Interesting approach. Increase the population pressure and shift the population balance toward women. It could also allow more culture to be transmitted sooner because more women would live to be grandmothers--which gives the society two chances to pass knowledge between generations instead of just one.

Teach them to catch, train, and ride horses. It won't make agriculture appear earlier, but it'll help it spread once it does.

More sinisterly, one could bring a plague to wipe out all the megafauna early, so to force people to rely on cultivation for food. No need to even interact with Neolithic folks, then.

Looking at this problem from a lateral perspective, why not use your "far-future" knowledge of science and nature in combination with a devious mind, and persuade them that you are an incarnation of a supreme Deity? Then simply order them to make the changes, and stick around just long enough for them to collect in their first harvest and see the possibilities. Then mysteriously "ascend" at the end of the year.

Heretical to those already of a faith, such as myself, but a good way of forcing a very quick change, no?

Teach them to catch, train, and ride horses. It won't make agriculture appear earlier, but it'll help it spread once it does.

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See My comment about selective breeding. 20~40 years ago Horses were smaller than modern Shetlands, to small for even chariots or horse carts.

Falastur said:

Looking at this problem from a lateral perspective, why not use your "far-future" knowledge of science and nature in combination with a devious mind, and persuade them that you are an incarnation of a supreme Deity? Then simply order them to make the changes, and stick around just long enough for them to collect in their first harvest and see the possibilities. Then mysteriously "ascend" at the end of the year.

Heretical to those already of a faith, such as myself, but a good way of forcing a very quick change, no?

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How to go about doing that without any special tools, though?

Actually, that's a scenario I'm interested in anyway. Barring knowledge of solar eclipses and suchlike, how do you convince people you're a god based on knowledge alone?

SeptimusMagistos said:

How to go about doing that without any special tools, though?

Actually, that's a scenario I'm interested in anyway. Barring knowledge of solar eclipses and suchlike, how do you convince people you're a god based on knowledge alone?

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I'm not sure, but I reckon it's possible. By setting traps a la Rambo to slaughter or capture a group of warriors, preferably with the intent that they couldn't tell what was killing them? Knowledge of crude natural medicines? By having the knowledge of ways to produce materials for making advanced tents and the like which extremely early hunter-gatherer types might consider so advanced as to be god-like knowledge? With knowledges of poisons you could make some kind of poisoned brass knuckle job which could give you what looks like the ability to kill on touching someone. Maybe something to do with knowing how to control fire? Are there any natural alcohols or similar substances that could allow you to do the prehistoric equivalent of laying down a trail of petrol, then setting it alight "as if by magic"? Sleight of hand could be used to produce items - magicians tricks, in essence. You could add in concepts which would simply be beyond the people at the time - the concepts of money, government, even speech, that to a very basic culture could simply bamboozle the natives into thinking you can only have gotten your knowledge from being better than human. There must be ways of doing it. Heck, maybe even just appearing in the middle of the group as if by magic at the start of your one year with them would be enough.

Like I say, there's got to be ways of doing it if you have a clever enough mind. I'm not necessarily saying that this could be something that any old person could pull off.

Edit: what about even the ability to "predict" the movement of the stars over a number of days? That's got to be worth something.