Agriculture developed independently at several locations around the world, within the same time frame of several thousand years, relatively close together chronologically when you consider our species' timeframe of hundreds of thousands of years. Does this mean that agriculture is inevitable for humans to develop once the climate reaches a certain state?
Was Agriculture Inevitable?
- Thread starter Finn
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How much it's climate, how much it's population densities, how much it's what, is a good question.
However, yes, I'd say it was inevitable. The very fact that you have multiple centers of independent invention really does suggest that it was.
Something like gunpowder, with (apparently) a unique invention, one can argue about. Agriculture? Metal working? Stone buildings? not so much. IMO.
Given that there were at least eight independent developments around the world within a few thousand years ago, yes, I take it as an inevitable thing... globally.
Locally, it was hit or miss.
Basically, its like coin flipping. Flip a coin for Egypt, it can come up heads - Agriculture, or tails - No Agriculture. Flip a hundred coins worldwide, some of them will definitely come up heads.
Locally, it was hit or miss.
Basically, its like coin flipping. Flip a coin for Egypt, it can come up heads - Agriculture, or tails - No Agriculture. Flip a hundred coins worldwide, some of them will definitely come up heads.
More like a hundred-sided die, with only the 100 representing the right location, right plants for domestication, right weather and right people all being in the right place at the right time.
But yeah, that's basically it.
You are also forgetting that we humans are as a group quite smart when it comes to making our lives easier .
What I mean is that people no matter how good it gets always want better .So even if you have a group of Hunter-Gatherers living where their are always herds of game nearby .Some will want to forego hunting and just stay in place and live off the land .
Hence farming and herding come about as a way of living that is easier than constantly moving about all over creation .
What I mean is that people no matter how good it gets always want better .So even if you have a group of Hunter-Gatherers living where their are always herds of game nearby .Some will want to forego hunting and just stay in place and live off the land .
Hence farming and herding come about as a way of living that is easier than constantly moving about all over creation .
Agriculture is only feasible in interglacials. During a glacial period, the climate is too variable from year to year to result in a worthwhile crop each year. As far as I know, there were attempts to grow crops during the last glacial period, but they all came to nothing.
But once we entered the current interglacial, the success rate of early agriculture went from zero to some non-zero number.
But once we entered the current interglacial, the success rate of early agriculture went from zero to some non-zero number.
The reason I think agriculture is inevitable is because even where it didn't occur people have gone to considerable lengths to alter their environment to make their food sources more reliable and accessible. For example despite the lack of a suitable crop the local Aborigines from where I grew up 'improved' the Condah Swamp with weirs and other works to make catching eels into a virtual industry. What's more the improvement of the Swamp meant more reliable water which drew game and encouraged plant growth in the long, hot summer. As a result some 8000 people clustered around the Condah Swamp and lived in huts with stone foundations and lower walls, in stark contrast to the usual semi-nomadic lifestyle pursued by the people in the wider area.
That's not farming, but in the circumstances is a reasonable substitute.
That's not farming, but in the circumstances is a reasonable substitute.
Actually, agriculture is harder than hunting-gathering. Farming requires more work, is harder on the body, and creates a less healthy diet overall than hunting and gathering. People started intensive farming not because they wanted to...they did it because their population densities exceeded the carrying capacity of the land with hunting and gathering and they couldn't move anyplace else because of natural or human barriers. It was either change and work harder or die. Many probably died, but a few bit the bullet and became agriculturalists.
Diamond actually postulated that the eel and fish dams of Australia would have developed into agriculture given a few millennia.
ComradeHuxley
Donor
This article might be interesting. It explains some very recent discoveries about the dawn of agriculture.
-Until now, researchers believed farming was 'invented' some 12,000 years ago in an area that was home to some of the earliest known human civilizations. A new discovery offers the first evidence that trial plant cultivation began far earlier -- some 23,000 years ago.- [July 22, 2015]
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150722144709.htm
-Until now, researchers believed farming was 'invented' some 12,000 years ago in an area that was home to some of the earliest known human civilizations. A new discovery offers the first evidence that trial plant cultivation began far earlier -- some 23,000 years ago.- [July 22, 2015]
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150722144709.htm
This discovery in itself is hardly new. Archaeologists have known for decades that there were attempts at proto-farming before the end of the most recent glacial.
I am surprised at the timing, though. Other known attemps at farming were all in an interstade, comprising a short (a few decades or centuries) interval of warmer weather within the last glacial. And of course once the glacial climate returned, the attempt would fail. But 23,000 years ago, the last glacial would have been at its coldest.