WI No (Plant) Agriculture?

What if the human race never gets around to the cultivation of plants* (at least to the levels achieved in the Neolithic Revolution)? To what degree would animal husbandry be curbed? If horses are still tamed, could an agriculture-less world nourish nomad civilizations? And how would said civilizations look different from those nomads that arose OTL?

*(due to factors environmental, alternate evolution, or what have you)
 
What if the human race never gets around to the cultivation of plants* (at least to the levels achieved in the Neolithic Revolution)? To what degree would animal husbandry be curbed? If horses are still tamed, could an agriculture-less world nourish nomad civilizations? And how would said civilizations look different from those nomads that arose OTL?

*(due to factors environmental, alternate evolution, or what have you)

A nomadic society emerging in Central Asia is a possibility, but a slim one. They might eventually figure out iron working, and have small pasture-based settlements around key resource locations. But properly sustaining a high enough population density for industrial civilization requires plant agriculture.
 
But properly sustaining a high enough population density for industrial civilization requires plant agriculture.

Oh I'm not looking for an industrial revolution in TTL by any stretch of the imagination -- really, if what I'm wondering is how much would the civilizations ITTL look like the Mongols, the Sioux, or what have you?
 
Oh I'm not looking for an industrial revolution in TTL by any stretch of the imagination -- really, if what I'm wondering is how much would the civilizations ITTL look like the Mongols, the Sioux, or what have you?

But, could there be nomad herders without agriculture?

If I'm not wrong, IOTL we havehad first hunter-gatherers, then peasants, and then nomad herders. Could hunters transform into nomads directly? Could they stop seing animals as prey and decide to keep them alive in order to domesticate them, without depending on other sources of food?
 
But, could there be nomad herders without agriculture?

If I'm not wrong, IOTL we havehad first hunter-gatherers, then peasants, and then nomad herders. Could hunters transform into nomads directly? Could they stop seing animals as prey and decide to keep them alive in order to domesticate them, without depending on other sources of food?

My question exactly -- albeit better phrased :D:eek:
 
No agriculture means no staying in one place for years on end, which means no building of towns, which in turn likely means no civilization. So how would civilization develop without ag? Simple: it wouldn't.

I doubt there would be any draft animals either. Without fields to plough, why bother going around and try to breed a stronger animal. From what I've read, the first horses domesticated were not all that good for riding.
 
No agriculture means no staying in one place for years on end, which means no building of towns, which in turn likely means no civilization. So how would civilization develop without ag? Simple: it wouldn't.

Wait, does this mean "nomad civilization" is an oxymoron? Am I missing something?

EDIT ADD: Ah, gotcha :eek:
 
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Krall

Banned
Wait, does this mean "nomad civilization" is an oxymoron? Am I missing something?

It depends on your definition of "civilisation", but by most definitions a civilisation requires many things that require agriculture. Without the massive changes to society that are brought with agriculture (such as large populations, construction of permanent settlements, the division and specialisation of labour, etc.) you can't really have any sort of meaningful civilisation - you'd just have a small number of people migrating nomadically in order to forage, hunt, and herd for food.
 
No agriculture means no staying in one place for years on end, which means no building of towns, which in turn likely means no civilization. So how would civilization develop without ag? Simple: it wouldn't.
Depending on the local ecosystem, you can have a hunter-gatherer society and still be relatively sedentary. You still won't be able to get a large population though.
 

Hnau

Banned
I would argue that there is evidence that the reindeer, the dog, and the horse were domesticated by non-agricultural cultures, peoples that had very little exposure to populations that utilized agriculture. What is your definition of civilization? I would argue that cultures can become more socially and technologically complex without agriculture. There was trade, for instance, before the neolithic revolution, of luxury items and resources like valuable shells or ornaments or stones. You don't need agriculture to invent the flute, for example, we've found flutes dating before the neolithic revolution, and if you have the flute you can invent music. We also have found boats being used by certain cultures before they adopted agriculture. Actually, you might be able to create a sedentary civilization based on the boat-making and fishing industry. They would have to be supplemented by trade from nomadic peoples, but they would have good reason to stay in one place.

The question then is, if a culture develops a sedentary society based on fishing and coastal trading, wouldn't it be a very simple matter for them to discover agriculture at that point? If the right plants are around? If people are living much of their lives in one location and have very few options for food, I think they would discover agriculture pretty quickly.

In saying all this, I have to admit that agriculture is incredibly useful, perhaps the most useful technology humanity has discovered, so if humanity goes without it their technological and social development is going to be retarded in a huge way. But that doesn't mean that some technological/social development isn't possible.
 
Actually, Early Humans had practiced/experimented forms of Subsistence Agriculture/Horticuluture which normally involves fire and domestication not just Gathering and Hunting so if we prevent hominids from discovering fire we prevent agriculture and prevent the rise of Homo Sapiens.
 
I would argue that there is evidence that the reindeer, the dog, and the horse were domesticated by non-agricultural cultures, peoples that had very little exposure to populations that utilized agriculture.

In the case of the dog, yes. In the case of reindeer and horses, however, they seem to have been domesticated after the domestication of other livestock like cows and sheep which were domesticated after the rise of agriculture. So it's possible that the people who domesticated them did so only after coming into contact with pastoralists who had split off from the early agricultural societies (so agricultural knowledge on animal husbandry could be transferred over long distances by non-agriculturalist peoples). Perhaps it's not impossible to domesticate livestock (as opposed to companion animals like dogs) independently of agriculture, but IOTL we just don't have a clear cut example of this happening.

So going to OP's question-There would be no animal husbandry equivalent ITTL. The nomads of this world would be pedestrian nomads, who would wander in fringe environments while settled hunter gatherers would exist in richer environments. Some of these high population density, settled groups would develop hierarchies and proto-states that could develop some monuments, but the vast majority of cultures would not have the population to sustain labor, let alone create the hierarchies necessary to organize labor. As Hnau said art, music, and technology such as seafaring still exist ITTL, but without food surpluses to allow for division of labor, there are no artisan/intellectual classes to develop the sciences. Starvation and early death through injury is a much more common fate in this world without the food security of agriculture.

Short of ASB intervention, though, it's not possible to stop agriculture. There are just too many different kinds of plants scattered across too wide a range of land. I think you can delay agriculture for millenia with some freak disasters in the right places, but I cannot suspend my disbelief for stopping agriculture forever.
 
The question then is, if a culture develops a sedentary society based on fishing and coastal trading, wouldn't it be a very simple matter for them to discover agriculture at that point? If the right plants are around? If people are living much of their lives in one location and have very few options for food, I think they would discover agriculture pretty quickly.
Well, IIRC, many of the native tribes in California were fairly sedentary, at most migrating seasonally between the sea and oak forests inland, and they never developed agriculture. Of course, their main food source, oaks, are not very amenable to domestication. I think that most groups of people living in areas with little food would be forced to move around quite a bit and hence would be less likely to develop agriculture. You would probably need a happy medium between very few local food sources, which prompts constant migration, and a wide diversity of food sources, which means less incentive to domesticate things, for agriculture to develop not to mention suitable plants and animals.
 

Hnau

Banned
twovultures said:
In the case of the dog, yes. In the case of reindeer and horses, however, they seem to have been domesticated after the domestication of other livestock like cows and sheep which were domesticated after the rise of agriculture.

IRC reindeer were first domesticated in the northern Russia-Finland region roughly at the same time agriculture was being developed in the Middle East if not before, so they wouldn't have been exposed to other domesticated livestock. Horses were most probably domesticated after the agricultural revolution but in the Ukraine and Kazakhstan... quite distant from the Fertile Crescent and other areas that had agriculture.
 
There's some emerging evidence a permanent site can predate real agriculture. A story was posted in the forums about it a while back. So you might be able to have a town of some sort that is really a religious/gathering center, but everyone else is still migratory.

Maybe try this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_gardening
 
Depending on the local ecosystem, you can have a hunter-gatherer society and still be relatively sedentary. You still won't be able to get a large population though.

Generally speaking, our species tends to be nomadic in that form. We only started settling down when we discovered certain areas were good for raising crops. Of course, population growth does drive expansion as well.
 
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