The Consequences of Food Production
Once successful¸ food production spread rapidly¸ partly because population growth after the fact prevented people from reverting to hunting and gathering. Food production spread to all corners of the world except where an environment with extreme aridity or heat or cold rendered agriculture or herding impossible or where people chose to remain hunters and gathers. In some places¸ food production was the economic base for urbanization and literate civilization; but most human societies did not go further than subsistence–level food production until the industrial power of nineteenth–and twentieth–century Europe led them into the machine age.
Differing Dates and Why
As we sall see in out next chapter¸food production began at very different times in various parts of the world¸ being well established in Southwest Asia by 10¸000 B.C.E. in China by at least 6¸000 B,C,E. and probably eariler¸ in Mesoamerica by 5¸000 B.C.E.¸ but much later in tropical Africa–by about 1¸000 B.C.E. and then only in some locations. What were the local variations that accounted for this time lag? We know that hunters–gathers in subtropical zones such as Southwest Asia and highland Mesoamerica were beginning to manipulate potential domesticates among wild grasses and root species at the end of the Ice Age. Dependence on such foods probably came earlier in these regions¸ where there were only a few forageable species. Such dependence was essential to long term survival. In contrast, populations in more humid tropical¸ regions, like Africa nad Amazonian rain forests, probably did little more than manipulate a few wild species to minimize risk in learn years. Many African agriculture peoples still turn to hunting and gathering in lean years to this day. Agriculture was established considerably earlier in subtropical Southwest Asia¸ Middle and South America¸ Southeast Asia¸ India than it was in humid¸ tropical zones¸ undoubtedly because these were rich in game and wild vegetable foods. Furthermore¸ domesticated crops, and animals were more susceptible to irregular rainfall¸ locusts and other insect attacks¸ and endemic stock diseases. A strong and sustained incentive to obtain food must have been a prerequisite for a lasting shift from foraging to agriculture.
An interesting question remains: Why did food production not take hold much earlier in prehistory? Surely¸ there were many previous occasions during the Ice Age when conditions were favorable for people to start cultivating plants. Here, population models for prehistory offer some clues. We know there was gradual population growth during the Stone Age. The constant cycle changes of the past 700¸000 years must have led to conditions in some areas that presented human societies with the challenge of constant environmental change and population shifts. However¸ it was not until the end of the Ice Age that global populations rose sufficiently to limit mobility¸ and the easiest strategy for people faced with food shortages is to move away. There was initially a slow and then a rapidly accelerating intensification of hunters-gather life ways during and after the last glacial maximum¸ especially during Holocene times. This intensification pre adapted many societies to food production for the first time.
Changes in Human Life
Food production resulted¸ ultimately in much higher population densities in many locations¸ for the domestication of plants and animals can lead to an economic strategy that increases and stabilizes available food supplies¸ although more energy is used to produce them. (135) Farmers use concentrated tracts of territory for agriculture and for grazing cattle and small stock if they practice mixing farming. Their territory is much smaller than that of hunters-gathers (although pastoralists need huge areas of grazing land for seasonal pasture). Permanent villages replaced the temporary camps of earlier times. New social units came into being as more lasting home bases were developed;these social links reflected ownership and inheritance of land and led to much larger settlements that brought hitherto scattered populations into closer and more regular contact. Within a smaller area of farming land property lines are carefully delineated as individual ownership and problems of inheritance arise. Shortages of land can lead to disputes and to the founding of new village settlements on previously uncultivated soil.
The technological consequences of food production were¸ in their way¸ as important as the new economies. A more settled way of life and some decline in hunting and gathering led to long–occupied villages¸ lasting agriculture styles¸ and more substantial housing. As they had done for millennia¸ people built their permanent houses with the raw materials most abundant in their environment. The early farmers of Southwest Asia worked dried mud into small houses with flat roofs; these were cool in summer and warm in winter. At night during the hot season¸ people may have slept on the flat roofs. Some less substantial houses had reed roofs. In the more temperate zones of Europe¸ with wetter climates¸ timber was used to build thatched–roof houses of various shapes and sizes. Early Africa farmers often built huts of grass¸ sticks¸ and anthill clay. (page 136) Nomadic pastoralists of the northern steppes had no concern with a permanent and durable home¸ yet they¸ too took advantage of the related benefits of having a domestic food supply¦ They used animal skins to make clothing¸ as well as tents to shelter them during icy winters.
Agriculture is a seasonal activity, with long periods of the year in which the fields are lying fallow or are supporting crops. Any farmers is confronted with the problems of keeping food in ways the hunter-gatherer never has to ponder. Thus¸ a new technology of storage came into being. Grains bins¸ jars¸ or clay-lined pits became an essential part of the agricultural economy for stockpiling food for the lean months and against periods of famine. The bins may have been made of wattle and daub¸ clay¸ or timber. Basket and clay-lined silos protected valuable grain against rodents.
Hunters–gatherers use skins¸ wood containers¶ gut pouches¸ and sometimes baskets to carry vegetables foods back to base. Farmers face far more formidable transport problems¦ They must carry their harvest back to the village¸ keep ready-for-use supplies of foods in the house as opposed to storage bins¸ and store water. Early farmers began to use gourds as water carries and, in some areas and somewhat later¸ to make clay vessels that were both waterproof and capable of carrying and cooking food. (page 137) They made pots by coiling rolls of clay or building up the walls of vessels from a lump and firing them in simple hearths. Clay vessels were much more durable than skin or leather receptacles. Some pots were used for several decades before being broken and abandoned.
For tens of thousands of years¸ people dug up wild edible roots with simple wooden sticks¸ sometimes made more effective with the aid of a stone weight. The first farmers continued to use the digging stick to plant crops a few inches below the surface¸ probably in readily cultivable soils. They also used wooden or stone–bladed hoes (and much later¸ iron hoes) to break up the soft soil. These they fitted with short or long handles¸ depending on cultural preferences. European and Southwest Asian farmers made use of the ox–drawn plow in later millennia¸ at first with a blade tipped with wood¸ then with bronze, and later with iron. The plow was an important innovation¸ for it enable people to turn the soil over to a much greater dept than ever before. Every farmer has to clear wild vegetation and weeds from the fields¸ and it is hardly surprising to find a new emphasis on the ax and the adze. In Southwest Asia, the simple axes of pioneer farmers were replaced by more elaborate forms in metal by 2500 B.C.E. Present–day experiments in Denmark and New Guinea have shown that the ground and polished edges of stone axes are remarkably effective in cleaning woodland and felling trees. In later millennia¸ the alloying of copper and bronze and¸ still later the developing of iron cutting edges made forest clearance even easier.
New tools meant new technologies to produce tougher working edges. At first¸ the farmers used ground and polished stone¸ placing a high premium on suitable rocks¸ which were traded from quarry sites over enormous distances. Perhaps the most famous ax quarries are in western Europe¸ where ax blands were traded the length of the British Isles¸ and Grand Pressigny flint from France was prized over thousands of square miles. In Southwest Asia and Mexico, one valuable tool–making material¸ not for axes but for knives and sickles, was obsidisn¸ a volcanic rock prized for its easy working properties¸ sharp edges¸ and ornamental appearance. Early obsidian trade routes carried tools and ornaments hundreds of miles from their places of origin. By using spectrographic techniques to identify distinctive trace elements in different obsidians¸ scientists have been able to match obsidian fragments in distant villages in the eastern Mediterranean to such places of origins as Lipari Island off Italy and Lake Van in Turkey.
All these technological developments made people more and more dependent on exotic raw materials¸ many of which were unobtainable in their own territory. We see the beginnings of widespread long–distance trading networks¸ which were to burgeon even more rapidly with the emergence of the first urban civilizations.
Food production led to changed attitudes toward the environment. Cereal crops were such that people could store their food for winter. (pg 138) The hunter–gatherers exploited game, fish¸ and vegetable foods¸ but the farmers did more;they altered the environment by the very nature of their exploitation. Expansion of agriculture meant felling trees and burning vegetation to clear the ground for planting. The same fields were then abandoned after a few years to lie fallow¸ and more woodland was cleared. The original vegetation began to regenerate¸ but it might have been cleared again before reaching its original state. This shift pattern of farming is called slash–and –burn¸ or swidden, agriculture (page 138) Voracious domesticated animals stripped pastures of their grass cover; then heavy rainfalls denuded the hills of valuable soil¸ and the pastures were never the same again. However¸ elementary the agricultural technology¸ the farmer changed the environment¸ if only with fires kit to clear scrub from gardens and to fertilize the soil with wood ash. In a sense, shifting slash–and–burn agriculture is merely an extension of the age–old use of fire to encourage regeneration of vegetation.
Food production resulted in high population densities¸ but population growth was controlled by disease¸ available food supplies water supplies¸ and particularly famine. Also, early agricultural methods depended heavily on careful selections of the soil. The technology of the first farmers was hardly effective enough for extensive clearing of the dense woodland under which many goods soils lay¸ potentially cultivable land could only be that which was accessible. Gardens probably were scattered over a much wider territory than is necessary today. One authority estimates that even with advanced shifting agriculture¸ only 40 percent of moderately fertile soil in Africa is available for such cultivation. This figure must have been lower in the early days of agriculture¸ with the simple stone tools and fewer crops.
In regions of seasonal rainfall¸ such as southwestern Asia¸ sub–Saharan Africa¸ and parts of Asia¸ periods of prolonged drought are common. Famine was a real possibility as population densities rose. Many early agriculturalists must have worriedly watched the sky and had frequent crop failures in times of drought. Their small stores of grain from the previous season would not have carried them through another year¸ especially if they had been careless with their surplus. Farmers were forced to shift their economic strategy in such times.
We know that the earliest farmers avalied themselves of game and wild vegetable foods to supplement their argiculture¸ just as today some farmers are obliged to rely heavily on wild vegetable foods and hunting to surive in bad years. Many hunter–gatherer bands collect intensively just a few species of edible plants in their large territories. Aware favored foods can carry a comparatively small population through to the next rains. A larger agriculture populations is not so flexible and quickly exhausts wild vegetables and game in the much smaller territory used for farming and grazing. If the drought lasts for years¸ famine¸ death¸ and reduced population can follow.
Nutrition and Early Food Production
Was food production a real improvement in human lifeways? For generations archaeologists have argued that human health improved dramatically as a result of agriculture¸ because people worked less and lived on more reliable food supplies. However¸ the economist Esther Broserup and others have argued that in fact agriculture brought diminishing returns in relation to labor expended in the new systems that were adopted to feed many more people. Richard Lee´s studies of the Kung Sun of the Kalahari Desert tend to support her views. They show that these hunter–gatherers¸ and presumably others¸ had abundant leisure and worked less than farmers. Some nutritionists point out that foragers may may have had better–balanced diets than many farmers, who relied heavily on root or cereal crops. Further¸ farmers with their sedentary settlements and higher populations densities¸ were much more vulnerable to gastrointestinal infections and epidemics because of crowed village populations.
Nutrition studies based on the skeletons of early farmers suggest some incidence of anemia and slow growth resulting from malnutrition. Regional studies of prehistory populations have suggested a decline in mean age life expectancy in agricultural populations¸ which contradicts the commonly held perception. Taken as a whole¸ paleopatholological studies suggest a general decline in the quality¸ and perhaps the length¸ of human life with the advent of food production. However¸ there are many unknowns involved¸ among them changes in fertility and populations growth rates¸ which caused the world's population to rise even if general health standards and life expectancy fell.
What impacts these studies will have on population-pressure theories about the origins of agriculture is still uncertain. Certainly¸ any shift to food production caused by increasing population pressure could be reflected in a decline in the overall health and nutrition displayed by prehistoric skeletons.
In the final analysis¸ some people tyrned to food production only when other alternatives were no longer practiable. The classic example is the Aborginies of extreme northern Australia¸ who were well aware that their neignboors in New Guinea were engaged in intensive agriculture. They¸ too knew how to plant the top of the wild yam so that it regerminated¸ but they never adopted food production simply because they had no need to become dependednt on a lifeway that would reduce their leisure time and produce more food than they required. We should never forget that humans have always been opportunisic¸ and the planting food crops and the first taming animals may have been the simple result of pure opportunism. In the next section I will describe the beginnings of food production throughout the world.
Summary
Many late–Ice Age and early Holocene hunter–gatherer societies were pre–adapted to food production¸ as they were already exploiting some food resources intensively and living more sedentary life–ways. Most of the societies were in regions where food resources were diverse and seasonally predictable. In contrast to early theories that food production was a revolutionary development¸ modern hypotheses invoke social relations¸ population growth¸ and ecological factors as multivariate causes food production. Its development was a gradual process¸ one that saw increasing reliance on food crops¸ especially in areas more sedentary human settlement¸ more substantial¸ housing¸ elaborate storage technologies¸ and special implements for agriculture tasks. All these technological developments led to greater interdependence and to more long–distance exchange of raw materials¸ as well as increasing human social complexity.
