Why did humans take up agriculture?

[HemlockGrey]

So I was reading about prehistoric human civilization, which subsisted, of course, on hunting and gathering. Now, apparently, hunter gatherers had a more balanced diet, were physically stronger, healthier, and had more leisure time than early farmers, who had to deal with crop failures and many more diseases.

So what made people take up farming? Obviously they didn't decide "Well, if we don't sit down and do this farming thing we'll never put a man on the moon." Was it that early farmers simply exhausted all the available foods in their area? That doesn't seem right, as Mesopotamia and the Nile were extremely lush areas. Was farming just more dependable? That also doesn't seem right, as herds and wild edibles don't suffer from crop failures.

[Frank Hipper]

Some of the earliest civilisations show evidence of farming and hunting/gathering existing side-by-side, so it's probably not much of a stretch to speculate that agriculture grew from a need to supplement gathered foods.

[Stark]

It's worth remembering that the situation was very fluid: 'primitive' hunter-gatherer societies survived millenia after the emergence of agriculture. Agriculture simply supports sedentary civilisation and leisure time, which equals technology. In a social darwinist sense, agriculture brings many benefits for a more 'advanced' form of society.

[Crown]

To make beer ... okay that was from Queen of the Damned, but damn if it doesn't make some sense.

[Gil Hamilton]

To make beer ... okay that was from Queen of the Damned, but damn if it doesn't make some sense.

Probably part of it. I've noticed in anthro studies that any time a civilization ever gets to the point they have excess grain, the development of beer happens. After all, beer is usually safer than the water supply for drinking.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Well, there are several stages in civilization development. The early, or first level societies might be the hunter/gatherors, but a level that usually comes before argriculture is horticulture. Many of the agricultural civilizations, especially the hydraulic cultures, first started as horticulturists along with their other activities to get food and subsist.

I think it was first in the mesolithic where humans began experimenting with certain plants that they saw and tested in nature. They planted them and nurtured already planted crops. They saw this worked, and they began to do it for themselves on a larger scale. They found out they could produce far more food in a more stable manner.

They didn't have to scrouge around and move from place to place following the herd. It was more "efficient" and freed up time for other things.

[LapsedPacifist]

I've been nursing the suspicion that agriculture came from making better deer blinds. I have no evidence of that, but a goal lazier more productive hunting certainly seems like it would lead to some planting.

LP

[Chmee]

So I was reading about prehistoric human civilization, which subsisted, of course, on hunting and gathering. Now, apparently, hunter gatherers had a more balanced diet, were physically stronger, healthier, and had more leisure time than early farmers, who had to deal with crop failures and many more diseases.

So what made people take up farming? Obviously they didn't decide "Well, if we don't sit down and do this farming thing we'll never put a man on the moon." Was it that early farmers simply exhausted all the available foods in their area? That doesn't seem right, as Mesopotamia and the Nile were extremely lush areas. Was farming just more dependable? That also doesn't seem right, as herds and wild edibles don't suffer from crop failures.

Guns, Germs & Steel is the book for you .... lot of interesting speculation in this area.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Was farming just more dependable? That also doesn't seem right, as herds and wild edibles don't suffer from crop failures.

Hunting is very inconsistent as far as providing food goes. Feast or famine if the way I've heard it described, and this is how it functions for most predatory animals and hunting societies. When you are successful in catching your prey, you have plenty of food, but if you hit a stretch of bad luck you starve. Also, with hunting and gathering, you are working and on the move all the time. Under these conditions it's very hard for older people and children.

Agriculture (and herding), by contrast, provides a very stable food source once it has advanced to a reasonable level, and in case of crop failure, you can still resort to hunting and gathering for emergencies and supplemental sustenance. Moreover, you stay in one place all the time, allowing you to set up a family more easily. It also tends to organize the group more cohesively than hunting and gathering. These are of great help not only in technical development, but also in primitive warfare. The agricultural society will be better organized than the hunter-gatherers and will outreproduce them. I wouldn't say that all of humanity adopted agriculture as much as the agricultural societies pushed the hunter-gatherers out.

[Imperial Overlord]

To add on to what Pablo said, an agricultural society also has the ability to store surplus food.

[Col. Crackpot]

To make beer ... okay that was from Queen of the Damned, but damn if it doesn't make some sense..

I actually had a western civizilation professor who strongly belived that humanity's pursuit of inebriation is what sparked the begining of agriculture.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Agriculture is more efficient, which means that is the natural recourse of a people who have exceeded the food resources available in a given area via hunting and gathering. The logical supposition for why agricultural society developed is that, over a very long period of time, a great deal of reproductive success in particular human populations forced them to depend on cultivation more and more as they exceeded the hunting/gathering resources in their area until such time as that cultivated crops had become the primary food source. The next step to formal agriculture was inevitable after that point as population pressures overcame us.

It's false to think of humanity as having existed in a balance with nature before we began agricultural efforts--the explosion out of Africa was, in evolutionary terms, incredibly rapid, and so was human population growth. We were healthier as hunter-gatherers, but our very success in that role in terms of species propagation guaranteed that we could not sustain it indefinitely.

Note that not all civilization arose from agricultural societies. We have very strong evidence that civilization developed in coastal Peru from a primarily fisheries-based society, and more tenuous evidence that Minoan civilization also developed primarily as fisheries-based without a great reliance on agriculture. Furthermore, it appears as though the Egyptians may have been able to skip many steps in the development of agricultural society because of the unique geographical and climatic conditions of the Nile valley. All three cases show themselves in the genesis of highly unique cultures, whereas cultures which developed through the standard accepted course of development of agriculture have a great many broad similarities.

One thing to consider for the greater creativity and success of societies which rely heavily on the water is that before the steam engine, water transport was a much, much, much more efficient way of carrying goods than anything remotely possible on land. Incidentally, that is my biggest issue with Diamond--Europe did not have more difficult terrain than the main cultural centers of Asia, it has easier terrain, because European geography is highly suited to the utilization of water based transportation, which is more efficient. The European advantage is much more likely due to simple economic prosperity caused by this.

[wolveraptor]

It's worth remembering that the situation was very fluid: 'primitive' hunter-gatherer societies survived millenia after the emergence of agriculture. Agriculture simply supports sedentary civilisation and leisure time, which equals technology. In a social darwinist sense, agriculture brings many benefits for a more 'advanced' form of society.

Hunter-gatherer societies had far more leisure time than agricultural societies. It was a factor of impermanence. A hunting tribe can be wiped out by the most minor fluctuation or migration of food, especially if the place is overcrowded, with warring tribes competing for food sources. An agricultural society can settle down and be resistant to famine, due to excess resources. Furthermore, they can construct a larger population, allowing them to fight for resources more efficiently.

[HemlockGrey]

Thanks for all the detailed responses. Much appreciated.

Guns, Germs & Steel is the book for you .... lot of interesting speculation in this area.

I did read it a while ago, but I unfortunately I don't remember much (primarily the bits about diseases, geography and animal domestication).

Incidentally, that is my biggest issue with Diamond--Europe did not have more difficult terrain than the main cultural centers of Asia, it has easier terrain, because European geography is highly suited to the utilization of water based transportation, which is more efficient.

My memory of this is very sketchy, but I thought that his idea was that it was much harder for ideas and inventions and such to move from Europe to Asia, due to the numerous deserts and mountain ranges in their path, especially in times of war.

[Jarl Sven]

To make beer ... okay that was from Queen of the Damned, but damn if it doesn't make some sense..

I actually had a western civizilation professor who strongly belived that humanity's pursuit of inebriation is what sparked the begining of agriculture.

Dr Katz from Penn is a strong supporter of the civilization for beer school of thought

He is also the one who helped translate the Sumerian ode to Ninkasi (goddess of beer)
It is actually a prayer and a recipe.

I made it once …very tasty

[The Duchess of Zeon]

My memory of this is very sketchy, but I thought that his idea was that it was much harder for ideas and inventions and such to move from Europe to Asia, due to the numerous deserts and mountain ranges in their path, especially in times of war.

That doesn't work either. A Nile-Red Sea canal, allowing full access by merchant ships of the period from Greece or Italy to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, was in operation more or less continuously from the beginning of Persian rule in Egypt to the end of Roman rule there. There is strong evidence of a Roman colony established on the Deccan for trading purposes. We know that Chinese emissaries reached Syria from the Han Dynasty, and that Indian traders who had visited the Han Court arrived in Rome as well. From the moment that Alexander the Great opened the trading routes at point-of-pike, the contact was quite free-ranging.

Much of western philosophy in the Hellenistic period was heavily influenced by Indian ideas, for instance, which shows how great the exchange was. One of the Mauryan Emperors of India in fact sent Buddhist missionaries to the various Hellenistic Successor States to try and get them to convert to Buddhism. All of this exchange is fully documented, along with these capabilities for travel and trade on a large scale--in a period when the differences were rather minor.

Much later, the Ming, Ottomans, and Japanese all fielded modern European-style weapons in the 1500s, the Ottomans even built an exact replica of the Venetian Arsenal. Babur, the Mughal conqueror of India, won his victories primarily due to the clever employment of blackpowder artillery.

Part of Diamond's argument--the part I was taking particular exception to--is that geography caused the disunity of Europe, and it was disunity which spurred competition, and with it, innovation. What I'm saying is that this is not correct--European geography actually aided in economic and cultural integration because of the ease and cheapness of high-volume transport via ships, and for much of European history political integration was at least nominally a fact of law, and thus cultural outlook.

[PainRack]

That doesn't work either. A Nile-Red Sea canal, allowing full access by merchant ships of the period from Greece or Italy to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, was in operation more or less continuously from the beginning of Persian rule in Egypt to the end of Roman rule there. There is strong evidence of a Roman colony established on the Deccan for trading purposes. We know that Chinese emissaries reached Syria from the Han Dynasty, and that Indian traders who had visited the Han Court arrived in Rome as well. From the moment that Alexander the Great opened the trading routes at point-of-pike, the contact was quite free-ranging.

Except his point was about agriculture and the permanance of settlements. Diamond focus on geography stated that while Europe and Asia was on the same latitudes, thus allowing for the spread of ideas and societies from Asia to Europe because of the ability to spread their foodstocks, this didn't happen in America because North American societies were incompatible with South American societies, due to the difference in climate.

Part of Diamond's argument--the part I was taking particular exception to--is that geography caused the disunity of Europe, and it was disunity which spurred competition, and with it, innovation. What I'm saying is that this is not correct--European geography actually aided in economic and cultural integration because of the ease and cheapness of high-volume transport via ships, and for much of European history political integration was at least nominally a fact of law, and thus cultural outlook.

IIRC, Diamond took note of that and pointed out that the difference between China and Europe, which both could easily rely on water transport was that unlike Europe, China didn't have moutaineous terrain to hinder the spread of civilisation. He also noted that his work at that point in time couldn't and chose to ignore the differences between unity and division.

Its also worth noting that with his focus on climate taken into account, that could also explain for certain divisions in Europe. Generally, climate was vastly difference in the Mediterran than from Northern Europe, and two distinct cultural centres did emerge, the Greek and Roman empires of the Med as opposed to the Goths and other civilisations in the wintry north.

[Jarl Sven]

Thanks for all the detailed responses. Much appreciated.

Guns, Germs & Steel is the book for you .... lot of interesting speculation in this area.

I did read it a while ago, but I unfortunately I don't remember much (primarily the bits about diseases, geography and animal domestication).....

I started reading that book. I had heard good reviews about it. But somewhere in one of the earlier segments the author said something that westerners should have evolved to be less fit because of TV


I put the book down then

[HemlockGrey]

Huh? My memory of that is him saying that over the long term TV and similar luxuries may induce sloth and dimwittedness into society, which is not exactly a groundbreaking revelation.

[Zero]

I stopped watching television a year ago, and if anything, I got lazier. Odd how things work... although my dimwittedness may have gone down a teensy bit.

[wolveraptor]

Why the fuck would you do that?

[Zero]

Because there's never anything on... lol. I don't know, I just told myself to stop for a week, for the sake of some damned thing or other.. and I just didn't pick it up again. Now it seems pretty dull and stupid most of the time...

[wolveraptor]

What, do you only get 4 channels or something?

[Zero]

No, I just never see anything interesting on. Not much interests me, I guess, but most of it just seems... dull. A waste of time.

[Zor]

First off, Domestication/Ranching had it's beginings some time before civilization, note what the Natives in the Prairie Region were doing with Bison (herding bison into pens for slaughtering).

I say Boats has at least a part to do with it. A few Stone aged Fishermen using rafts/cannoes/Reedboats and nets could provide a good deal of food from a river, as well as providing transport for hunters and there kills. This allows them to be more settled, they discovered how to use seeds over time and that they could get there vegitibles more easily by farming.

Zor