Lecture 3 - Agricultures Impact

Hunter -Gatherers: Modes of Existence

• Great social advantages: their flexibility

• Exploit many resources lightly, not depend heavily on only a few

• Typically mobile, either seasonally or constantly

• Little opportunity for economic or other specializations to develop

Pastoralism…a “bridge” to agriculture?

• Emerges around the same time as agriculture (about 14,000 to 12,000 years ago)

• It is the herding of domesticated or partially domesticated animals

• Nomadic, wandering mode of existence

• Usually based on marginal land; was compatible or even interdependent with agriculture…

• …but also led to conflict, i.e., warfare

The Impact of the Earth on our early civilisation

• Iain Stewart and the video “How Earth Made Us”

- Continental plate boundaries are places of great natural resource availability (metals, water, etc.)

- These areas see the flourishing of the vast majority of the world’s first civilizations (e.g., the Minoans, whose success is based on trade of processed natural resources – Bronze)

“…Subject to change without notice”

• Whether it is the concentration of useful minerals (copper, tin, etc.) or water (exploited via qanats) peoples are drawn to these plate boundaries…

• …which are also places of tremendous danger (e.g., the Santorini eruption of ca. 1600 BCE and the collapse of Minoan civilization, earthquakes in Iran, dangers in California, Istanbul, etc., etc.)

• So: the earth is both cradle of civilizations and the destroyer of civilizations as well

The Emergence of Agriculture

• Sedentism = living in one place; it’s new for humans

• 12,000 – 10,000 years ago, villages begin to appear, esp. in what is today the Middle East (below)

Emergence of Agriculture - Specific Theories

• Was it… Population concentration produced shortages, leading to necessity of agriculture (or starvation)?

• Was it…“Garbage Pile” model?

• Was it…(Current champion) → climate change stress on the Natufian Culture of the Fertile Crescent, forcing them to become agriculturalists?

A Half a World Away…

Around 12,800 B.P., Lake Agassiz in N. America (covering parts of Manitoba, N. Dakota, Minnesota, Ontario, Saskatchewan and fed by glacial meltwater) bursts its banks in a massive, immediate episode…

…which produces the Younger Dryas (maybe)

The Impact if the Younger Dryas in the Fertile Crescent

• Cooler, much dryer conditions dramatically limited the productivity of the region

• Natufians had a choice: to become semi-nomadic again (remember – at the onset of the Younger Dryas they were that rare category, sedentary hunter-gatherers), roaming in search of food…

• … but some of them remained semi-sedentary, and began to cultivate some plant species (einkorn in particular) to preferentially help them thrive

• By the time the Younger Dryas ended, around 11,500 B.P., agriculture was firmly established in the Fertile Crescent – and humanity was changed forever

Environmental circumstances affecting us (again)…why domesticate Einkorn wheat?

• Brittle vs non-brittle rachis in einkorn wheat, and why this matters

• One gene, one mutation, in one location in the Middle East, about 12,000 years ago in today’s southern Turkey… spells death for the plant

• …or it represents the most important event in human history. You pick.

The meaning of wealth

• Storable foodstuffs = wealth, which requires protection = walls

• Walls themselves suggest a food surplus: why?

• Construction like this represents a huge organized effort…an effort that can only come from the actions of a government

Evidence for Elites - the Beveled-Rim Bowl

• First appears about 5,800 years ago…

• …soon produced in huge quantities, and discarded in huge quantities too (in some sites 75 percent of ceramics found are BRBs)

• So, what is the function of the BRB?

Emergence of elites…from the environment?

• Environmental stress produces profound social change

• Original agricultural hierarchies (such as the early Sumerian ones) based on priests…

• …actually, to be precise, they were priest-astronomers. Why would watching the heavens be so important to these emerging agricultural societies?

Agriculture and the Environment

• Competition for resources = warfare = replacement of priesthood by warrior-kings

• One of the earliest? Sargon of Akkad (warrior, king, lawyer, conduit to the gods)

• Why? Because agriculture has become complex and needs a complex governing hierarchy → one that controls irrigation, food distribution. etc.

The River Flood Phenomenon: Blessing and Problem

• Mesopotamia = “land between rivers”; the land of Sumer and Akkad (ca 5,500 BP to 4,000 BP)

• Tigris-Euphrates: flood March to May

• Crops already in fields, need protection

• Nile: floods Sept-Oct

• Crops off fields, soil fertilized for next year

Mesopotamian Irrigation & its Problems

• Very old, at least 8000 BP

• Requirements: protect crops early, water them later

• 4500 BP: crop yields falling because of salinization

• Regional productivity damaged, cycles of social collapse follow; Sumer collapses around 4000 BP, being replaced by Assyrian entities from the northwest

The Tragedy of Development: Egypt’s Case After WW2

• First dam at Aswan on the Nile, some 800km south of Cairo, finished in 1902

• 1950s: Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian president, envisions the construction of a new dam at Aswan, ending the river’s flooding and producing hydropower for a growing economy

• 1960-1970: dam built against the backdrop of the Cold War; formally opened in 1971

Problems with the Dam

• Loss of fertility in the Nile Delta (no more nutritive silt deposited by floods also enhances erosion of the delta too…very bad news in a climate-changing world)

- Egyptian farming community now dependent upon external sources of fertilizer (1 MT/yr), where before there had been independence

• Collapse of fish stocks in the Nile itself (many were migratory and the dam prevents their journey) and the dramatic reduction in the anchovy/sardine population & fishery in the Eastern Mediterranean

• Silting of Lake Nasser behind the dam is very costly to combat (some 124 million tonnes of silt/yr)

Agriculture in SE Asia: the Great Leap Forward

• Prehistoric patterns similar to those of Middle East…by 5500 BP: wheat, millet, rice are being grown on arable land

• 2500 BP: a great conceptual leap – get the rice wet in Paddy (padi) Fields; by 1500 BP this is a common practice throughout SE Asia

Advantages of Aquaculture

• Deals with soil fertility problem:

- Water is nutrient-rich

- Algae can grow in it, fixing nitrogen

• Secondary benefit – yummy crustaceans and small freshwater fish (and, hence, an easily-obtainable dietary protein source)

Drawback: Its a Horrifically Labor-Intensive Process

• Rice-paddy farmers employ 26 or more management techniques

• Rice stalks are planted individually!

• Knowledge base required for aquaculture is also enormous

Another apparent drawback: it’s a totally transformational process

• Rivers dammed, flow controlled, etc.

• Slope management and terracing

• Entire ecosystems realigned to artificial forms

• Methane production from wet-rice cultivation is evident in ice cores (but there is a “but”)

• Hidden benefit: there’s almost no further impact

Implications for History

• Aquaculture is incredibly efficient→ so population rises a lot

• China in 1200 was most advanced country in the world. Then it stalled. Why?

• Got to keep people on the land→ no social mobility!

• Failure lies in efficiency’s success: there’s no need to innovate

• In Europe, the opposite was true…they became restless technophiles

“Less Advanced” Agriculture and its Impact: NW Europe

• Slash-and-burn agriculture, relying on rain for water

• Cyclical process replaced, about 3800 BP, with settled permanent agriculture

• Problems?

- Soil erosion (how do we know?)

- Species extinctions (because they’re not there anymore) and those species’ replacements

• Diet doesn’t change that much, implying that agriculture probably failed often and required supplementary food sources

Agriculture Life in “Dark Ages” Europe

• During the period of the Roman empire (ca. 2000 – 1500 BP) life was cosmopolitan and interconnected; after Rome’s fall Europe enters the intensely local Dark Ages or Mediaeval period

• Manors (North) and Villas (South) became the focus of agricultural existence, not individual farms→ Agriculture was based on these self-sufficient, intensely local and isolated communities

Medieval Agriculture Production

  Four main factors determine its nature:

• Economic self-sufficiency of manor

• Development of mixed agriculture

• New technologies

• Land tenure and ownership

Organization, Technology

• Land-holdings divided into strip fields, affecting production

• Technological change also affected production… the heavy plough and horse collar were critical adaptations

New Lands, New Crops

• Middle Ages (ca. 900-1300) see more land coming under cultivation: where?

• New crops too – sugarcane, rice, cotton, fruits (all from contact with the Arab world)

• Ca. 900 – 1280, during the Mediaeval Warm Period there’s a significant increase in farmed land area, and therefore lands that are cleared

Mediaeval Food and Diets

• Depended a great deal on the social class of the individual:

- The Wealthy: had a wide range of foods available to them

- The Poor: had to make do with a very simple, calorically-limited diet

• Most common drink? Ale, not water (Why?)

• Most diets were protein-poor and amalgamated (e.g., “Pottage” and “Potluck” meals)

• The premodern world was usually a hungry one – and that’s when times were good; when times were bad, they were bad

Agricultural Conclusions: Life on a Knife-Edge

• For most (almost all) of the pre-modern period humanity lived on a knife-edge…

• …agriculture was a great invention, but for most of the world it was still limited and not hugely productive (the exception being??)

• Nevertheless, it conditioned our societies – their politics, philosophy, economies, etc.

• And it allowed for environmental modifications, generally on a small but gradually expanding scale