View of the Aymara community of Jachacachi in PeruLuis Flores-Blanco
Posted on 07/07/2025 9:14:53 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The switch to agricultural rather than hunter-gatherer-based societies is one of the most pivotal moments in the history of humankind. Archaeologists have long thought that this transition may have been influenced by hardships, as communities began relying more heavily on domesticated crops due to increasing population and diminished wild resources. However, according to a statement released by the Public Library of Science, new evidence from Peru's Altiplano region suggests that this was not the case there. Researchers recently examined the diets of 16 individuals buried at the sites of Kaillachuro and Jiskairumoko between 5,000 and 3,000 years ago, during the transitional period from foraging to farming. By analyzing isotopic signatures, the team determined that the diets of the inhabitants consisted of about 84 percent plant material, with a smaller proportion made up of meat from large mammals. This remained consistent over thousands of years, in both earlier foraging and later farming communities, seemingly dispelling myths that the eventual switch to agriculture was driven by necessity and crisis. "Our findings demonstrate, instead, that in the Altiplano, it was a process marked by stability and food sufficiency sustained for thousands of years," said researcher Luisa Hinostroza. "These results constitute crucial evidence revealing the capacity of Andean societies to efficiently manage their resources and maintain long-term stability." Read the original scholarly article about this research in PLOS ONE. To read about how hunter-gatherers thrived for 13,000 years in the southern reaches of South America, go to "Letter from Patagonia: Surviving a Windswept Land."
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
View of the Aymara community of Jachacachi in PeruLuis Flores-Blanco
One of the things the egghead’s don’t like to admit is the effect of Religion on the birth of Civilization. There has not been, to my knowledge , any Civilization that started up without it . Even now the efforts to erase Religion from Civilization have been a disaster as the Soviet Union proved.
An interesting hypo7. I’ve never thought about religion’s effect on the BIRTH of civilizations. I always thought that is was correlated but not a creating factor, but now when you talk a out it and what we know of Gobekli Tepe, that this first started as a religious place that led to agricultural use and permanent buildings, keeping that in mind makes sense.
But can you elaborate on what you have thought, your conclusions etc?
Human sacrifice?
Soooo
Turns out they really liked taters enuff to stop gathering...
Religion is a glue that holds Civilization together. It gets people who might even hate each other to cooperate. It serves as the beginning of the rule of law vs. law of the jungle. It has the draw back that war often results when different religious factions meet but even that has the benefit of advancing technology even if it was originally developed to kill the other side .
I wonder what happens to us another 13,000 years into the future. We don’t seem to be able to maintain a balance as these people did. But then 13,000 years later, some people might say we did but there was a disruption of some kind at the start of that new 13,000 year period.
I am guessing that you were never a farmer.
Your average small farmer will work sun up to sun down.
Hunter gathers work 4 to 5 hours a day for food.
My current working theory is that humans became farmers was to have the means of making alcoholic beverages.
Men became farmers to make BEER.
Most likely.
Your theory sounds very plausible.
What would we do without beer?
:)
South American and lower Latin American indigenous people were likely in contact with Africans, or maybe even by people from Oceania.
Indigenous people north of that were still very much in the stone aged ‘hunter gatherer’ mode. No metallurgy, no agriculture, no horses... Small groups fighting amongst each other with spears and bows and arrows made of stone.
Then again... Southern climates because of their good weather, lend themselves to the advancement of agricultural development. The more north you get in North America, the harder it is to grow anything.
Civilization is the result of agriculture and the need of fixed populations to defend their farmland and fields of food, and religion arose as a result of civilization, not the other way around. The USSR collapsed because of its rejection of reality, e.g., the market economy.
There was no mention of the recent efforts to study the extremely wide human existence in the rain forested areas of the Amazon head waters. These were agricultural people.
It turns out that the rain forests being “destroyed” exposing the previous extensive remains are in effect weeds in the old croplands.
The extent of the human existence hidden by the forests are visible in radar and other such methods.
Yup. The ancient big civs began and thrived in the major riverine basins (Nile, Euphrates, Indus, Yangtze, Danube, etc) and the Amazon was left off that list. I think that’s more the result of the ‘noble savage’ bias that persists today. If someone had wanted to look, they’d have found the old settlement sites, even without lidar and satellite eyes.
An agricultural society provides for a more sustainable and secure source of beer.
Another study suggest that the invention of beer made possible the rapid increase in human population that made possible civilization.
The human race may not exist if we didn't have beer.
Beer made for safe drinking water.
‘Beer is What Makes us Human’: How Beer Influenced Humanity Worldwide
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