Farming Origins Gain 10,000 Years

BBC ^ | 6-23-2004

[blam]

Rainforest Researchers Hit Paydirt (Farming 11K Years Ago In South America)

[Dark Wing]

FYI

[HankReardon]

So, although humans had been ritualistically buring their dead for well over 50,000 years we are to believe they couldn't figure out the deliberating planting of seed for food until only 23,000 years ago?

[blam]

"So, although humans had been ritualistically buring their dead for well over 50,000 years we are to believe they couldn't figure out the deliberating planting of seed for food until only 23,000 years ago?"

Some people believe that. I don't!

[RightWhale]

they couldn't figure out the deliberating planting of seed for food until only 23,000 years ago?

This would be the oldest farm found so far.

[Ichneumon]

So, although humans had been ritualistically buring their dead for well over 50,000 years we are to believe they couldn't figure out the deliberating planting of seed for food until only 23,000 years ago?

Nomadic hunter-gatherers can bury their dead easily enough and then resume roaming, but have to completely change their way of life in order to settle in one spot and take up agriculture.

For an informative and fascinating look at the issues of how, why, when, and where mankind took up agriculture (as well as writing, animal domestication, nationstates, etc.), see Jared Diamond's Pulitzer-prize winning book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies .

[Odyssey-x]

What this really tells me is human progress is not automatic. Without the disciplined methods of thinking that we now take for granted, humanity had to fumble around in darkness for 1000s of years.

[Arthalion]

I have to offer a rebuttal: When they planted people, did the earth suddenly sprout a People Plant? So why would the connection have been made that planting food results in new food plants growing?

In all likelihood, the earliest humans simply believed that God(s) made the plants grow, just as He made the sun shine and the rain fall. The discovery that plants grew from seeds was an earthshaking (and possibly heretical) event for the people of that day. It's certainly not an innate or instinctual bit of knowledge, so somewhat, somewhere, at some point was the "first" human to realize that planting seeds caused plants to grow. I've always considered the 12,000 year mark to be a bit low, but I doubt it was much earlier than the 20,000-25,000 year mark they're looking at now.

[RightWhale]

human progress is not automatic

Some is deliberate and some is accidental. All of it requires individual participation. Regress is highly likely now and then in spite of the best intent.

[Dog Gone]

These grasses included wild emmer wheat and barley, which were forerunners of the varieties grown today.

This moves back the earliest date for beer on the planet.

[HankReardon]

Very funny, you cannot believe I was equating planting people with planting seeds to grow food. I was demonstrating humans were intelligent enough to ritualistically bury their dead and much more but they could go for thousands of years without figuring plants out? Doesn't matter, I believe humans have always been humans and humans have always been farmers and herders and hunters and fishers. From "In the begining".

[Dog Gone]

Agriculture is pretty labor-intensive, and it's not as simple as planting a seed in the spring and coming back in the fall to check on it. It takes a plan involving irrigation, especially in the birthplace of civilization, Iraq.

I've always thought that agriculture brought about the first harnessed source of energy--raiding your neighbor to capture slaves to work the fields.

And isn't it interesting that slavery ended when fossil fuels were discovered...

[PatrickHenry]

Farming was the essential start of a whole complex of further developments. Property rights, writing (deeds, harvest records, etc.), markets to exchange goods, money, simple math and simple geometry (for surveys) for starters. And warfare over territory. Then leisure, and it goes from there. Except for warfare, none of these are required, or even useful, to hunter-gatherers. Without farming, there would be no civilization at all.

[RightWhale]

Without farming, there would be no civilization at all.

That's right, and civilization is also necessary to protect the beer.

[Tax-chick]

agriculture

[Age of Reason]

So, although humans had been ritualistically buring their dead for well over 50,000 years we are to believe they couldn't figure out the deliberating planting of seed for food until only 23,000 years ago?

Why bother with the misery of farming--unless population growth exceeds what nature supplies on its own.

[Age of Reason]

I strongly suspect that eating tiny grass seeds and going through the trouble of planting and harvesting them was the result of the population outgrowing our normal food supply

I am sure that is it.

The earth became overpopulated when mankind was forced either to war or to farm.

Unfortunately, our own natures haven't completely adapted to an agricultural economy--leave alone to the industrial revolution.

People pay to vacation camping, hunting, fishing--people pay for the pleasure of experiencing hunting and gathering.

How many would pay to push a plow around a field all day?

[Ichneumon]

I was demonstrating humans were intelligent enough to ritualistically bury their dead and much more but they could go for thousands of years without figuring plants out?

It's not a matter of "figuring plants out". It's a matter of establishing a self-sustaining agricultural community, which is *not* as simple as it may seem at first glance when starting from hunter-gatherer origins. *And* it's a matter of finding a reason to do so in the first place -- the first agricultural attempts would have been a poor replacement for the nomadic lifestyle, and I'm often surprised that anyone ever took the first plunge at all.

Again, you might want to read the book I recommended in my previous post. It covers a lot of these issues.

"Figuring out" that you could put seeds in the ground and have plants sprout from them was the easy part. But figuring out how to survive and succeed at subsistence farming with wild-type crops is far harder, and the benefits of making the effort hard to see at first.

Doesn't matter, I believe humans have always been humans and humans have always been farmers and herders and hunters and fishers. From "In the begining".

Mountains of evidence indicate otherwise. Again, check out the book I recommended.