"The continuity of the cultural field" (6). The axioms of civilizations

3.1.1. agriculture had been experimented long before answering a vital societal need

The reason agriculture finally got practiced some 10,000 years ago in the Tri-Continental-Area was not at all because tribal populations had suddenly discovered the marvels of seeding and harvesting.


Sometime around 11,700 years ago an abrupt increase in the average surface temperature of the earth resulted in the melting of the ice caps that covered the biggest part of the Northern hemisphere. This pushed up sea levels by tens of meters. Archaeologists and geologists are still bickering about the magnitude of the figures. But whatever the real figures the fact is that large swathes of land got submerged while at higher latitudes in the Northern hemisphere continental size land masses were freed from their ice cover. This is where our most fertile agricultural is practiced today.


The wild animals followed the melting waters that were swelling rivers with rich alluvium that deposited along their banks which in turn were soon graced with an abundance of vegetation. Humans opportunistically followed in the trace of the animals. This explains in large part :

1. One : the important migrations of human populations that took place at the time


2. Two : the long transition from tribal societies to power societies and civilizations that took place within the world’s alluvial plains.

The vegetation grew so lush on the newly deposited sediments that the women, who knew since times immemorial how plants reproduce by seeding, were tempted to lend a helping hand to mother nature. Agriculture did indeed not start as something falling out of the sky. It was more like a trial and error process that had spread over thousands of years before a contextual need forced its systematic application.


It strikes the imagination that from very early on women have been on a path of 'managing' nature. From our modern perspective, to reach agriculture from that initial understanding of seeding, appears to have been a very long process that spanned perhaps tens of thousands of years of trials and errors.


But was it really so ? Could it not be that our modern understanding is completely wrong ? Could it not be that our tribal ancestors were a lot smarter than we give them credit for ? And what if they had refused to practice agriculture for thousands of years because they had understood that it would be procuring worse daily life conditions while furthermore risking to destabilize their society ? Is this idea not the most elegant explanation for a late emergence of agriculture while trials and errors occurred over tens of thousands of years ?


Our ancestors knew since a very long time indeed that by helping mother nature, to spread the seeds of their most preferred harvested plants over selective areas, they could increase the quantities of grains collected annually. They evidently knew this and that is why they were giving mother nature a helping hand since tens of thousands of years before the start of the agricultural revolution.


They also understood that they could collect vast quantities on small parcels. But their (wo)men of knowledge were aware that doing so would be counterproductive for the further reproduction of the tribal experiment. They understood life as the flow of nature and they had since early on grasped that going against the flow of nature always ended up in tears. That’s why women’s help to the mother remained for so long limited within the flow of nature. Going further did indeed appear to them as falling for an extreme behavior that had always been strongly disavowed by the animist (wo)men of knowledge.


They furthermore also knew, at least their (wo)men of knowledge had informed them, that collecting more than was necessary for the number of mouths in the group would have grave consequences. Tribes practiced a fission-fusion mechanism of population control that kept their population within the golden 'Dunbar' number (1). Sure they did not call that number like that. This appellation relates indeed to a modern scientific observation by a team led by Robin Dunbar.


But the maximization of work efficiency of small groups like tribes had all naturally awakened the subconscious intuition of the tribal (wo)men of knowledge. And it continues to unconsciously awaken even us moderns, to the utmost efficiency of small groups averaging 150 members. How could we validly refuse this idea of a tribal awakened subconscious intuition to the golden number when it is observed that this is what brings chat-rooms and discussion groups on the web to spontaneously balance their membership around that figure ? It was this same observation that spontaneously drove tribal (wo)men of knowledge to convert the whole world to such an awakened subconscious intuition to the golden number.


The reason agriculture finally got practiced some 10,000 years ago in the Tri-Continental-Area was not at all because tribal populations had suddenly discovered the marvels of seeding and harvesting. Agriculture arose because the fission-fusion model of tribal population control had led to the entirety of the Mesopotamian alluvial plains being occupied.


But while the fission-fusion model of population control was continuing to eject surplus tribal population from their tribes there was no territory left for new tribal groups to occupy ! The tribal fission-fusion model was not to blame. The abrupt change in the climate context had provoked such a rapid increase in resources and in population that the tribal model of society had simply been overwhelmed. So when all the plains were occupied the surplus population that thus got ejected from existing tribes was suddenly confronted with a question of survival.


The answer by the (wo)men of knowledge to this challenge was to concentrate the excess population in small territories on the margins of the tribal occupied territories while forcing them to put in practice what had been common knowledge since thousands of years prior. Pretending that tribesmen did not understand, that seeds germinate and grow into adult plants producing new seeds, is refusing to recognize that tribal populations had a lot more intimate knowledge about the working of nature than our own. This is simply unrealistic and presumptuous.


It was the challenge to the survival of their excess populations that got tribesmen to overrun a taboo that hitherto had been considered an extremist move outside of the natural flow in the path of least resistance at the center. And once the taboo of moving to the margins had been broken other extremities got naturally tested.
To power human activity tribal societies had been exclusively using the energy of free (wo)men to maximize their well-being by hunting and gathering, what was necessary to ensure an easy life, while minimizing as much as they could the burden of toiling. Joining maximization of efficiency with maximization of the individuals’ free time was one of the biggest successes of the tribal model of society.


All the research papers converge on the conclusion that the quality of life attained in tribes stood in stark contrast with that in villages :

1. The collected resources from agriculture in villages were far less varied. It has been documented that agricultural villages survived on less than 5 plants on average while foragers survived on an average of nearly 100 plants plus the meat collected by hunting men


2. The results of such a very limited food diversity supplied by agriculture is well known today. Multiple studies have been undertaken over the last decades about the health impact of agriculture and the results converge on the dire consequences that agriculture inflicted on its practitioners (2) :
   
   
   
   • steep fall in early-farmers’ life expectancy
   
   
   • farmers were 12-16 cm shorter than hunter-gatherers
   
   
   • farmers had more dental decay, body lesions, infections and other signs of physiological stress
     

The following table presents :

“… a summary of a classic paper on the health and longevity of late Paleolithic (pre-agricultural) and Neolithic (early agricultural) people. [Source: Angel, Lawrence J. (1984) ‘Health as a crucial factor in the changes from hunting to developed farming in the eastern Mediterranean.’ " In: Cohen, Mark N.; Armelagos, George J. (eds.) (1984) Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture (proceedings of a conference held in 1982). Orlando: Academic Press. (pp. 51-73)] " 3

 

“Longevity & health in ancient Paleolithic vs. Neolithic peoples” by Ward Nicholson

 

 

Foraging tribesmen were free (wo)men who searched to maximize their collection of resources while minimizing the time devoted to labor. In comparison early farmers were more like gardeners who worked nearly double the weekly hours of tribesmen. And seen the damaging impact on their health the question has necessarily arisen among researchers as to why on earth would free tribesmen have wanted to lose their freedom and health while having to toil much longer hours. At first sight the proposition makes indeed no sense.


I did not see any good argument answering this question. I searched and thought about the problem for years without any satisfying response. But while writing “part 2. Worldviews” I got struck by an epiphany and in an alleluia moment I realized that all the elements of the puzzle of societal evolution from tribal to power societies were coming together in my mind.


As mentioned here above tribesmen knew about agricultural processes since a long time before agricultural villages had started to be established in the Fertile Crescent. The fact is that, while the alluvial plains got completely occupied, overpopulated tribes continued their old practice of ejecting their surplus population which in the absence of available free land were confronted with an impasse. Without the availability of free land there was no longer a way to establish a new tribal group.


Tribal surplus populations had to find a new solution to feed themselves. One that encroached as little as possible on tribal territory in order to avoid retribution. By necessity of survival they choose to take possession of small parcels of land located on the margins of tribal territory where they put into practice the agricultural processes that had always been rejected by their ancestors. And so started the agricultural revolution which was more like a gardening revolution than anything else.


The ascent of agriculture was rapid because tribal excess population was continuing to grow and flowing without respite into villages. This explains why villages were forced to expand in tribal territory which inevitably resulted in violence. By the end of this territorial expansion all tribes had been expelled fleeing to the margins of the alluvial plains.


But in this process the organization of agricultural villages had been taken over by chieftains and as described in “2.2. the worldview shared by society ” their gain of control was always very short and they had thus never the time to reproduce their institutions over the generations.


The expansion of villages and the rise of early-power was a very unstable period during which chieftains accumulated the control over parcels of land and the distribution of reserves but there was always another one who conquered their gains before they could consolidate them. This period of instability started sometime between 9,000 to 8,500 years ago and lasted till sometimes between 6,000 to 5,500 years ago.


By that time the villages were expanding into cities that were managed by men of power who, with the help of men of knowledge, succeeded to reproduced their institutions over the generations. But social inequality had already started to set in that had concluded with the adoption by the men of power of 2 new sources of energy :

1. the energy of animal slaves 


2. the energy of human slaves

The logical conclusion that rises in the mind is that such a process of territorial expansion in the TCA must have been followed by unrelenting violent fights between villages and tribes. Tribal life had fostered slow and peaceful behaviors and the tribes were thus ill prepared for the violence that had emerged. Archaeological digging confirms this intuitive reasoning. Violence start to emerge between 10,000 and 9,000 years ago and by 8,500 years ago a turning point had been reached by which time tribes had been pushed outside of alluvial plains into ever more inhospitable land.


The destabilization of tribal societies under the impact of growing populations found vastly different responses in the Tri-Continental-Area (TCA = Middle-East) and in China. These different responses, given to a problem that emerged some 10,000 yeas ago, are at the root of why both sides today continue to perceive each other as being so otherworldly.


In the TCA the impact of growing populations, that resulted in the destabilization of the tribal organization, was finally answered through the emergence of a new societal order based on power relations and rules. In China the animist (wo)men of knowledge managed a process of cultural unification of their tribes which led them to become the administrators of the later societies of power.


This explains why China and the TCA engaged upon a different path that drove them to a different outcome in term of civilizational axioms, worldviews, systems of governance, and so on. In light of this it would be advisable that both China and the West engage in an effort at boosting their comprehension of the historical process that brings them face to face in the 21st century.


Let’s keep in mind for the moment that, on both sides of this great divide, power gave to a minority of men the monopoly to draft rules, exercise the authority to implement those rules, while hoarding resources for the use of their families from the labor of society at large. Supplying the needs of the minority in power was made possible initially by serfdom and slavery. Later a further surplus of energy would be made available through the domestication of cows and horses or other large animals. That addition of energy powered an increasing economic production that resulted in further population growth and the emergence of cities, confederations of cities, and then early-kingdoms and empires.


In that sense the supplement of energy procured by slavery and animal domestication has to be understood as being the two determinant factors that unleashed the whole cycle of agricultural production, the ensuing human settlements, and the growth of power-societies. The same can be said for the industrial revolution that was powered by cheap fossil fuels which were the direct cause of increasing CO2 emissions in the atmosphere. What I mean to say here is that an economic revolution is unleashed by new technologies and new sources of abundant energy.


Technology and energy are necessary but they are nevertheless not sufficient to unleash a revolution. The technology has indeed to be powered in order to enter in application and this power comes from the input of energy. But both the technology and the energetic sources don’t fall from the sky. They can only emerge after a new paradigm has permeated the societal Zeitgeist that procures the conceptual framework for this technology and its energetic sources to possibly be conceived of and then adopted :

1. The agricultural revolution emerged as the application of a principle known by tribal populations since times immemorial. Its application had always been rejected because it was not perceived to bring any betterment in tribal daily life. But the context had suddenly changed :
   
   
   • Tribal groups were generating excess populations 
   
   
   • Alluvial plains in the TCA were fully occupied by tribal groups
   
   
   • The traditional fission-fusion population control mechanism had encounter a dead end that needed a solution
   
   
   • Tribal excess populations were left experimenting the application of the known principle of seeding that hitherto had always been a taboo. Such an experimentation to produce the resources necessary for their subsistence, on a fraction of the territory used by tribes, must have appeared as an evident solution, in the eyes of the tribal (wo)men of knowledge, to save the existence of the tribal excess population. 
   
   
   They intuitively sensed that concentrating plantations on a limited territory would produce the resources necessary to feed large groups of people. We moderns view our ancestors as primitive. But this appreciation is a mental weakness.
   
   Scientists have indeed been forced to recognize that tribal (wo)men of knowledge had a very advanced and sophisticated knowledge about astronomy and about the use of plants in the treatment of health conditions. 
   
   And once this was understood, a few decades ago, pharmaceutical companies rushed to patent the plants, or the active ingredients in plants, that tribal (wo)men of knowledge used to treat their fellow tribesmen.
   
   In light of this the idea that the animist (wo)men of knowledge knew that agriculture produces the resources necessary, to feed large groups of people on a limited territory, is not so far fetched any longer. But we still miserably fail to appreciate how far apart tribes and villages were in term of population density. 
   
   The following is a citation of an approximate estimate about the increase in magnitude of the population density in agricultural villages compared to tribes :
   

   “It is generally admitted that tribal population density was in the order of one person per 25 km2, or a density of 0,04 person per Km2, giving an average territorial size in the order of 3750 km2 for a population of 150 people. This compares to the size of a farmer’s village that, at the time of Europe’s dark ages, would have averaged at most some 100 km2 for a population of at most some 5000 people which gives a population density of some 50 persons per km2. In other words, in the context of alluvial plains, village population density would have been in the order of 1250 times higher than the density in tribes.“  4

   
   This comparison is based on estimates of village density in the early-years of European Modernity in the 12th century. But archaeological, and other studies, undertaken at the site of Çatalhöyük, in the same area as Gobekli Tepe, procure some further interesting clues as to the emerging process of village formation some 10,000 years ago :
   

   “The community began as a small settlement, likely consisting of a few mud-brick houses occupied by a small group of adults and children".

   
   
   Initial settlements were small enough that they did not provoke the resistance of tribal populations. It is even  highly probable that the relations of early villages with their tribal neighbors remained quite cordial and that tribes were extending gifts to the villages. But a thousand years later :
   

   “… the Çatalhöyük community grew, reaching a peak population size of ∼3,500 to 8,000 individuals in the Middle Period”. 5

   
   
   These were extremely high figures for the time. They could indeed have totaled, if not the entire tribal population of the Fertile Crescent, at least in a great part of it ! So it is highly probable that by 8,000 years ago Çatalhöyük had already pushed back its tribal neighbors further into the recesses of less hospitable habitats. Let’s remember that this is the time when Göbekli Tepe was abandoned under a thick layer of dirt which suggests that villages had ejected tribes and were in need to forget about animism and tribal organization in order to possibly consolidate a new worldview…
   



2. The industrial revolution has emerged in the context of a kind of religious conversion to the new paradigm represented by “the reason that is at work within capital” that occurred some 6 centuries earlier when the new rich merchants had started to expose their material possessions and popular envy was unleashed that would go on growing unabated. After a few centuries, by the Renaissance, the whole of Western Europe, including ‒ the monks ‒ the hierarchy of Christianity ‒ the aristocracy, wanted to share in the dream of material possessions.
   
   The catalyst, that finally put in motion the chain reaction like process of the industrial revolution, was national mercantilism that demanded the suppression of Britain’s gold and silver exports :
   
   
   • Long distance trade, and looting, filled the pockets of Western European merchants during the centuries of merchant capitalism that preceded the industrial revolution. They had thus accumulated wealth on a grand scale and so capital was readily available to invest…
   
   
   •   Popular envy of the merchants’ richness had firmly integrated in the minds the new conceptual framework of “the reason that is at work within capital”  and that reason was soon to be expanded to everything under the sun in the form of rationalism
   
   
   •   Britain imported large quantities of cotton goods from India and tea, porcelain, from China but there was no demand in these countries for British productions and payments in silver and gold were thus emptying British reserves… 
   
   
   •   Confronted with this reality the merchants, the monarchy, and the political elites devised strategies to suppress the export of gold and silver. In short India was forbidden to process raw cotton, China was forced by the British to accept the addiction of its population to opium. This is how Britain industrialized and its empire spread over the world…
     

In what follows I’ll address exclusively the path that was initiated in the Middle-East. I have already described the process of tribal cultural unification that characterized China’s path to power in part 2 and I’ll give a more extensive presentation of its governance aspect, that parallels the cultural unification aspect,  in “Volume 4. Societal governance and societal evolution”.

Notes.

 
1.   Dunbar number :

A theory attributed to Robin Dunbar. An evolutionary sociologist and anthropologist who specialized in the study of “small groups”. Dunbar came to the “small group” idea while studying tribal societies. Original tribal societies having vanished, from the surface of the earth, he approached the study of small groups in contemporary settings. What he discovered was that small groups of Homo Sapients reach their optimum working capacity while being composed of 150 individuals on average.

He further discovered that group size was linked to brain size and from this observation he derived “the social brain hypothesis” which relates brain size to group size. Applying the same rule to other species he calculated a theoretical average group number for their observed brain size. The calculated number was each time verified by the facts on the ground which proves the theory right.

Applying his number theory to tribes he came to the conclusion that tribes naturally, spontaneously, adapted a corrective response to any population move outside of the accepted limits of approximately 120 to 180. This means that when the group reached a headcount of 180 it would have to split in 2. Some 120-130 individuals stayed in the existing group while 50 to 60 of them would have to leave:
    • or regrouping with a tribe whose headcount was approaching the lower limits of the acceptable
    • or starting a new tribe on their own with the help of their group of origin.
As we will see the retreats by the men of knowledge were an opportunity to organize population movements as well as the movements of women between tribes.



2.    See

• “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race” by Jared Diamond
•  “Stones, Bones, and States: A New Approach to the Neolithic Revolution” by  Richard H. Steckel and John Wallis. February 19, 2007
• “Human Health and the Neolithic Revolution: an Overview of Impacts of the Agricultural Transition on Oral Health, Epidemiology, and the Human Body” in Nebraska Anthropologist. Volume 28. 2003. By Katherine J. Latham.
  

3.   “ Longevity & health in ancient Paleolithic vs. Neolithic peoples” by Ward Nicholson



4.    In “2.2.3.1. Population growth and alluvial plains” : The size of a farmer’s village mentioned here above is taken from the geographic distribution of markets in the very early-years of Western Modernity in “The first blow in Late-Modernity. 7.4.3.2. the transition from Late-Modernity to After-Modernity”.   See Page 515 :  “C.  Societal governance : About geography and institutions”.



5.   “Bioarchaeology of Neolithic Çatalhöyük reveals fundamental transitions in health, mobility,and lifestyle in early farmers” in PNAS by Clark Spencer Larsena,1, Christopher J. Knüselb, Scott D. Haddowc, Marin A. Pilloudd, Marco Milellae,f,Joshua W. Sadvarig, Jessica Pearsonh, Christopher B. Ruffi, Evan M. Garofaloj, Emmy Bocaegek, Barbara J. Betza,Irene Dorib,l, and Bonnie Glencrossm