this was scott's idea! blame him.
sorry guys, but this is the last paper i have to write for this class. treasure the time you have with it.
Adam Heiniger
Rhiannon Jones
Intro. to Prehistory
3-28-04
The Origins of Agriculture
It is doubtful that the layperson spends a great deal of time contemplating who first thought to plant a seed in the ground; agriculture seems such an integral part of humanity that most probably account the conception of agriculture to be a non-issue. However, most pundits in the field of archaeology now agree that food production is in fact “the economic foundation upon with the state and modern civilization are built and maintained” (Wright 1971: 1), and so knowing why, where, and when it first occurred could teach mankind a great deal about himself and the basis for his social structure. However, it has become increasingly unlikely that the origin of agriculture can be restricted to such a single event. In fact, with the current evidence, it is impossible to say precisely how prehistoric man replaced hunting and gathering with agriculture, but archaeologists have narrowed their views of the origins of agriculture into several theories. After a brief background of what is known of agriculture in the Old and New Worlds in prehistoric time, this paper will address the Oasis Theory, the Hilly Flanks Hypothesis, theories based on population pressure and marginal zones, and the Social Hypothesis.
A primary goal of archaeology is to answer what is unknown based on what is known. In terms of agriculture, though the reasons for its invention may be unknown, archaeologists can at least say with relative surety when and where agriculture was first practiced.
In the Old World, the domestication of plants and animals appears to have first occured in the Near East. Feinman and Price state that “the process of domestication [in the Near East] may have taken place somewhat earlier than elsewhere” (Feinman and Price 2001: 198). The earliest cultivated plant found there is rye, dated to 11000 b.c. at the site of Abu Hureyra, in northern Syria (Campana and Crabtree 2001: 255). Domestic plants and animals, that is, plants and animals physically changed by human exploitation (Feinman and Price 2001: 197), were apparently spread throughout the Near East by 6000 b.c. (Campana and Crabtree 2001:262). It is important to note, however, that the most extensive research has been done in the Near East. Continuing research in other areas of the Old World could push their dates back (Feinman and Price 2001: 199), possibly before those of the Near East.
In the New World, agriculture appears to have occurred later than in the Old World, with its first appearance in the cultivation of squash in Mexico in the 8th millenia b.c. (Feinman and Price 2001: 199). Maize, arguably the most important crop in the Americas, “appears in Mesoamerica about 4000 years ago, 6000 years after the beginning of agriculture in the Near East” (Campana and Crabtree 2001: 275).
Also, archaeologists can generally accept a certain set of conditions necessary for agriculture to come about. Gary Wright cites Alphonse de Candolle, who listed preconditions for agriculture. These include,
(1) the plants must be productive and easy to rear; (2) the climate must not be too rigorous; (3) there must be some duration of drought in hot countries; (4) there must be some degree of security and settlement; and (5) there must be a pressing necessity arising from insufficient resources from hunting, fishing, or the gathering of wild plants (Wright 1971: 450).
What’s more, in regard to the “some degree of security and settlement”, this requires what is termed a “sedentary lifestyle”, which in itself further contributes to the rise of agriculture. A sedentary hunting and gathering community could either deplete its natural resources or its population could exceed its environment’s carrying capacity, both of which would require the development of agriculture as an alternate means of food production. Furthermore, sedentary lifestyles, in the time just before agriculture, apparently brought about social change, as far-reaching trade was established in order to acquire exotic materials. And “the need to increase production for trade and exchange may well have encouraged experiments with plant domestication” (Campana and Crabtree 2001: 259).
And so, with all these ideas in place, archaeologists formed the four major theories on the origins of agriculture. The first to be discussed in this paper is the Oasis Theory (sometimes called the Propinquity Theory). The basic idea behind this theory is that at the end of the Pleistocene (around 10,000 years ago) the natural habitat of plants and animals hunted and gathered by humans was shrinking due to climatic changes. This resulted in humans following these plants and animals to oases of optimal food resources, where, “through intensive interaction, a symbiotic relationship evolved between man and certain plants and animals” (Wright 1971: 452).
The most prominent supporter of this theory was V. Gordon Childe, and he pointed to climatic changes due to the retreat of the Würm glacier circa 8000 b.c. (Wright 1971: 453-4). These climatic changes would have caused an increase in arid zone species, but unfortunately for Childe, in the areas of plant and animal domestication “the large temperate zone mammals persist; there is no evidence of the extreme desiccation Childe’s hypothesis requires” (Campana and Crabtree 2001: 245).
Another hypothesis was put forth by Robert J. Braidwood. Termed the “Hilly Flanks” or “Natural Habitat” hypothesis, it did not answer questions as to why domestication occurred, but rather where. Childe believed that the domestication of animals was the goal of plant domestication; that man used cultivated plants to feed animals in order to tame them (Wright 1971: 453). This required the assumption that both plants and animals were domesticated at approximately the same time and place. Braidwood’s Hilly Flanks Hypothesis operated under the same assumption, and concluded that humans must have domesticated plants and animals in areas where modern wild sheep, goats, barley, and wheat still coexisted, that is, their natural habitat. The only area in which these species overlapped was the low foothills of the Zagros and Taurus Mountains, where they surround the Mesopotamian floodplain (he called these foothills the “hilly flanks” of the fertile crescent). And indeed, in this area he and his team of scientists found several sites that contained evidence of early farming, such as Jarmo in Iraqi Kurdistan (Campana and Crabtree 2001: 246). However, later evidence showed that Braidwood’s assumption that plant and animal domestication occurred simultaneously is flawed. Plant domestication came first, not in the hilly flanks but “in an area where…there had been significant climatic fluctuations” (Campana and Crabtree 2001: 248). His hypothesis, then, has little meaning, being founded on that assumption.
But because the findings in the hilly flanks of the fertile crescent did not support the Oasis Theory, archaeologists like Lewis Binford devised explanations for agriculture based on increasing demands on natural food resources due to increasing human populations. Binford called this the Population Pressure Hypothesis, and said that agriculture arose when there was a disruption in the equilibrium between the availability of food and the number of people. People domesticated plants and animals in response to an insufficient supply of wild food. He then compounded on this idea, realizing that population pressure would force people away from dense areas of natural plant and animal habitation into marginal zones. Domestication, then, would not occur among people with means, in the optimal zones, but instead in the marginal zones, where plants and animals were not as dense and food resources were more limited. This has since been termed the Edge Hypothesis (Feinman and Price 2001: 201).
Furthermore, Kent V. Flannery fits that idea into his Systems Theory, a precise model for the origin of agriculture in the Near East. With the systems theory, Flannery presented the origin of agriculture as the ultimate solution to the problem of the need of food. Previous solutions of hunter-gatherers included the Natufian tool tradition (characterized by flint sickles with bone hafts, mortars, and pestles), possibly the use of baskets to more efficiently transport harvests, the development of facilities to remove seeds from their tough encasement (the glume), the use of storage facilities to extend the duration of a harvest, and the following of maturation of cereals along altitude clines (Flannery 1973: 280).
However, when, as Binford said, population was exerting too great a pressure on the environment for these solutions to provide for the people, the people spread to less provident marginal zones, and they brought their wild cereals with them, where they learned to cultivate it. Under human care and protection, there was less pressure of wild selection, and so the brittle rachis became more tough and the tough glume evolved into the domestic, naked seed (Flannery 1973: 282-4). However, Flannery later stated that the evidence is against his own model. In order for it to be accurate, evidence should show that there was greater population growth in optimal zones than in marginal zones, where in fact the opposite appears to be true; in the Lebanese woodland, an optimum area, there is no evidence of strong population growth, whereas there is such evidence in Negev, a marginal habitat (Flannery 1973: 284).
The final theory to be discussed in this paper is the Social Hypothesis. Barbara Bender asserted that the need for increased food production may have arisen out of the existence of an economic-based social hierarchy. Feinman and Price summarize this view by stating that agriculture may have been “the means by which social inequality emerged and egalitarian societies became hierarchical” (Feinman and Price 2001: 202). In Bender’s model, it is increased social complexity that creates the demand for agriculture, not the opposite, as other theories assume. And in order for the Social Hypothesis to be accurate, there would have to be evidence of this increased social complexity before there was evidence of agriculture. And Bender says this evidence exists: “While it is evident that the amount of obsidian in circulation increases in the Neolithic, trade and exchange go back much earlier and are more closely related to increased sedentism (and the social developments that that signifies) than with a change in the subsistence base” (Bender 1978: 215). Bender believed agriculture to be a means to supply the demand created by competition in trade, where that trade was brought about by increased social complexity.
And so, there is clearly variation and even evolution of the schools of thought on the origins of agriculture. Childe’s assumptions when tackling the Oasis theory gave rise to Braidwood’s Hilly flanks Hypothesis. But when Braidwood’s hypothesis proved the Oasis theory incorrect, there was room for Binford’s population pressure and edge hypotheses, along with Flannery’s systematic method of applying them. Finally, Barbara Bender presents a view of reversed causality, in which increased social complexity created the need for agriculture, instead of agriculture giving rise to increased social complexity. The only sure thing is that agriculture helped prehistoric man support a greater number of people with a smaller amount of land, thus allowing for either an increase of population or a decrease in available wild food sources due to climate change (Campana and Crabtree 2001: 242). It is obvious that this advantage did indeed outweigh the disadvantages of the increased labor and the riskier nature of farming versus foraging (Campana and Crabtree 2001: 242).