The agricultural
revolution
Its causes and consequences
The neolithic revolution
• Neolithic=new stone age, associated with the rise of
intensive agricultural practises, i.e. farming with the use
of the plough and irrigation, as well as domesticated
plants and animals.
• First evidence for farming is found in the highland areas
of Mesopotamia about c. 14,000 b.p. (barley).
• Intensive agriculture is much more productive than hfg,
but is also much more labour-intensive. (remember: hfg
must work about 2-4 days per week only, even in
marginal environments).
• Consequences of food production are very well known,
although its initial causes are still being debated
(Weisdorf).
• Clear that once agricultural production had taken hold,
population increases meant that a large-scale return to
hunting and food gathering would be impossible.
The main consequences
of agricultural production
• Populations became more sedentary and worked longer
hours.
• Production of a social surplus, due to the fact that each
household can produce about 5 times its own necessary
consumption.
• Increased population and fertility, due to sedentarism,
increased food supply, and the decline of birth-spacing.
• Emergence of towns, and later cities. The urban revolution
closely followed the neolithic revolution.
• Emergence of full-time specialists not dependent on
farming, e.g. craftsmen, such as metal workers, potters,
weavers, and also priests, scribes, artists, bureaucrats, and
aristocrats, law-makers, traders.
• Stimulated inventions in: metallurgy, writing, astronomy,
architecture, city-planning.
• Also: increase in infectious diseases: smallpox, measles,
influenza, tuberculosis, malaria.
First Cities
• Date back to 8000
to 7000 BCE
• Jericho—west bank
of Jordon River
• Catal Huyuk—in
Turkey
• Danpo—China
• Harrappa-Pakistan.
• Became more
common after
4000-3000 BCE
• Jericho’s Walls
The neolithic revolution
and social inequality
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Early stages of the neolithic revolution show evidence of specialists, but not major
social inequalities: all had access to food and land through kinship networks.
Some archeologists think that inequality first emerged through differences in soil
fertility between river valleys and more mountainous areas: e.g. Indus River Valley,
referred to as centre-place theory.
In the ‘fertile crescent’, as city-states competed with each other for land, warfare
emerged, accompanied by the enslavement of captured populations, usually
women. (Mesopotamia, about 3,000 bp).
Slavery and inequality were later legally instituted through Mesopotamian law codes,
e.g. the middle Assyrian law code c. 2500 bc and the Hammurabic code, c. 1750 bc.
Domestic slavery also recognized in these codes, as some women from poorer
families were sold into domestic slavery. Origin of veiling: (MALC):
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•
"Neither wives of seignoirs nor widors who go out on the street may have their heads
undovered. These women...must veil themselves with either a shawl or robe or mantle if
they go out on the street alone. A concubine who goes out on the street with her mistress
must veil herself. A sacred prostitute whom a man married must veil herself on the street,
but one whom a man did not marry must have her head uncovered on the street; she must
not veil herself. A harlot must not veil herself; her head must be uncovered.”
Warfare also led to the emergence of permanent, centralized bureaucratic
institutions, led first by priests. These are known as ‘states’.
States and territories.
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From kinship based communities to
territory based ‘empires’ and
‘nations’.
Chieftainships (rank-based) to state
(class-based) societies.
Functions of the state:
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law and order
maintains socioeconomic contrasts
suppression of internal disorder
defense against external threats
Centres of neolithic
cultures
• Most agree with Childe and Flannery that the neolithic
revolution started first in the mountainous regions of
Mesopotamia, i.e. the region of contemporary Iraq near
the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
• However, French archeologists in Vietnam claim that the
Hoabinhian culture began food production about 14,000
bp also. Also, the Nile Valley has mortar and pestles
from 15,000 bp, but these sites were later abandoned.
• The major centres of early food production include:
Baluchistan (Pakistan) 8,000 bp, northern China, the
Nile Valley, and Central America.
Neolithic
started
10,000 bp
Indus River Valley Map
Neolithic started c. 7,000 bp
Gender, family and
territory
•
In horticultural and hfg societies, there are many example of
matrilineal societies, i.e. those in which descent is traced through the
mother.
– Women often have important ritual and political roles if they control
valued goods, e.g. the Iroquois.
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Gradual change from matrilineal to patrilineal descent groups with
intensive agriculture. Land is inherited by males, women receive
dowry as family property.
Plough agriculture nearly everywhere is exclusively male.
– Separation of the domestic realm from the realm of production, with
women being associated with domestic duties and men with farming,
politics, law.
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Status of women declined after the emergence of the state. Law
codes differentiate in terms of status and gender:, e.g. the middle
assyrian law code and the hammurabic code.
Extended family units become the main unit of production; reciprocity
between family units declines and state takes over the task of
redistributing goods.