THE NEOLITHIC 'REVOLUTION'
to a long-forgotten nomadic way of life, or find some way to make up
for the deficiencies of nature by their own labour.
This path led to agriculture. People had accumulated immense
amounts of knowledge about plant life over hundreds of generations
of living off wild vegetation. Now some groups began to use this
knowledge to guarantee food supplies by planting the seeds of wild
plants. Observation taught them that the seeds of certain plants were
much more fruitful than others and, by selecting such seeds, they
began to breed new, domesticated varieties which were much more
useful to them than wild plants could ever be. The regular harvests
they obtained enabled them to tether and feed the more tame varieties of wild sheep, goats, cattle and donkeys, and to breed animals
that were tamer still.
The first form of agriculture (often called 'horticulture') involved
clearing the land by cutting away at woodland and brush with axes
and burning off the rest, then planting and harvesting seeds using a
hoe or a digging stick. After a couple of years the land would usually
be exhausted. So it would be allowed to return to the wild and a new
area would be cleared for cultivation.
Obtaining a livelihood in this way involved radical changes in
patterns of working and living together. People became more firmly
rooted to their village settlements than ever before. They had to tend
the crops between planting and harvesting and so could not wander
off for months at a time. They also had to work out ways of cooperating with each other to clear the land, to ensure the regular tending of crops (weeding, watering and so on), the storing of harvests,
the sharing of stocks, and the rearing of children. Whole new patterns
of social life developed and, with them, new ways of viewing the
world, expressed in various myths, ceremonies and rituals.
The transformation is usually referred to as the 'neolithic revolution', 28 after the increasingly sophisticated 'neolithic' (meaning 'New
Stone Age') tools associated with it. This involved a complete reorganisation of the way people worked and lived, even if the process took
place over a prolonged period of time.
The archaeological evidence from the Fertile Crescent shows people
living in small villages as separate households, although it does not tell
us what the basis of these households was (whether, for instance, they
were made up of separate couples and their children; of a mother, her
daughter and their spouses; or of a father, his sons and their wives). 29
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A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE WORLD
There was still nothing resembling class and state authority until many
thousands of years after the first turn to agriculture. In the 'late Urbaid
period' (4000 BC), 'significant differentiation' in 'wealth was almost
entirely absent', and even in the 'protoliterate period' (toward 3000
BC), there was no indication that 'the processes of social stratification
had as yet proceeded very far'. 30 There was no evidence of male supremacy, either. Some archaeologists have seen the existence of clay
or stone statuettes of fecund female figures as suggesting a high status
for women, so that men found it 'natural' to pray to women. 31 However, one significant development was that weapons for warfare as
well as for hunting became more prevalent.
The pattern seems to have been very similar to that in horticulturebased societies which survived into more recent times—in a few cases
right through to the 20th century—in various parts of the world. These
societies varied considerably, but did share certain general features. 32
Households tended to be associated with cultivating particular
bits of land. But private property in land as we know it did not exist,
and nor did the drive of individuals or households to pile up stocks
of personal possessions at the expense of others. Instead, individual
households were integrated into wider social groupings, 'lineages' of
people, who shared (or at least purported to share) the same ancestry. These provided individuals and households with clearly defined
rights and obligations towards others to whom they were related directly, or linked to through marriage or through 'age group' associations. Each was expected to share food with the others, so that
no
household would suffer because of the failure of a crop or because it
had more young children to bring up than others. Prestige came not
from individual consumption, but from the ability to help make up
for the deficiencies of others.
Many core values remained much closer to those of hunter-gatherer
societies than to those we take for granted in class societies. Thus, an
early 18th century observer of the Iroquois horticulturists noted, 'If a
cabin of hungry Iroquois meets another whose provisions are not entirely exhausted, the latter share with the newcomers the little which
remains to them without waiting to be asked, although they expose
themselves thereby to the same dangers of perishing as those whom they
help'. 33 A classic study of the Nuer noted, 'In general it can be
said
that no one in a Nuer village starves unless all are starving'.34
Once again, the explanation for such 'altruism' lay in the requirements
12
THE NEOLITHIC 'REVOLUTION'
of obtaining a livelihood. It made sure, for example, that households with
lots of labour but few mouths to feed provided assistance to those which
had lots of mouths but little labour—especially those with many young
children. 35 Children represented the future labour supply of the village
as a whole. Such 'redistributional' mechanisms towards the biggest families were necessary if the group was to be protected from dying out.
Under hunting and gathering, the need to carry children on the
daily round of gathering and on the periodic moves of the whole camp
had led to very low birth rates. Women could not afford to have more
than one child who required carrying at a time, so births were spaced
every three or four years (if necessary through sexual abstention, abortion or infanticide). With a fixed village life based on agriculture, the
child did not have to be carried once it was a few months old, and the
greater the number of children, the greater the area of land that could
be cleared and cultivated in future. The premium was on larger families. The change in the method of production also had a profound
impact on reproduction. Populations began to expand. Although the
rate of growth was small by present standards (0.1 percent a year), 36 it
quadrupled over two millennia, beginning the climb which took it
from perhaps ten million at the time of the neolithic revolution to 200
million at the beginning of capitalism.
There were other big changes in horticulture-based societies compared with those of hunter-gatherers. A big dispute in a band of
hunter-gatherers could be solved simply by the band splitting or by
individuals leaving. This option was hardly open to a group of agriculturists once they had cleared and planted their land. The village
was larger and depended on a more complex, organised interaction
between people than did the hunter-gatherer band. At the same time
it faced a problem which hunter-gatherers did not—it had stocks of
stored food and artefacts which provided a motive for attacks by
armed raiders from outside. War, virtually unknown among huntergatherers, was endemic among many horticultural peoples. This gave
a further impetus to formal decision-making mechanisms designed
to exercise social control—to councils made up of senior figures in
each lineage, for example.
People have made the move from hunting and gathering to farming
in several parts of the world, independently of each other, in the ten millennia since—in Meso-America (present day Mexico and Guatemala),
in the Andean region of South America, in at least three distinct parts
13