3. 10,000 BCE The Agricultural Revolution: A great mistake? 

The Agricultural Revolution allowed humanity to evolve from hunter gather societies to societies capable of building advanced and enormous civilizations, but did we lose more than we gained? Maybe.

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Between 10,500 and 8,500 BCE, humans began to switch from hunting and gathering to farming, a change which led to larger populations, permanent settlements, and many other developments we now consider typical across the globe. This development is known as the first Agricultural Revolution or the Neolithic Revolution. For many generations it was considered a great leap forward as it led to the creation of cities and accompanied the emergence of organized religions and political structures as well as a wide range of occupations and economic trade. But as we learn more and more about how humans lived before the Agricultural Revolution it seems like we lost more than we gained.

The Agricultural Revolution took place at different times in different parts of the world, but the first one began in what we call the Fertile Crescent, the land that stretches from the Tigris and Euphrates River Valleys in Mesopotamia to the Nile River valley in Egypt. It is here that archeologists have found the earliest evidence for the beginning of agriculture. So that is where we will take our closest look at the evidence.  To keep things simple, we will focus on bones and artifacts from two cultures in the Fertile Crescent, the Neolithic farming settlement at Abu Hureyra and the settled hunter-gatherers of the Natufian culture that existed prior to the Neolithic Revolution. Archeological evidence does not always offer us a complete picture of what happened, so we will also consider evidence anthropologists have gathered from foraging societies that exist today.

Prehistoric women might have been at the heart of the transition to farming from hunting and gathering. Hunting would have been the task assigned to the most able-bodied people of the community, usually men in their prime, though some modern foraging societies invited women who had not yet had children take part in the hunt. That means women, children, and the elderly would work together to gather grains, fruit, and legumes from the wild. It is possible that women were the ones who observed the connection between fallen seeds and a richer harvest when they returned to a certain spot later. The earliest version of farming predated the Bronze Age, so it did not involve a plow. Rather, the farmer would use a stick to poke a hole in which the seed was dropped. After harvest, women would do much if not all of the food preparation, a task that called for grinding the grain on a stone pallet. There is evidence that women in the earliest farming communities were physically very strong. A comparison of prehistoric women’s arm bone fragments to the Cambridge Women’s Rowing team showed the ancient women had bone strength that measured 9% stronger than modern athletic women. 
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 That strength came with a cost, however. When Theya Molleson of the British Museum looked at the remains of women from Abu Hureyra, a site occupied for 6000 years in what is now Syria, she found evidence that these women spent hours kneeling over their grinding stones, resulting in deformed toes, curved thigh bones, and arthritic knees and backs. Pre-agriculture skeletons revealed none of those issues. Furthermore, the teeth of earlier humans were in much better shape. The teeth of Neolithic farming people first showed more wear and tear as tiny bits of stone ended up in the grain, and later showed more cavities and gum disease as the soft porridge they ate left a build-up of sugar and carbs on the tooth enamel. Farming peoples worked harder and were far less healthy overall. 

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In addition to the impact on the bones of farming peoples, they had a far less nutritious diet because they focused on a few crops that grew easily compared to other foodstuffs.  That meant they had fewer foods to choose from and a limited diet is automatically not as rich as a varied diet. The farming people would have been more likely to develop heart conditions and digestive difficulties, among other things.

Humans lost their connection to nature along the way, as well. Modern-day foragers, who lived much like our hunter gatherer ancestors did, still experience this deep sense of connection with the natural world. When a forager arrives at a new place, she will spend time observing and absorbing the sights and smells around her. Many wild animals do the same thing.  

How do we know that the diet of the earliest farmers was lacking when compared to that of hunter gatherers? Well, we can’t be certain if this was true of all prehistoric peoples, but evidence from earlier Natufian sites tell us that their diets were rich, and they did not have to work hard to get enough to eat. Though we used to assume that life before farming was brutal, archeologists have unearthed wonders that dramatically alter what we thought we knew about life before the Neolithic Revolution. One site, named Ohalo II, had been inhabited continuously for many generations almost 23,000 years ago. These humans were hunter gatherers, but they were not migratory. They often lived in small villages near forests and waterways and let the food come to them. That means that they survived on a rich array of resources without having to travel far to find them.  

Archeologists have found the remains of food such as almonds, pistachios, olives, grapes, and many other edible plants. Among these is a fruit known as the Rubus, similar to a blackberry. That’s something that had to be eaten fresh. Animal remains included a wide variety of fish, turtles, waterfowl, and several breeds of mammal ranging from rabbit to gazelles. They did find grinding stones that still held fragments of barley, wheat, and oats. There were even sickle blades, showing us the residents of this tiny village had figured out how to harvest even though the evidence suggests they only engaged in small-scale planting.  Archeologists have found very little wear and tear on the sickle blades, supporting the idea that they were only used occasionally. Residents in this settlement would have been well fed, but probably not overworked. Men’s and women’s skeletons were very similar in terms of wear and tear and overall health. It was only after humans took up farming that women’s bodies bore the mark of physical labor while bent over a grindstone. Farming people were also shorter than earlier humans, due to the limited nutrition available.

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Historian, Jared Diamond, argued, “Farming may have encouraged inequality between the sexes, as well. Freed from the need to transport their babies during a nomadic existence,and under pressure to produce more hands to till the fields, farming women tended to have more frequent pregnancies than their hunter-gatherer counterparts- with consequent drains on their health. Among the Chilean mummies, for example, more women than men had bone lesions from infectious disease.”

The Agricultural Revolution represents a move away from tiny settlements like we find at Ohalo II and towards massive populations laboring to farm larger and larger territories. The process shows its first dramatic changes of inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent between 9,500 and 8,500 BCE. Humans sought to increase production of wheat, originally a wild grass, but one which grew easily if properly protected. Doing so meant not just plowing the soil and sowing the seeds. It meant draining the land if the weather was too wet and building irrigation ditches if it was too dry. Wheat had to be protected from pests like rabbits with the introduction of fences. Just as we saw with the activities surrounding the preparation of grains—the kneeling to grind grain for hours on a regular basis—the labor that went into the planting and protection of the fields left its traces on human bones. Spines, knees, necks, and feet showed increasing damage with every generation of farmers. 

Furthermore, settling so many people in one place led to a build-up of human and animal waste, spreading diseases such as parasites, infections, and viruses. Pests too small to block out with fences, such as rats and mice, were attracted to stored food. The growth of rodent populations attracted predators such as wild cats and dogs, leading to the domestication of those animals. 

Apart from wild pests, fields also had to be protected from human rivals. Though scholars have claimed since the Renaissance that prehistoric humans were violent brutes, their lives were nothing compared to the violence that accompanies competition for scarce resources.  When a hunter-gatherer group felt the pressure of a stronger bunch of foragers, they could simply move elsewhere. That was no longer an option. The farmed land had to be protected from scavengers and neighbors or the community would starve. Even the simplest farmer had to be prepared to defend the land. 

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This competition and need to protect the harvest contributed to a growing hierarchy in society. Just as farming might have been advanced by a clever individual who could direct projects and rise in status in the group, the need for protection introduced dedicated warriors to guard the boundaries. The next logical step, of course, is that dedicated warriors and community leaders were increasingly excused from the actual labor and were fed by the work of others. Hierarchies emerged, leaders became entrenched, and over thousands of years, division of labor extended to specialized occupations that served those in power at the expense of those who worked the hardest. 

Even burial practices reflected the change in social order. In pre-farming burial sites, the graves of men and women are all roughly the same. People were buried with a few items that seemed to link each person to a particular clan or place. The dead were often buried very near to the homes of descendants, linking the living to the ancestors. After the agricultural revolution, graves began to show enormous differences in wealth and status. Poor laborers were buried with almost nothing, while warrior graves contained weapons, and the graves of the wealthy and powerful people contained treasures and food offerings. It is pretty clear that, just as agriculture created wealth for some, it also led to poverty for others.

All territories were now under someone’s control. Even if someone chose to leave life in the settled city, there was not much “free territory” available. If you did find an unclaimed piece of land, it usually required even more hard labor if you and your family had to clear the land in order to survive.  

What made humans settle down and take up farming, if it made life harder and damaged our overall health? One possibility is that humans simply had no choice. At the end of the last great Ice Age, the climate was changing dramatically. Parts of Mesopotamia that we tend to think of purely as desert were actually once very wet. 

Landscape archeologist Jennifer Pournelle has been able to map out the elaborate waterways and wetlands that used to cover all of Southern Mesopotamia. The land was lush, and food was plentiful. However, as the land began to dry up, the great diversity of plants and animals disappeared. Humans were left with the task of encouraging a few edible plants to grow on as much land as possible. The early phases of farming might not have required backbreaking labor, since it was still possible to throw seeds on fertile land that was exposed as waters receded. As the climate became even drier, though, humans had to adapt their work again to make crops grow.

During and after the Agricultural Revolution, when enormous cities emerged in Mesopotamia, some semi-migratory groups continued to thrive. They were not foragers, however. They tended to be pastoralists who largely lived off herding goats, sheep, and cattle. These groups continued to enjoy relatively egalitarian social relations. However, they had a pretty hard life and farming livestock had a severe impact on the animals themselves.​

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A hunter will take any animal that he finds, but the farmer will carefully select more easily controlled animals. He will eat male animals and female livestock too old to breed, but spare young female animals to ensure a bigger herd through their young. The movement of animals had to be limited to keep them from wandering off, and pastoralists had to stay on the move to find enough food for the herd while fending off predators. Sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle as we know them today are almost completely dependent on human care. They would not survive in the wild.

Apart from climate change, another possible explanation for the move towards agriculture has to do with religion. In Turkey, there is an ancient religious complex at Göbekli Tepe, dating back to 9500 BCE. There were no dwellings or fortifications here and all the evidence points to the fact that this religious site predated widespread farming. There are traces of feasts, in the form of ancient bread and beer, all made from grains collected in the wild. There are large carved sculptures of humans and wild animals. There are a small number of huge, stone monoliths as well. For most of history, we have assumed that large building projects occurred only after the rise of agriculture. But, clearly, something moved these foragers to cooperate in the creation of something majestic in honor of the gods.

Some mysterious spiritual calling led hunter-gatherers to gather at Göbekli Tepe to build, to worship, and then return to their nomadic or semi-settled lives. Ideas about the cosmos and worship of deities may have indicated a growing sense that humans were not like other animals. Some scholars believe that our growing disconnection from nature is what led to farming, rather than farming leading us away from nature.

Another interesting question is why did humans not reverse course when they realized that life had become so much harder? The simplest explanation is that when you see how everything has changed, it’s usually too late to reverse course. Change is gradual, and even if we are aware that society is changing, it is very difficult to figure out how to improve your situation. Consider this: a serious downside to hunter-gatherer life is the absolute need to limit the size of the population even if that meant committing infanticide to keep numbers low. After the Agricultural Revolution, when surplus food was possible, families were able to feed more people, and therefore they were able to have bigger families. It is a little hard after a couple of generations of population growth to simply go back to being hunter-gatherers.

In fact, there is still some debate on the impact of humans having bigger families. Historian Yuval Noah Harari reminds us that humans no longer practiced infanticide after the advent of settled farming, but the loss in health usually increased infant mortality all the same. Many farming mothers fed their babies porridge in order to stop nursing and return to heavy labor. The lack of mother’s milk contributed to illness and weaknesses among children.

By the end of this era, so much remained in question. Did the benefits of settled life outweigh the loss of free time and a more equal society? Could ancient humans have made any other choice? It is possible that the life of a forager is the best in terms of balance, connection to nature, a varied diet, and mutual respect for all members of the community. But, for all its cost, agriculture has led, over time, to amazing advances in the arts, science, language, and literature. Once we jumped on the agriculture path, everything we enjoy in modern life became possible. Was it worth it, or was the Agricultural Revolution a huge mistake?  ​

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Bibliography

Belfer-Cohen, Anna, & A. Nigel Goring-Morris, “Becoming Farmers: The Inside Story,”Current Anthropology v. 52, No. S4, (October 2011)

Christ, Carol. “Women and Men in Egalitarian Matriarchy,” Feminism and Religion (2018)

Diamond, Jared. “The Worst Mistake in Human History.” Discover Magazine, 1987. http://public.gettysburg.edu/~dperry/Class%20Readings%20Scanned%20Documents/Intro/Diamond.PDF. 

Harari, Yuval Noah. “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” (2015)

Manning, Richard. “Against the Grain: How Agriculture has Hacked Civilization” (2004)

Scott, James C. “Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States” (2017)

Strayer, R. and Nelson, E., Ways Of The World. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.

Ungar, Peter S. “Evolutions Bite: A Story of Teeth, Diet, and Human Origins” (2017)

Primary AUTHOR:

Dr. Nancy Locklin-Sofer

Primary Reviewer:

​Chloe Gardner

Consulting Team

Editors

Kelsie Brook Eckert, Project Director
Coordinator of Social Studies Education at Plymouth State University

Dr. Nancy Locklin-Sofer, Consultant
Professor of History at Maryville University. 

Chloe Gardner, Consultant
PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University

Dr. Whitney Howarth, Consultant
Former Professor of History at Plymouth State University

Jacqui Nelson, Consultant
Teaching Lecturer of Military History at Plymouth State University

​Maria Concepcion Marquez Sandoval
PhD Candidate in History at Arizona University

Amy Flanders
Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy
Ron Kaiser
Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy
Chris Canfield
Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy

Reviewers

Ancient:
Dr. Kristin Heineman
Professor of History at Colorado State University
Dr. Bonnie Rock-McCutcheon
Professor of History at Wilson College
Sarah Stone
PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University
Medieval:
Dr. Katherine Koh
Professor of History at La Sierra University
Dr. Jonathan Couser
Professor of History at Plymouth State University
Dr. Shahla Haeri
Professor of History at Boston University 
Lauren Cole
PhD Candidate in History at Northwestern University
Modern:
Dr. Jack Gronau
Professor of History at Northeastern University