3. 10.000 a. C. - Revolución agrícola: un gran error
The Agricultural Revolution allowed humanity to evolve from small hunter-gatherer tribes to societies capable of building advanced civilizations, but did women lose more than they gained? Women became slaves to the grindstone, health declined, and hierarchies established gender norms that lasted millennia. However, birth rates and surpluses of food improved, and everything considered modern evolved from the Agricultural Revolution. Weighing it all - it's hard to say whether this was revolutionary for women.
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Editores del Proyecto Remedial Herstory. "3. 10.000 a. C. - LA REVOLUCIÓN AGRÍCOLA: ¿UN GRAN ERROR?". Proyecto Remedial Herstory. 1 de noviembre de 2025. www.remedialherstory.com.
Entre el 10.500 y el 8.500 a. C., los humanos comenzaron a cambiar de la caza y la recolección a la agricultura; un cambio que dio lugar a poblaciones más grandes con asentamientos permanentes en muchas partes del mundo. Este desarrollo se conoce como la primera Revolución Agrícola o la Revolución Neolítica . A lo largo de muchas generaciones, la transición a la agricultura condujo a la creación de ciudades, el surgimiento de religiones organizadas y estructuras políticas, y el comercio entre personas de diferentes localidades. Pero a medida que aprendemos más sobre cómo vivían los humanos antes de la Revolución Agrícola, parece que hemos perdido más de lo que ganamos.
La Revolución Agrícola tuvo lugar en diferentes momentos y partes del mundo, pero la primera comenzó en lo que llamamos el Creciente Fértil, la región comprendida entre los valles de los ríos Tigris y Éufrates en Mesopotamia y el valle del río Nilo en Egipto. Es aquí donde los arqueólogos han encontrado la evidencia más temprana del inicio de la agricultura. Allí examinaremos la evidencia con mayor detenimiento, centrándonos en huesos y artefactos de dos culturas del Creciente Fértil: el asentamiento agrícola neolítico de Abu Hureyra y los cazadores-recolectores sedentarios de la cultura natufiense , antes de la Revolución Neolítica. También consideraremos la evidencia que los antropólogos han recopilado de las sociedades recolectoras que existen en la actualidad.
Neolítico (n.) , la última parte de la Edad de Piedra, cuando prevalecían las armas y los utensilios de piedra molida o pulida.
Natufiense (n.) , cultura prehistórica de personas que vivieron en la región del Levante del Mediterráneo oriental entre 15.000 y 11.500 años atrás.
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Grinding stone (n.), slabs of stone that Aboriginal people used to grind and crush different materials.
El papel de la mujer en el proceso agrícola
Las mujeres prehistóricas fueron clave en la transición de la caza y la recolección a la agricultura. La caza era generalmente la tarea asignada a las personas más aptas de la comunidad, generalmente hombres en la flor de la vida. Mujeres, niños y ancianos trabajaban juntos para recolectar granos, frutas y legumbres silvestres. Es posible que las mujeres fueran quienes observaran la conexión entre las semillas caídas y una cosecha más abundante al regresar posteriormente a un lugar determinado.
La agricultura más antigua data de antes de la Edad del Bronce, por lo que no se utilizaba el arado. El agricultor usaba un palo para hacer un agujero donde se dejaba caer la semilla. Tras la cosecha, las mujeres se encargaban de gran parte, si no de toda, la preparación de los alimentos.
Hay evidencia de que las mujeres en las primeras comunidades agrícolas eran físicamente muy fuertes. Un análisis de fragmentos de huesos del brazo de mujeres prehistóricas revela que las mujeres antiguas tenían una fuerza ósea que medía un 9% más que las mujeres atléticas modernas. Sin embargo, esa fuerza tenía un costo. Cuando Theya Molleson del Museo Británico observó los restos de mujeres de Abu Hureyra, un sitio ocupado durante 6.000 años en lo que ahora es Siria, encontró evidencia de que las mujeres pasaban horas arrodilladas sobre sus piedras de moler , lo que resultó en dedos de los pies deformados, huesos de los muslos curvados y rodillas y espaldas artríticas. Los esqueletos preagrícolas no revelaron ninguno de esos problemas. Además, los dientes de los agricultores neolíticos primero mostraron más desgaste a medida que pequeños trozos de piedra terminaban en el grano, y más tarde mostraron más caries y enfermedades de las encías a medida que las gachas blandas que comían dejaban una acumulación de azúcar y carbohidratos en el esmalte dental.
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Remains of a Natufian woman and her dog
La dieta humana
Con la transición hacia la agricultura, parece que los pueblos agricultores trabajaron más arduamente y su salud en general fue mucho peor. Su dieta, basada en unos pocos cultivos, era menos nutritiva que la de una dieta basada en una variedad de alimentos recolectados. Como resultado, los antiguos agricultores probablemente desarrollaron enfermedades cardíacas y dificultades digestivas, entre otras afecciones.
¿Cómo sabemos que la dieta de los primeros agricultores era deficiente en comparación con la de los cazadores-recolectores? No podemos asegurar si esto era así en todos los pueblos prehistóricos, pero la evidencia de los yacimientos natufienses nos indica que sus dietas eran ricas y que la gente no tenía que trabajar duro para conseguir lo suficiente. Aunque solíamos asumir que la vida antes de la agricultura era brutal, los arqueólogos han descubierto evidencia que altera drásticamente lo que creíamos saber sobre la vida antes de la Revolución Neolítica. Un yacimiento, Ohalo II, ubicado en el actual Israel, estuvo habitado continuamente durante varias generaciones hace casi 23.000 años, antes de ser incendiado, lo que pudo haber sido parte intencional de la migración a un nuevo espacio. Estos humanos eran cazadores-recolectores, que dependían de granos y frutas silvestres, junto con el pescado y la caza que se podían encontrar a orillas del Mar de Galilea. Sobrevivían gracias a una rica variedad de recursos sin tener que viajar para encontrarlos, y también mostraban algunos de los primeros indicios conocidos de cultivo, mucho antes de la Revolución Agrícola.
Los arqueólogos han encontrado restos de alimentos como almendras, pistachos, aceitunas, uvas y muchas otras plantas comestibles. Entre ellas se encuentra una fruta conocida como rubus, similar a una mora. Era algo que debía consumirse fresco. Los restos animales incluían una amplia variedad de peces, tortugas, aves acuáticas y varias razas de mamíferos, desde conejos hasta gacelas. Los arqueólogos también encontraron piedras de moler que aún contenían fragmentos de cebada, trigo y avena. Incluso había hojas de hoz, lo que nos muestra que los residentes de esta pequeña aldea habían descubierto cómo cosechar, aunque la evidencia sugiere que solo se dedicaban a la siembra a pequeña escala. Por ejemplo, los arqueólogos han encontrado muy poco desgaste en las hojas de la hoz, lo que apoya la idea de que solo se usaban ocasionalmente.
El impacto en el cuerpo
Los residentes de este asentamiento probablemente estaban bien alimentados, pero probablemente no trabajaban en exceso. Los esqueletos de hombres y mujeres eran muy similares en cuanto a desgaste y salud general. Fue solo después de que los humanos se dedicaran a la agricultura que los cuerpos de las mujeres mostraron las marcas del trabajo físico, como agacharse sobre una piedra de afilar. Los agricultores también eran más bajos que los humanos primitivos, debido a su dieta limitada.
El historiador Jared Diamond sostiene que:
La agricultura también pudo haber fomentado la desigualdad entre los sexos. Liberadas de la necesidad de transportar a sus bebés durante una vida nómada y bajo la presión de tener más mano de obra para cultivar los campos, las mujeres agricultoras tendían a tener embarazos más frecuentes que sus contrapartes cazadoras-recolectoras, con el consiguiente deterioro de su salud. Entre las momias chilenas, por ejemplo, más mujeres que hombres presentaban lesiones óseas causadas por enfermedades infecciosas.
Ancient farming
Settlements
The Agricultural Revolution represents a move away from tiny settlements like those at Ohalo II and toward massive populations laboring to farm larger and larger territories. The process shows its first dramatic changes in 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. Fences also had to be built to protect wheat from pests like rabbits.
Just as we saw with the regular kneeling to grind grain for hours surrounding the preparation of grains, 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 through parasites, infections, and viruses. Likewise, pests too small to block out with fences, such as rats and mice, were attracted to stored food, and the growth of rodent populations attracted predators such as wild cats and dogs, leading to the domestication of those animals.
Fields also had to be protected from human rivals. Although scholars have claimed since the Renaissance that prehistoric humans were violent brutes, their lives were calm compared to the violence that accompanied competition for scarce resources. When a hunter-gatherer group felt the pressure of a stronger bunch of foragers, it could simply move elsewhere. That was no longer an option. The cultivated 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.
Egyptian artisan Sennedjem and his wife Ti harvesting wheat
Hierarchy (n.), a system or organization in which people or groups are ranked one above the other according to status or authority.
Entrenched (adj.), (of an attitude, habit, or belief) firmly established and difficult or unlikely to change; ingrained.
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Changes in Social Order
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, was 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 thous ands of years, division of labor extended to specialized occupations that served those in power at the expense of those who worked the hardest.
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. Just as agriculture created wealth for some, it also created poverty for others.
All territories were increasingly 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 because you and your family had to clear the land in order to survive.
Egalitarian (adj.), relating to or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
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Pastoralists
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, life was difficult in early pastoral societies.
A hunter will take any animal 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, yet pastoralists had to stay on the move to find enough food for the herd while fending off predators. As a result, sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle as we know them today are almost completely dependent on human care. They would not survive in the wild.
Khoikhoi dismantling their huts, preparing to move to new pastures
Infanticide (n.), the crime of killing a child within a year of its birth.
Why Change?
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 mapped 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.
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 there, and evidence points to this religious site predating 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 few huge stone monoliths as well. For most of history, we have assumed that large buildings emerged only after the rise of agriculture, but 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, 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 led to farming rather than farming leading us away from nature.
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. For example, a serious downside to hunter-gatherer life created 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 available, families could feed more people, making it possible to have bigger families. It is difficult after generations of population growth to simply go back to being hunter-gatherers.
There is still some debate regarding 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 infant mortality increased all the same. Many farming mothers fed their babies porridge in order to stop nursing and return to heavy labor, and the lack of mother’s milk contributed to illness and weaknesses among children.
Conclusion
It is possible that the life of a forager is better 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 humans began to engage in settled agriculture, everything we enjoy in modern life became possible.
Did the benefits of settled life outweigh the loss of free time and a more equal society where men and women shared responsibilities and roles were less gendered? Could ancient humans have made any other choice? Was it worth it, or was the Agricultural Revolution a huge mistake?