Topic 2. The Neolithic Revolution

It appears that the first invention of humankind was the hand axe – a sharpened pebble that made it possible to chop wood or cut meat. The hand axe was the first primitive tool, and its use set humans apart from the world of ape-like primates. Somewhat later, about 100,000 years ago, humans learned to use fire; fire served not only for cooking food or providing warmth, but was, first and foremost, a weapon used in hunting. Fire made it possible to organize drive hunts: waving torches, a line of beaters drove a herd of animals toward an ambush, where hunters lay in wait with spears and clubs. Archaeological evidence points to the extraordinary effectiveness of drive hunting – for example, at the site of Solutré the bones of 10,000 horses were found, animals that had been driven off a steep cliff.

Drive hunting was the main factor shaping the way of life of Stone Age people: they lived in small, tightly knit clans. Collective hunting required collectivism in everyday life; prehistoric people did not know what private property was; they lived in a single cave and ate from a single fire, without dividing up the spoils. All the men of a clan were considered brothers, and all the women, sisters. The family had a different character than it does today: besides his first wife, each man had other wives – all the wives of his brothers, meaning all the women of the clan were considered his secondary wives. Among the Inuit, a brother's wife was called "ayagan" – literally "my wife."

Drive hunting ultimately led to the complete extermination of many species of large animals, such as mammoths, mastodons, and woolly rhinoceroses. Struggling to survive in the eternal fight for existence, people improved their hunting methods; about 13,000 years ago the bow was invented, making it possible to hunt birds and small animals. Around this time the dog was domesticated – people "formed an alliance" with the ancestors of dogs, jackals, and began helping one another in the hunt. The harpoon appeared and fishing became widespread; hunters built the first dugout fishing boats. Alongside hunting, gathering became increasingly widespread; the gathering of edible plants was usually done by women, while hunting was the occupation of men.

The meaning of all the technical achievements of ancient humans ultimately came down to attempts to expand their ecological niche. The size of an ecological niche is determined by the extent of the available food resources; technical achievements, say, the development of fishing, lead to an increase in these resources, that is, to an expansion of the ecological niche. However, under favorable conditions a population can double in 50 years; in a hundred years the population can grow fourfold, in 200 years – sixteenfold, and in 400 years it can grow 256-fold! Thus, the human capacity for reproduction is such that new resources are soon exhausted, the ecological niche fills to its limit, and a shortage of food again begins to be felt.

Stone Age people almost always lived under conditions of food shortage – that is, under conditions of regularly recurring famine. Famine led to clashes between hunting clans, and archaeologists find abundant evidence of these clashes, including shattered and hollowed-out human bones – signs of cannibalism. According to researchers, the life expectancy of Stone Age people was 32 years for men and 25 years for women – figures that speak to the harsh struggle for existence that ancient humans had to wage.

Improvements in hunting methods had a significant impact on people's lives, but they could not compare with the revolutionary changes that took place in the late Neolithic, in the 9th–8th millennium BC. This was the time of the so-called Neolithic Revolution – the technology of farming was mastered, and people learned to sow wheat and harvest crops. Whereas previously feeding a single hunter required 20 square kilometers of hunting grounds, now that same territory could feed dozens or hundreds of farmers – the ecological niche had expanded tens, even hundreds of times over! To hunters, who had been forced to fight constantly for survival, came an unheard-of abundance, and a "golden age" began in the history of humankind.

From the times that followed the Neolithic Revolution, many legends have survived about a prosperous, well-fed life. Here is how the ancient Greek poet Hesiod told the legend of the Golden Age.

First of all the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus

made a golden race of mortal men.

These lived like gods, with carefree hearts,

untouched by hardship or toil. Nor did miserable old age

come upon them... In every good thing they took delight,

and the fruitful earth yielded its bountiful harvest

to them of its own accord, in abundance and without stint.

It is notable that the communities of the first farmers were led by women: women had previously engaged in gathering, and it was apparently women who "invented" agriculture. According to ethnographers, among many primitive peoples farming is done by women, while hunting remains the occupation of men. Because women provided the clan with food, they held a privileged position – matriarchy was the dominant order during this period.

Initially, the farmer's main tool was the digging stick or the hoe; in the 4th millennium BC the plow was invented, drawn by oxen. Using the plow required great physical strength, and from that time on plowing became men's work; now the man became the provider of the clan, and the age of patriarchy began.

The mastery of farming was a great fundamental discovery that led to a sharp expansion of the ecological niche and to a rapid growth in the number of farmers. The original center of agriculture was in the Middle East. Already by the 8th millennium a shortage of land began to be felt there, and farmers began settling the lands of the surrounding hunting tribes – the spread of the agricultural cultural sphere began. In the 7th millennium farmers appeared in the Balkans, in the 6th millennium in the valleys of the Danube, the Indus, and the Ganges, and by the end of the 5th millennium in Spain and China. The hunting tribes, the former inhabitants of these territories, were either exterminated, driven out by the newcomers, or subjugated by them and adopted their culture. Wave after wave of new migrations flowed out of the old farming regions. The Phoenicians and Greeks settled the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, while Indians settled the shores of Indochina.

The mastery of farming secured people's food supply for a long time, but it also gave rise to certain problems. The shift to a different diet gave rise to new diseases and required a fairly lengthy period of adaptation. Then there arose the problem of clothing: previously hunters had dressed in animal skins. Farmers began growing plants with long fibers – flax above all; they began spinning and weaving flax fibers. Thus spinning and weaving came into being. Another problem was the storage of grain, which was devoured by hordes of mice. This problem was solved with the invention of pottery. Woven baskets began to be coated with clay and fired over a fire; later, kilns for firing and the potter's wheel were created. Potters became the first professional craftsmen; they lived at the communal temple and received their keep from the community.

The problem of housing turned out to be very important for farmers. Hunters were constantly on the move in search of prey and lived in light shelters covered with animal skins. Farmers lived in houses; the first houses were built from unfired brick, and later brick began to be fired in pottery kilns, but fired brick was expensive and was used mainly for facing buildings. In the 4th millennium another innovation appeared in Mesopotamia – the four-wheeled cart drawn by oxen.

Another discovery of this period was the creation of the first copper tools. Perhaps the first copper was obtained accidentally from ore in pottery kilns, but however it happened, this discovery initially had no noticeable effect on the lives of farmers. Copper was a rare metal and was at first used as an ornament. Later, in the 3rd millennium, it was discovered that adding tin produced bronze, which was harder than copper. Weapons and certain important technical parts, such as the hubs of war chariots, began to be made of bronze – but bronze was even more expensive than copper, and its appearance did not lead to the widespread use of metal tools.

The mastery of hoe farming was the first stage of the Neolithic Revolution that changed people's lives. The second stage was the mastery of irrigation farming. Under hoe-based technology, cultivated land quickly became depleted, and after two or three years farmers were forced to move to a new plot; with irrigation, soil fertility is restored through silt deposits, yields remain consistently high, and land resources are used to their fullest. The significance of the irrigation revolution is shown by the following figures. Population density under a hunting economy is about 0.05 people per square kilometer; under hoe farming, up to 10 people per square kilometer; under irrigation farming it reaches 100–200 people per square kilometer. Thus, the second stage of the Neolithic Revolution was no less significant in scale than the first.

The irrigation revolution became a reality in the 4th millennium BC, when the inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia, the Sumerians, learned to build major irrigation canals dozens of kilometers long. The enormous increase in agricultural productivity caused a sharp rise in population, and at this time numerous settlements appeared that grew to the size of cities. In the 3rd millennium the irrigation revolution spread to the valleys of the Nile and the Indus, and in the 2nd millennium to the valleys of the Ganges and the Yellow River; the valleys of the great rivers became the main centers of agricultural civilization.

The development of irrigation led to a further expansion of the human ecological niche – but, as we recall, population grows very quickly, and over four hundred years it can increase 250-fold. In the 3rd millennium, population density in the river valleys increased hundreds of times over, and the new ecological niche became filled to capacity. Overpopulation began in the Middle East.

During the period of colonization and abundance, clan communities saw no need to change the traditional principles of collective labor: just as with hunting, the cultivation of land was carried out jointly on a common field, and the harvest was divided equally among kinsmen. Such a system of land use is recorded in the sources of many of the most ancient communities of Asia. Another tradition inherited by farmers from hunters was the popular assembly and clan democracy.

Overpopulation at first showed itself in occasional famines during years of poor harvests. The community responded to it by applying irrigation and fertilizers. Gradually it became apparent that, unlike hunting, collective labor in farming gave no advantage over individual labor. "Under collective labor many grow lazy, and there is room for less than full effort," says the ancient Chinese treatise "Lüshi Chunqiu." The most hardworking peasants began to demand the allotment of their own plot of land and moved off to "homesteads." At first, peasant plots were subject to periodic redistribution.

"No one was allowed to rejoice alone in fertile land, so once every three years the fields and dwellings were redivided," says a Chinese source. In China this system was called "jing tian"; it is recorded in almost every region of the world, and in Russia and Southeast Asia it survived until the 19th century.

However, in areas of higher demographic pressure the system of allotments quickly led to the emergence of private ownership of land – above all because periodic redivisions discouraged the use of fertilizers and local irrigation. Private property appeared in Mesopotamia around 2600 BC, and in other regions as pressure there reached a corresponding level. In China this happened in the 7th–6th centuries BC, and in India and Italy in the middle of the 1st millennium BC.

The emergence of private property caused the breakdown of the community. Families and private homes separated from one another behind high fences. A brother's wife ceased to be "my wife." The community began to split into rich and poor. The division of plots among large families meant that the resulting allotments could no longer feed the landowners. Peasants took grain on credit – this is how moneylending arose – and eventually lost their allotments. The landless worked as laborers for wealthy peasants, begged for alms on the roads, and many turned to banditry. Another portion of the landless took up professional crafts. Craftsmen gathered around markets to exchange their goods for bread – this is how towns and trade arose.

Population growth gradually filled the ecological niche of farmers, and as this filling took place, humans adapted to the new conditions of existence. The result of this adaptation was the emergence of private property, new family relations, and the development of towns, trade, crafts, arts, and science – the formation of a new society, known as the "traditional society" of farmers. This world was strikingly different from the earlier world of hunting communities, and these changes were brought about by a great fundamental discovery – the mastery of agriculture.