Topic 2. The Neolithic Revolution

Apparently, the first invention of man was the creation of a hand chopper — a pointed pebble, which makes it possible to chop wood or cut meat. Rubilo was the first primitive instrument, the use of which isolated man from the world of primate monkeys. Somewhat later, about 100 thousand years ago, man learned to use fire; the fire served not only for cooking or heating, but, in the first place, was a weapon on the hunt. The fire allowed to organize a driven hunt: swinging torches, a chain of beaters drove a herd of animals to an ambush where hunters with lances and clubs were hiding. The archeology data speaks about the extraordinary efficiency of the driven hunt - for example, in the parking lot in Solyutra, bones of 10 thousand horses were found, which were driven to a steep precipice.

Hunting was the main factor determining the lifestyle of the people of the Stone Age: they lived in small cohesive clans. Collective hunting required collectivism in everyday life; primitive people did not know what private property is; they lived in the same cave and ate at the same fire, without sharing the spoil. All men of the family were considered brothers, and all women were sisters. The family had a different character than in our time: except for the first wife, every man had other wives — all the brothers' wives, i.e. all women of the clan were considered his second wives. Among the Eskimos, his brother's wife was called “ayagan” - literally “my wife”.

Hunting in the long run ultimately led to the complete extermination of many species of large animals, for example, mammoths, mastodons, woolly rhinos. Trying to survive in the eternal struggle for existence, people perfected the methods of hunting; about 13 thousand years ago the bow was invented, which allowed to hunt birds and small animals. At this time, the dog was domesticated - people "made an alliance" with the ancestors of the dogs, jackals, and began to help each other during the hunt. A harpoon appears and fishing is spreading; the hunters make the first fishing dugout boats. Along with hunting, gathering is increasingly spreading; the gathering of edible plants was usually done by women, while the hunt was the occupation of men.

The meaning of all the technical achievements of the ancient man, ultimately, was reduced to attempts to expand its ecological niche. The volume of the ecological niche is determined by the size of the existing food resources; technical achievements, say, the development of fisheries, lead to an increase in these resources, i.e., to the expansion of the ecological niche. However, under favorable conditions, the population can double in 50 years; in a hundred years the population can increase 4 times, in 200 years - 16 times, in 400 years it can increase 256 times! Thus, a person’s ability to reproduce is such that new resources are soon exhausted, the ecological niche is filled to the limit, and food shortages are beginning to be felt again.

Stone Age people almost always lived in conditions of food shortages — that is, in conditions of regularly recurring hunger. Hunger led to clashes between hunting clans, and archaeologists find numerous evidence of these clashes, including fragmented and hollowed human bones, are signs of cannibalism. According to the testimony of researchers, the life expectancy of people of the Stone Age was 32 years for men and 25 years for women - these figures indicate the harsh struggle for existence that ancient people had to wage.

The improvement of hunting methods had a significant impact on the lives of people, but it did not compare with the revolutionary changes that occurred in the late Neolithic period, in the IX-VIII millennium BC. er At this time there was a so-called Neolithic revolution - the technology of agriculture was mastered, people learned to sow wheat and harvest. If before to feed one hunter it took 20 square meters. km of hunting grounds, now dozens and hundreds of farmers could feed themselves on this territory - the ecological niche has expanded dozens, hundreds of times! Hunters, forced to constantly fight for their existence, suddenly came unheard of abundance, began the "golden age" in the history of mankind.

From the times that followed the Neolithic revolution, there are many legends about a prosperous, full life. This is how the ancient Greek poet Hesiod passed on the legend of the Golden Age.

Created first of all the golden generation of people

Everlasting gods, owners of Olympic dwellings.

Those people lived like gods, with a calm and clear soul,

Sorrow without knowing, without knowing the works. And sad old age

I didn’t dare approach them ... Kindness

He was not aware of anything. Great harvest and abundant

The bakeries themselves gave themselves.

It is characteristic that in the communities of the first farmers were headed by women: women were previously engaged in gathering and apparently, it was women who “invented” agriculture. According to the testimony of ethnographers, many primitive peoples are engaged in farming by women, while the occupation of men is still hunting. Due to the fact that women provide the clan with food, they occupy a privileged position - the dominance of matriarchy is characteristic of this period.

Initially, the main tool of the farmer was a stick-digger or hoe; in IV thousand BC. er a plow was invented into which oxen were harnessed. The use of the plow requires great physical strength, and from that time plowing became the work of men, now the man became the breadwinner of the family, the time has come for patriarchy.

The development of agriculture was a great fundamental discovery, which led to a sharp expansion of the ecological niche and to a rapid increase in the number of farmers. The initial focus of farming was in the Middle East. Already in the VIII millennium, the shortage of land began to be felt here and the resettlement of farmers to the lands of the surrounding hunting tribes began - the spread of the agricultural cultural circle began. In the 7th millennium, farmers appeared in the Balkans, in the 6,000 in the valleys of the Danube, the Indus and the Ganges, and by the end of the 5,000 in the Spain and China. Hunting tribes, the former inhabitants of these territories were either exterminated, or supplanted by aliens, or submitted to them and adopted their culture. More and more migratory waves emerged from the old areas of agriculture. Phoenicians and Greeks mastered the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, the Indians - the shores of Indochina.

The development of agriculture for a long time provided people with food, but at the same time gave rise to certain problems. Switching to another food gave rise to new diseases and required quite a long adaptation. Then there was the problem of clothing: after all, before, hunters dressed in animal skins. Farmers began to grow plants with long fibers - primarily flax; they began to spin and weave flaxen fibers. Thus, spinning and weaving appeared. Another problem was the storage of grain, which was eaten by hordes of mice. This problem was solved with the invention of ceramics. Baskets of twigs began to be covered with clay and burned on a fire; then kilns and a potter's wheel were created. The potters became the first professional artisans, they lived at the communal church and received content from the community.

The problem of dwellings turned out to be very important for farmers. Hunters constantly moved in search of prey and lived in light huts covered with animal skins. Farmers lived in houses, the first houses were built from unbaked bricks; then they began to burn the brick in pottery kilns, but the burnt brick was expensive and was used mainly for cladding buildings. In the fourth millennium, another innovation appeared in Mesopotamia - a four-wheeled carriage drawn by bulls.

Another discovery of this time was the creation of the first copper tools. Perhaps the first copper was accidentally obtained from the ore in pottery kilns, but be that as it may, this discovery did not initially have a noticeable effect on the lives of farmers. Copper was a rare metal, and was initially used as an ornament. Later, in the 3rd millennium, it was discovered that the addition of tin makes it possible to obtain more solid bronze than copper. They began to make weapons and some important technical details from bronze, for example, the sleeves of the chariots of war — however, bronze was even more expensive than copper and its appearance did not lead to the spread of metal tools.

The development of hoe agriculture was the first stage of the Neolithic revolution that changed the lives of the people. The second stage was the development of irrigation farming. With the hoe technology, the cultivated land was quickly depleted, and after two or three years, the farmers were forced to move to a new site; in the presence of irrigation, soil fertility is restored by silt sediments, yields remain consistently high, and land resources are fully utilized. The following figures indicate the significance of the irrigation revolution. The population density during hunting is about 0.05 man / sq. km, with hoe agriculture - up to 10 people / sq. km, with irrigation farming, it reaches 100-200 people / sq. km Thus, the second stage of the Neolithic revolution was not inferior in scale to the first stage.

The irrigational revolution became a fact in the 4th millennium BC. Oe., when the inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia, the Sumerians, learned to build the main irrigation canals tens of kilometers long. The enormous increase in the productivity of agriculture caused a sharp increase in the population, at this time there are numerous villages that grow to the size of cities. In the third millennium, the irrigation revolution spreads to the valleys of the Nile and the Indus, in the second millennium to the valleys of the Ganges and the Yellow River; the valleys of the great rivers become the main foci of agricultural civilization.

The development of irrigation has led to a new expansion of the human ecological niche - however, we remember that the population grows very quickly, over four years it can increase 250 times. In the 3rd millennium, the population density in the river valleys increased hundreds of times, and a new ecological niche was filled. Overpopulation began in the Middle East.

During the period of colonization and abundance, the clan communities did not consider it necessary to change the traditional principles of collective labor: just like hunting, the cultivation of the land was carried out jointly in a common field and the crop was divided evenly among relatives. This land use order has been recorded by sources in many of the oldest communities in Asia. Another tradition inherited by farmers from hunters was the national assembly and tribal democracy.

Overpopulation was manifested at first by rare hunger strikes during the period of great crop failures. The community responded to it with irrigation and fertilizer. Gradually, it became clear that, unlike hunting, collective labor in agriculture does not give an advantage over individual labor. “With collective labor, many are lazy and there is the possibility of an incomplete return of forces,” says the old Chinese treatise “Lüshi Chuntsyu.” The most industrious peasants began to demand the allocation of a plot of their land and went to the "farm". At first, peasant holdings were subject to systematic redistribution.

“Puffy lands were not allowed to rejoice in anyone, therefore fields and dwellings were altered once every three years,” said a Chinese source. In China, this system was called “jing-tien”, it was fixed in almost all parts of the world, and in Russia and Southeast Asia survived until the XIX century.

However, in areas of higher demographic pressure, the allotment system quickly led to the emergence of private ownership of land — primarily because redistribution restrained fertilizer use and local irrigation. Private property appeared in the Two Rivers about 2600 BC. e., and in other regions - as the pressure there has reached the appropriate level. In China, this happened in the VI-VII centuries BC. e., in India and in Italy - in the middle of I millennium BC. er

The emergence of private property caused the disintegration of the community. Families and private houses were separated from each other by high fences. The brother's wife has ceased to be "my wife." The separation of the community into rich and poor began. Sections of the site in large families led to the fact that plots could not feed the landowners. The peasants took the grain in debt - so usury appeared - and eventually lost their allotment. The landless rotten from the kulaks, asked for alms on the roads, many hunted for robbery. Another part of the landless engaged in professional craft. Craftsmen gathered around the markets in order to change their goods for bread - this is how cities and trade appeared.

The growth of the population led to the gradual filling of the ecological niche of farmers, and as far as this filling occurred, human adaptation to new conditions of existence took place. The result of this adaptation was the emergence of private property, new family relations, the development of cities, commerce, crafts, arts and science - the emergence of a new society, which is called the "traditional society" of farmers. This world was strikingly unlike the former world of hunting communities and these changes were caused by a great fundamental discovery - the development of agriculture.