Lecture 2.

The agricultural
revolution
 The traditional view
• Agriculture: the first great leap forward
• V. Gordon Childe: the Neolithic Revolution
• Originated in Southwest Asia, spread west to
Europe, south to Africa, and east to India as a
result of migration and rising population
• Led to an increase in food supply, created a
surplus making possible a range of activities
other than food production. Good for
economic welfare!
 The traditional view
• The agricultural revolution made possible and
thus led to:
– Sedentism (permanent settlements)
– Civilization (writing, monumental architecture, a
non-working elite, private property)
– The state
– Ultimately helped to create the modern world
• Since it was so obviously beneficial, it was
adopted as soon as someone had the bright
idea; the only problem is explaining the idea
What happened?
Multiple independent ‘hearths’
 Multiple independent ‘hearths’

And many
sources of
origin even
within the
Fertile Crescent
hearth
 Multiple independent ‘hearths’

The old view of

diffusion from
the Fertile
Crescent is no
longer
accepted
 Multiple independent ‘hearths’

And this was

just one stage
in a gradual
process of
controlling the
environment..
 Multiple independent ‘hearths’

Some aspects
of what later
becomes
agriculture
occurs among
Natufians 5000
years earlier..
How did it happen?
 The Natufians (14500-11500 BP)
cultivated wheat and barley
• They typically lived where hills met plains
• Gazelle lived on the plains and were hunted
• The hills contained oaks and pistachios which
gave nuts as food
• Also on the hillsides were stands of wild wheat
and barley, which they harvested
• They lived in semi-subterranean houses with
stone foundations and probably wood
superstructures
Natufian landscape
Wild barley growing on a hillside
Presence of wild cereals
 Natufian tools included:
• Flat bladed sickles
• Mortars
• Grinding stones
• Storage pits

• Abundance of tools for harvesting and

preparing grain shows its importance in their
diet
Sickle and grinding stones
Modern foragers know a lot about the plants
and animals they harvest.

• How they reproduce

• How the environment affects their growth
(they even garden them)
• The realization that planting seeds yielded
crops was not an intellectual breakthrough
that precipitated farming since it was probably
known for a long time
 Domestication
• Farmers began by planting wild seed and keeping
wild animals
• Domestication implies biological changes that made
wild varieties easier for human beings to manage; the
key threshold is when the new varieties can no
longer survive in the wild
• Evidence of domesticated barley as early as 11000 BP
• Wheat domesticated by 9800 BP but process starts
far earlier
• Sheep and goats about the same time
With animals, domestication meant that the
animal got smaller.
• Animals were tethered, and not fed very much
• They were smaller as a result
• Females, in particular, were smaller and had smaller
birth canals
• They could no longer give birth to large offspring
• Inadvertent selection for genetically smaller animals
• Higher reproduction rates, more docile
– Much the same was true for us, perhaps
• The domus: mutualism (both species benefit) and
commensalism (one benefits, no cost to the other)
Morphology of plants also changed
• In the wild, seed cases were flimsy
• As a result, wild seed dispersed easily
• When humans harvested wild seed, it
dispersed, and much of it was lost as it was
harvested and taken to houses
• Domestication meant harder seed cases, which
reduced losses
• Threshing was necessary to break seed cases
• Such a plant would not do very well in the wild!
Brittle rachis and tough rachis
 How did this change happen?
• About one wild plant in 2 – 4 million had a tough rachis
• Humans could have inadvertently produced
predominantly hard rachis seed (ie domesticate wheat)
in 200 years, if they
– Didn’t begin the harvest of wild seed until the grain was ripe
and the soft rachis seed had already fallen to the ground
– Harvested wild wheat with a sickle and left grain that fell off
on the ground, taking home the tougher-rachis grain
– Planted seed where it could not interbreed with wild seed
• Evidently, cultivation preceded domestication
• Domestication an evolution, not a discovery
• People trying to preserve lifestyles, not transform them
What were its consequences?
Lionel Robbins (LSE)

“Economics is the
science which studies
human behaviour as a
relationship between
ends and scarce
means which have
alternative uses”

“Humans want what

they can’t have”
 Sahlins 1972
• Wants may be “easily satisfied” either by
producing much (Robbins would disagree) or
by desiring little: hunter gatherers’ “Zen
strategy” led to their enjoying “unparalleled
material plenty – with a low standard of
living” (and lots of leisure!)
• Not storing food or owning a lot is rational,
since they are mobile, and that is what keeps
them well fed
• What did most European observers conclude?
 Kaplan 2000
• Time studies based on very few days (e.g. 11, or
even just 4)
– Were these days representative? Can you
extrapolate to other periods in the year?
• They sometimes went hungry (but are his
examples representative?)
• Do they really have limited wants? Different
tastes?
• How genuinely sharing are they?
• Can you think of an even more basic objection?
 Kaplan 2000
• Time studies based on very few days (e.g. 11, or
even just 4)
– Were these days representative? Can you
extrapolate to other periods in the year?
• They sometimes went hungry (but are his
examples representative?)
• Do they really have limited wants? Different
tastes?
• How genuinely sharing are they?
• Can you think of an even more basic objection?
Health deteriorates
Steckel and Rose (2002)
How do you combine many indicators? Form
an index
(Larsen found no evidence that
osteoarthritis got worse, or that life
was getting more physically
demanding)
Steckel and Rose 2002
Steckel and Rose 2002
Why did it happen?
 In particular
• Why did people take up farming if their
standard of living declined?
• Why didn’t agriculture improve human well
being?
• A test for any theory of the origins of
agriculture is to reconcile farming with falling
living standards
• What may be rational for individuals may not
always be optimal for the group
The 19th century: progress is in the nature of human
beings, who (inevitably?) moved through stages
 20 century theories
th

• Childe: the end of the Ice Age made Southwest

Asia drier; the region was the home to wild
wheat, barley, goats and sheep; people and
animals were forced to cluster near oases;
people were already cultivating cereals and now
learned how to combine cultivation and herding
– But agriculture did not in fact start in the oases:
rather, it is close to lakes and rivers
• The notion that climate mattered has persisted
however
 20 century theories
th

• Climatic (Younger Dryas) theory

• Sedentism theory
Climate change
 The impact of the Younger Dryas
• Rise in temperature and rainfall 15K BP increased
fertility of the environment and made it possible for
the Natufians to harvest wild cereals
• The ‘younger dryas’ was colder and drier and made
existing settlements unsustainable
• People moved: some became foragers again while
others began cultivating wheat and barley near rivers
• This triggered domestication
• When climate improved, agriculture was more
productive than foraging and displaced it
• ‘Temporary’ (1,300 years) shock had permanent
consequences (path dependence)
There may be some truth to this theory, but
it is not the whole story.
• The theory predicts a temporary fall in income
as the climate deteriorated
• Then the standard of living is predicted to
rebound
• That is not what happened
• To understand why, we will need a model of
demography (see lecture 4)
 Sedentism
• Inversion of the Childe paradigm where agriculture
leads to permanent settlements: here it is the
other way around
– Barker: direction of causation dependended on context
• Established for the Natufians by Ofer bar Yosef:
long before agriculture
• Explanation: rising temperature after last ice age
increased fertility of the natural environment,
reducing the distance people needed to wander to
find food. Eventually, they could stay in one place
and make day trips
Permanent settlement affected many aspects
of human life:
• Since people did not have to carry their
babies, they could have more of them, and the
fertility rate rose
• In some places, manufactures (eg pottery)
were invented before farming
• Communal activities like feasting
 Population growth and agriculture
• Population growth may have led to
agriculture, rather than merely being caused
by it
• People avoided planting wild seed by rivers
since that involved more work (removing
other plants that were dominant)
• They only planted seed by rivers when they
became numerous and poor enough
• This analysis can explain why the invention of
agriculture was accompanied by a permanent
fall in the standard of living
 Some open questions
• Is there a general explanation, or a series of
context-specific explanations?
• Were humans pushed into agriculture by a
lack of other resources, or were they pulled
into it by new opportunities?
• Did these decisions reflect interests: how best
to cope with changing circumstances? Or was
the adoption of agriculture a story of
unintended consequences?