Text 2. Setting the Stage for Civilization: The Origins of Food Production

Read the text and do the tasks that follow:

The era between 35,000 and 12,000 years ago had been an Ice Age. Within about 3,000 to 4,000 years after the end of the Ice Age, humans in western Asia had accomplished one of the most momentous revolutions ever accomplished by any humans: a switch from subsistence by means of food-gathering to subsistence by means of food-producing. For roughly two million years humanlike species and humans had gained their sustenance by foraging, or by combined foraging and hunting. These modes of existence meant that such peoples could never stay very long in one place because they continually ate their way through local supplies of plant food, and, if they were hunters, they were forced to follow the movements of herds.

But “suddenly” (that is, in terms of the comparative time spans involved) substantial numbers of humans began to domesticate animals and raise crops, thereby settling down. As soon as this shift was accomplished, villages were founded, trade developed, and populations in areas of sedentary habitation started increasing by leaps and bounds. Then, when villages began evolving into cities, civilization was born. “The rest is history” in a very literal sense, for human history – as opposed to prehistory – really began with the birth of civilization.

The Gradually Developing Need for Reliable food Sources

To say that some humans became food producers all of a sudden is of course justifiable only in terms of the broadest chronological picture. Seen from the perspective of modern historical change, wherein technological revolutions transpire in a few decades or years, the change in western Asia from food-gathering to food production was an extremely gradual one. Not only did the transition take place over the course of some 3,000 to 4,000 years (c. 10,000 to c. 7000/6000 B.C.E.), but it was so gradual that the peoples involved hardly knew themselves what was happening.

The story of how humans became food producers is roughly as follows. Around 10,000 B.C.E. most of the larger game herds had left western Asia. Yet people in coastal areas were not starving; on the contrary, they were surrounded by plenty because the melting glaciers had raised water levels and thereby had introduced huge quantities of fish, shellfish, and water fowl in newly created bays and swamps. Excavations near Mount Carmel and at the site of Jericho in modern-day Israel – locations not far from the Mediterranean Sea – prove that wildlife and vegetation in that area between about 10,000 and 9000 B.C.E. were so lush that people could sustain themselves in permanent settlements in an unprecedented fashion, easily catching fish and fowl, and picking fruits off trees as if they were in the Garden of Eden. But the plenty of Mount Carmel and Jericho had its costs in terms of population trends. Modern nomadic hunting peoples have low birthrates, and the same is presumed to have been true of prehistoric peoples. The given in this regard is that a woman can trek with one baby in her arms but hardly with two; hence nature finds ways to limit nomadic births for each woman to one every three or four years. Once people became sedentary in Eden-like environments, however, their reproductive rates began to increase, until, over the course of centuries, there were too many people for the lush coastal terrains.

Ex. 1. Answer the following question.

1. By what time had humans in western Asia accomplished one of the most momentous revolutions ever accomplished и any humans?

2. When people found food by foraging and hunting, was their food dependable or was it irregular? Why?

3. In what way did the life of humans change when they gradually switched to producing food instead of looking for it?

4. What were some of the effects of the emergence of villages?

5. How long did the transition from food gathering to agriculture take?

Speak on the possible reasons for gradual switching to production of food instead of looking for it, and the effects this process had in the development of human civilization.