The end of the Paleolithic era led to the Neolithic era, or the New Stone Age. As one could infer, this era is referred to as the New Stone Age because humankind began using tools made out of new material, like metal, instead of stone. The Neolithic era is also known as the Agricultural Revolution. As the Ice Age came to an end, natural warming of the globe promoted the Agricultural Revolution. More plants and animals thrived and people started settling down in bigger populations because of a more comfortable climate. The Agricultural Revolution was a time when humans began to cultivate different types of plants and domesticate animals to benefit their societies. This simple transformation was the foundation for stable human life on Earth. This revolution took place during the same general time, around 12,000 to 4,000 years ago. However, it was slower to reach some places than others.
Since women were the gatherers in the gatherer-hunter way of life, it could be assumed that they actually paved the way to farming during the Agricultural Revolution. During this new era, men were only in charge of domesticating animals whereas women dealt with everything else.
The area known as the Fertile Crescent (Iraq, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and southwest Turkey) experienced a full Agricultural Revolution, because the humans there could domesticate all sorts of plants and animals in a small area. This wasn't the case for a lot of other places around the world at the time. For instance, African domestication was widely scattered, but eventually spread to the Eurasians. American domestication was also scattered, as they didn't have as many types of animals as the people in the Eastern hemisphere. This meant that they didn't have manure or fertilizer, much protein in their diets, and no source of power or transportation. The Americas only had the llama and alpaca as a source for these things. Humans in the Americas relied heavily on hunting and fishing. In addition to these "disadvantages", they didn't have many types of grains, only maize or corn.
The extension of farming happened in two ways: diffusion and migration. Diffusion was the spreading of agricultural techniques without movement of a people, as known as communication between peoples. Migration happened when agricultural people were pushed outwards by growing population, causing them to farm in places that have never been farmed before. There are places that didn't turn to agricultural, though. These places include: New Guinea, Australia, the western part of North America, the arctic, and southwestern Africa. There are a couple of reasons that humans in these locations might not have wanted to turn to farming. The first being that the environment they lived in was too harsh for farming or so good and plentiful that they didn't even think about farming. The second reason could be that they enjoyed a free life as they had in the Paleolithic era. The Agricultural Revolution didn't bring only positive aspects, but also some negatives. Farming meant more work for humans, brought tooth decay, malnutrition, anemia, stunted growth, shorter life expectancy, new diseases because they lived in such close proximity to the animals, and living in large communities meant there was a higher chance of epidemics.
There were 3 types of societies that arose from the Agricultural Revolution. The first was pastoral societies. Most pastoral societies were in Central Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, the Sahara, and east and south Africa. These territories were not fit for farming. Therefore, domesticating animals was more important than farming. Humans in these pastoral societies migrated seasonally with the animals since they relied on them for survival. Pastoral societies often conflicted with agrarian societies because the latter was more well-established. However, both societies exchanged ideas with each other. Pastoral people also had a sense of equality between the genders since there was only one duty: domesticating and caring for animals.
The second type of society were agricultural village societies. These societies had social and gender equality, with no leaders. The people used a lineage system to organize themselves. This system performed the functions of a government, like making and enforcing rules, maintaining order, and settling disputes. As one could imagine, this lineage system did cause some inequalities and problems.
The third type of society were chiefdoms. Chiefdoms were agricultural village societies that were politically organized. As politics were introduced to humans, so were inequalities. Chiefs were not like kings. Unlike kings, the chiefs couldn't use force to get obedience from the people. Chiefs used gift giving, ritual status, and personal charisma to gain and persuade followers. They were in charge of leading rituals, organizing the community for warfare, dealing with the economy, and resolving conflicts within the society. They collected tributes from the people, such as food, material goods, and raw materials.
As I read Nissa's story in the Documents section, my eyes were opened to how life must have been in the Paleolithic era. Reading the perspective of a person who actually lived the gatherer-hunter lifestyle was enlightening. From what I read, I could tell that sharing was very important in that time period. Marriage was not for love and women and men learned to love each other throughout their marriage. Even though people were married, they would openly have affairs and different lovers. When people were sick, n/um would heal them. N/um was a trance medicine that wasn't always reliable. I'm guessing Nissa was talking about some sort of psychoactive drug when she was referring to n/um.
I hope to read more documents like Nissa's so I can gain a better perspective about the eras we're learning about!
No comments:
Post a Comment