Haven't read this book yet, but hearing about it has gotten me curious. Was civilization, which is to say the organization of society around permanent settlements, a mistake? Did prehistoric band societies have a better idea? In a sense, I'm sure this is true. Modern civilization prioritizes many things that perhaps don't need to be priorities.
On the other hand, how many of us are equipped to live outside of civilization? I don't have any illusions about myself on that score. So perhaps the challenge is to find lessons from outside our own society and learn them. And be humble.
On the other hand, how many of us are equipped to live outside of civilization? I don't have any illusions about myself on that score. So perhaps the challenge is to find lessons from outside our own society and learn them. And be humble.
2 comments:
I read about this book a while ago. Ideas about what humanity was like before the agricultural revolution have fascinated me for a number of years. It's certainly true that the human race became more prone to illness and generally grew smaller in stature once those who did so became agrarian. That's no surprise when we consider that they adopted a less balanced diet and also shared space with rats and other vermin.
That there was a four thousand year period when people inhabited stable towns but had neither governing hierarchy nor priests has long been one of the more mysterious aspects of the remains of the Indus Valley civilization. It seems there may have been a long period when at least some of our race did both - growing fruit and nut trees, harvesting tubers, making pottery and other crafts they could trade to nomads etc.
From what I've come to understand it wasn't until people began cultivating grain - a staple that could be taxed did all the weird stuff start happening. After that it was a short step to kings, priests, slaves, and armies.
If the lifestyle introduced by agriculture was less beneficial - and there's some evidence of that - then why did everyone go along with it? There could have been - and I think the book may raise this possibility - an environmental catastrophe that made hunting and foraging less able to feed the tribes. The new ways wound up sticking, and after all these ways were working for someone. We probably can't go back to the pre-civilization ways, or at the very least that omelet could involve more eggs than we really want to break. But aiming for the flexibility we seem to have lost would be a good goal.
Yes, grains do seem to have been instrumental to the introduction of an agrarian/urban society. Maybe because they keep better than fruits and vegetables after being chopped up.
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