Topic: The Rise and Collapse of the Bronze Age: 3000-1000 BCE
Agricultural Revolutions
THE STRUCTURE OF AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES
Much of what we think of a human history involves the doings of agricultural societies—societies, that is, in which most people are farmers and in which the production of food is the central economic activity.
Nonagricultural groups, such as the nomadic herders in central Asia, made their own mark, but their greatest influence usually occurred in interactions with agricultural peoples. Many societies remain largely agricultural today. The huge time span we have thus far considered, including the Neolithic revolution itself, is all technically “pre-historical”—involved with human patterns before the invention of writing allowed the kinds of recordkeeping historians prefer. In fact, because we now know how to use surviving tools and burial sites as records, the prehistoric—historic distinction means less than it once did. The pre-agricultural—agricultural distinction is more central.
Fairly soon after the development of agriculture—although not, admittedly, right away—significant human change began to occur in decades and centuries, rather than in the sizable blocks of time, several thousand years or more, that describe pre-agricultural peoples.
From their origins until about 200 years ago (before the Industrial Revolution), and in some cases more recently, agricultural societies had a number of features in common. They varied, of course, depending on what kinds of crops they grew and a host of other factors. But it is vital to consider the shared characteristics.
TIME: All agricultural societies, for example, invented some kind of week. This is the only division of time that is entirely human-constructed, with no relationship to phenomena in nature. Agricultural weeks varied, from four days to nine, and this is a big difference. But all agricultural societies had something that marked an interruption in normal work. Usually, this interruption had or developed religious significance, seen as a special day of prayer or observance. Even more often, weeks were ended (or begun) by market day, and this need to exchange certain goods, even in villages where families produced most of their own requirements, may help explain why weeks were invented. It is also true that agricultural work was hard, so some interruption may have been essential in order to motivate people to resume their work when the next week began.
POPULATION: Agriculture encouraged the formation of larger as well as more stable human communities than had existed before Neolithic times.
Agricultural societies also encouraged higher birth rates than hunting-and-gathering societies had done, because a number of children were useful as labor on the land.
In agricultural societies, not surprisingly, most people farmed, at least part of the time. Agricultural societies often produced some surplus, but never enough to allow more than 20-25 percent of the population to specialize in some thing other than agriculture, or to live away from the land (in cities). Often, the agricultural percentage of the population was even higher.
Agriculture brought many disadvantages to many people involved, including greater liability to disease and an increase in human inequality. But it did allow societies to support a larger number of people than hunting and gathering had done, because the food supply became more reliable despite frequent bad harvests and famines. Before agriculture, and for many thousands of years, the global human population had fluctuated between 5 and 8 million. By 4000 BC the global population stood at 60 to 70 million.
FESTIVALS: Agricultural societies also always developed certain rituals around planting and harvesting, often including special festivals. Here too, religion usually picked up some of the tasks of seeking a good season or giving thanks when the harvest was in, though there was great variety among the religious that arose among agricultural peoples.
Agricultural societies always emphasized certain kinds of science and mathematics, in order for example to calculate seasons and permit the development of calendar. Sometimes, science became far more elaborate than this, but agricultural needs always figured in intellectual life.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Most agricultural peoples did not have new lands close by to which they move after a short time. And there were advantages to staying put: houses could be built to last, wells built to bring up water, and other costly improvements afforded because they served many generations.
[In the Middle East, India and China, a key incentive to stability was the need for irrigation devices to channel river water to the fields. This same need helps explain why agriculture usually generated communities and not a series of isolated farms. Small groups simply could not regulate a river’s flow or build and maintain irrigation ditches and sluices. Irrigation and defense encouraged villages—groupings of several hundred people—as the characteristic pattern of residence in almost all agricultural societies.]!
METALS: The discovery of metal tools dates back to about 4000 BC. Copper was the first metal with which people learned how to work, although the more resilient metal, bronze, soon entered the picture. In fact, the next basic age of human existence was the Bronze Age. By about 3000 BC, metal working had become so commonplace in the Middle East that the use of stone tools dissipated, and the long stones ages were over at last—although, of course, an essentially Neolithic technology persisted in many parts of the world, even among some agricultural peoples.
Metalworking was extremely useful to agricultural or herding societies. Metal hoes and other tools allowed farmers to work the ground more efficiently. Metal weapons were obviously superior to those made from stone and wood. Agricultural peoples now supported the small number of individuals such as toolmakers, who specialized in this activity and exchanged their products with farmers for food.
Specialization of this sort did not, however, guarantee rapid rates of invention; indeed, many specialized artisans seemed very conservative, eager to preserve methods that had been inherited.
But specialization did improve the conditions or climate for discovery, and the invention of metalworking was a key result. Like agriculture, knowledge of metals gradually fanned out to other parts of Asia and Africa and Europe.
Gradually, the knowledge of metal tools created further change, not only for farmers but also for manufacturing artisans benefited from better tools. Woodworking, for example, became steadily more elaborate as metal replaced stone, bone, and fire in the cutting and connecting of wood. Iron was later introduced around 1500 BC by herding peoples who moved into the Middle East from Central Asia.
By 4000 BC, other changes began to accumulate in several agricultural centers, particularly in the Middle East, beyond metal working and the expansion of towns. These changes depended on the extent to which agricultural production could free up a few people to specialize in craft manufacturing, initially on products used in agricultural process, such as the manufacture of pots.
Gradually, certain other inventions cropped up that could benefit agricultural production, while also spilling over into other human activities such as warfare. Around 4000 BC, for example, the wheel was introduced, probably by peoples who migrated to the Middle East. Here was a vital contribution to the movements of goods, and soon, to certain kinds of fighting.