Understanding the New Mode of Life

It is important to understand that this new way of life meant a whole new set of opportunities for human beings and a whole new set of problems as well.

The following list suggests some of the problems inherent in this new way of life:

1. Dependency on few plants

Agriculture made human communities, like this one pictured at left in Turkey, dependent on relatively few plants--the main crops which they grew--rather than on the many different kinds of plants which hunter-gatherers use.

2. Greater vulnerability to weather

Dependency on fewer plants in turn makes agriculture a great gamble, as farming involves "betting" that the weather conditions will favor the growth of the particular crops planted. Weather patterns, however, constantly fluctuate and rainfall tends to vary unpredictably. Hunter-gatherers collect food from a hundred different plant species, some of which flourish in wet weather, some in dry, some are cold-resistant, etc. In such a mode of life, some sources of food are available whatever the weather is like in a particular year. Agricultural life, in contrast, bets the life of the community on weather patterns favorable to the few plants it cultivates. Agriculture thus continues the ancient dependency of human life upon natural, ecological systems like the weather cycle, but it raises the odds of disaster in any given year. Thus, early agriculture tended to be even more vulnerable to changes in the weather than hunting and gathering had been.

3. Complete dependency on harvest times

To survive, agriculturalists have to gather all their food for the year at one or two or three harvest times, rather than gathering year round. Nothing, therefore, can be allowed to interupt the harvest. There is similarly a very narrow window of opportunity for planting and cultivating. Under this kind of pressure, agricultural communities became more time-conscious. Agriculturalists also have to store the produce of their fields for the rest of the year, protect it from moisture, vermin, and thieves, and learn to dole out supplies in measured quantities so the community can survive and have seed for next year's planting. These conditions created a new kind of life style. (Note the contrasting absence in hunting and gathering conditions of incentives to store food or to refrain from consuming whatever is available at the moment, or to plan for the future. The agricultural community that behaves in ways appropriate for hunter-gatherers soon starves to death.)

4. Need for intense physical labor

Agriculture requires intense and sustained physical effort--"drudgery"--at several times of the year, and on a scale previously unknown. In the Near East, cereal-growing required back-breaking labor at both sowing and harvest times. The labor of both men and women was required in the fields. As can readily be imagined, these fundamental conditions of survival encouraged the development of social as well as individual discipline. That is to say, the new way of life molded humans and human society in new ways.

Permanency - Specialization - Wealth Accumulation

With the emergence of a sedentary way of life, it made sense for the first time to devote a considerable amount of effort in building permanent dwellings. For the first time, in fact, it was possible for humans to invest for the long term. Accordingly, almost immediately after agriculture appears, the archeological record begins to show a variety of solid dwellings of a more or less permanent sort which make ingenious use of local building materials This picture reconstructs some of the setting from one of the world's earliest towns, the Neolithic village of Catalhoyuk, in what is now southern Turkey.

This cut-away of an early mud-brick dwelling (below) of the 'Ubiad culture of Mesopotamia suggests how elaborate village dwellings soon became, even given the severe limitations in building materials available on the Tigris-Euphrates flood plain.

Animals were kept in very close proximity to human living quarters. The flat roof-tops of houses were used as living space in the evening. Later, open central courtyards were developed.

Storage became a central issue. The excavation at Catalhoyuk has uncovered special rooms and special places in the context of domestic living areas where storage occurred.

Human tools no longer had to be portable. This means that the "tool kit" of agriculturalists can expand. In fact, it can expand exponentially (the human tool kit is still expanding). The new conditions of life encourage expansion of technology, because for the first time specialization becomes possible. Some individuals who are skilled at making clothing or working with wood, for example, begin to invest almost all their time in those activities. People living at Catalhoyuk, for example, quickly developed skills that produced items that they could find useful for trade purposes. They produced fine obsidian blades and finished tools to trade for a variety of objects.

Note also, that for the first time, wealth acquires meaning, because one can accumulate and store useful or desirable objects and even produce surpluses of food. The people of Catalhoyuk could trade surpluses of grain and cattle in addition to what they made in the way of artifacts for this purpose. As specialization emerged, knowledge itself--specialized forms of knowledge held within a small guild or skilled group of craftsmen--became a form of wealth as well.

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