Agriculture gave rise to cities, writing, art, and religion. Think again.

[Ahovking]

I have just finished reading the June edition of National Geographic "The Birth of Religion" and is about the oldest known temple: Goebekli Tepe (located in Turkey).

What is really shocking about this artical is that organized religion gave birth to civilization. Apparently, this idea has now become conventional wisdom among archaeologists.

When i growing up, i was taught the standard line that emerging agriculture drove the Neolithic Revolution. Farming meant the ability to stay in one place rather than be nomadic. Civilizations that grew up around these proto-cities developed Religion to bring coherency and order to society.

I Am a bit Sepalcure about this edition of National Geographic but its seems to be Ture and makes sense, what's your opinion

If you wanna read... http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/06/gobekli-tepe/mann-text

 

[GoodGame]

I'd accuse fermentation as being the primary reason for settling down. Though enjoying fermentation products while contemplating metaphysical topics might make some sense. Which came first then? Hmmm?

Skimming the article, I'd say it makes some sense to say that "sacred milestones" marking migratory/pastoral borders might evolve into holy sites and into religions, but that doesn't convince me that people settled down to make their pilgrimages easier. It makes as much sense to me to say that people settled near more convenient milestones, and the perpetuation of their worship evolved those places into temples and organized religion.

Also the lack of a grain economy doesn't really make sense for me to say "there was no agriculture" or "the animals they ate came from far off places" (how the heck do they know where the bones of the eaten animals came from?). Why not also suppose that maybe humans, in those days, made a very small imprint on their ecology, such that a migratory herd traveled near their settlements on a regular basis? Maybe that is pastoralism bordering on a form of agriculture? That is how does one know that those animals weren't herdstocks, fed on grain by grazing?

Archeologically, I'd say this is equivalent to finding a town on top of Stonehenge (which isn't the case). And similarly, I think it'd be wrong to state that why civilization started at this one site is a universal truth for the origins of all settlements.

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

I call BS. Everyone knows you have to start by founding your first city. Then you immediately start working city squares for food, arrows, and shields. It is only then that you can convert some of the arrows to beakers and discover Mysticism, Polytheism, and Monotheism, and use the shields to build Temples.

 

[Singularity]

Nono, you need a river, a big fat cow and/or a nice dollup of wheat, then you found your city.

It's certainly refreshing to see that all is not discovered in the world, and what we considered to be facts yesterday has to be reconsidered based upon what we learn today.

 

[jtb1127]

hmm... so civilization was founded through religion...therefore, civilization can't exist without it!

 

[FriendlyFire]

If you were neolitic man what would you choose to research first
Religon or Agriculture to start your civilization ?

 

[berkut]

Why nomads can't have religion?

 

[GoodGame]

Why nomads can't have religion?

No one said they can't. They obviously can (all you need is a cultural system that is portable to an extent, or marked by holy places). The article was just trying to say that religious tradition evolved from tribal records made on stones, so that the people were tied to specific location where the records were maintained. From that spawned more elaborate places of worship (e.g. megaliths like say a Stonehenge) which led to a bit of a religious caste, settling down, and temples.

 

[aronnax]

Why is this here? The History forum needs some love.

What about the development of Chinese societies? I can't think of any ancient Chinese pilgrimage sites. then again, Im not an ancient Chinese Scholar.

 

[General Pilates]

No one said they can't. They obviously can (all you need is a cultural system that is portable to an extent, or marked by holy places). The article was just trying to say that religious tradition evolved from tribal records made on stones, so that the people were tied to specific location where the records were maintained. From that spawned more elaborate places of worship (e.g. megaliths like say a Stonehenge) which led to a bit of a religious caste, settling down, and temples.

Religion in no way requires writing of any kind. Oral tradition works just as well.

 

[Synobun]

Doubtful. I can understand the gullibility of early civilization, but I find it hard to believe that the only reason we have civilization is because of religion. Sustainability of extended residence seems more likely as the cause.

That isn't to say that religion isn't a factor though. There's a lot of factors in the forming of civilization.

 

[Yeekim]

Wasn't there a thread about this...? Anyway, the article is great, so another thread can't hurt. I encourage everyone to read it.

 

[Winner]

Haven't read the article yet, though it seems the OP is confusing the cause and the result.

Agriculture allowed greater population densities, and these populations then developed cultural practices which at that time helped them organize themselves. Organized religion as a step above tribal/customary religion was a part of that process.

In any case, it changes nothing about what religion is - a huge stinking pile of dung. I don't care how much art it inspired or how many great cathedrals were built because priests were efficient at collecting money from peasants, it doesn't make religion true and you should never lose sight of that.

 

[Algeroth]

Haven't read the article yet, though it seems the OP is confusing the cause and the result.

Agriculture allowed greater population densities, and these populations then developed cultural practices which at that time helped them organize themselves. Organized religion as a step above tribal/customary religion was a part of that process.

And what caused agriculture, then? Neolithic people have no reason to adopt agriculture, hunter-gatherers spend less work acquiring food, have more free time and were less sick than the first agriculturalists.

I find the OP believable because I once tried to suggest that the reason behind the neolithic revolution was rise in a religion that worshipped particular landmarks, but my friends from religion studies explained me that I could be saying about neolithic religion whatever I want and nobody would be able to disprove it, because we don't know anything about neolithic religion.

 

[Traitorfish]

No one said they can't. They obviously can (all you need is a cultural system that is portable to an extent, or marked by holy places). The article was just trying to say that religious tradition evolved from tribal records made on stones, so that the people were tied to specific location where the records were maintained. From that spawned more elaborate places of worship (e.g. megaliths like say a Stonehenge) which led to a bit of a religious caste, settling down, and temples.

Given that the neolithic inhabitants of the British Isles left no written records of any sort, don't you think that might be just about the worst, most self-refuting example you could have used?

And what caused agriculture, then? Neolithic people have no reason to adopt agriculture, hunter-gatherers spend less work acquiring food, have more free time and were less sick than the first agriculturalists.

Stability. Hunter-gatherers, leisurely as their existence may be, live from meal to meal. Agriculturalists know where their food is, and that it is in fact coming. The trick is that this wouldn't appeal to all hunter-gatherers, and true enough there are recorded hunter-gatherer people who maintained their way of life even when agriculturalist or pastoralist ways of life were open to them, but the very presence of agriculturalists tends to put pressure on non-agriculturalist populations to join in or shove of simply through their monopolization of the best resources.

 

[Leifmk]

Stability. Hunter-gatherers, leisurely as their existence may be, live from meal to meal. Agriculturalists know where their food is, and that it is in fact coming.

Nomadic hunter-gatherers, at a tech level where they don't yet have draft animals, sleds or wheels, face one nasty hard fact of life:

If you have to move around all the time, you can basically have one young child per able-bodied adult (or maybe just one per woman if the men are otherwise occupied), because children that can't turn in a useful day's march themselves yet have to be carried. So you can't have closely spaced children, so you have to either practice sexual abstinence or infanticide. On the other hand, if you can stay more or less put (which is possible in some very fecund areas even for hunter-gatherers), you can have a lot more kids. This, of course, will cause your population to grow much faster, so it eventually outstrips the food resources available even in a fecund area. Unless you turn to rely more and more on horticulture and basically develop that into early agriculture (also easier to do if you aren't moving around much). And then you suddenly find yourself stuck as an early agricultural civilization because you can't give that up without having most of your people starve.

 

[Masada]

On the other hand, if you can stay more or less put (which is possible in some very fecund areas even for hunter-gatherers), you can have a lot more kids.

You still have to feed them and it's for that reason that neolithic agriculturalists couldn't grow all that much faster than nomads. (Just plug in a 1% population growth on a 1000 individuals and go forward a couple of thousand years and you'll see how that claim is justified).

 

[Algeroth]

If you have to move around all the time, you can basically have one young child per able-bodied adult (or maybe just one per woman if the men are otherwise occupied), because children that can't turn in a useful day's march themselves yet have to be carried. So you can't have closely spaced children, so you have to either practice sexual abstinence or infanticide. On the other hand, if you can stay more or less put (which is possible in some very fecund areas even for hunter-gatherers), you can have a lot more kids. This, of course, will cause your population to grow much faster, so it eventually outstrips the food resources available even in a fecund area. Unless you turn to rely more and more on horticulture and basically develop that into early agriculture (also easier to do if you aren't moving around much). And then you suddenly find yourself stuck as an early agricultural civilization because you can't give that up without having most of your people starve.

That's just wrong. Hunter-gatherers have longer period between pregnancies than agriculturists. The shorter period between pregnancies is probably adaptation on much higher child mortality in agriculturist due to new diseases from domesticated animals and higher concentration of people.

Stability. Hunter-gatherers, leisurely as their existence may be, live from meal to meal. Agriculturalists know where their food is, and that it is in fact coming. The trick is that this wouldn't appeal to all hunter-gatherers, and true enough there are recorded hunter-gatherer people who maintained their way of life even when agriculturalist or pastoralist ways of life were open to them, but the very presence of agriculturalists tends to put pressure on non-agriculturalist populations to join in or shove of simply through their monopolization of the best resources.

Agriculturalists know where their food is, but also they depend on fewer sourcers of food which means that one crop failure can lead to famine, because they can't as easily move to another source of food. The second part is speculation IMHO, IIRC hunter-gatherers tend to coexist with them in relationship defined on on hand conflicts about land but on the other mutual trade between them due to division of labor.

 

[Winner]

And what caused agriculture, then? Neolithic people have no reason to adopt agriculture, hunter-gatherers spend less work acquiring food, have more free time and were less sick than the first agriculturalists.

You're assuming that the transition towards agriculture was a conscious decision made by people who had two choices laid out before them.

I really really doubt it was like that. It probably occurred over the span of many generations, with each doing more farming and less hunting-gathering, until eventually the food they obtained from farming was the main and indispensable source of nutrients. This was probably also accompanied by an increase in population, so even if they later decided that farming sucks ("I have to work all day, my back hurts, I don't eat enough meat"), it was too late to return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

I find the OP believable because I once tried to suggest that the reason behind the neolithic revolution was rise in a religion that worshipped particular landmarks, but my friends from religion studies explained me that I could be saying about neolithic religion whatever I want and nobody would be able to disprove it, because we don't know anything about neolithic religion.

How scientific - we're going to invent a justification for religion that nobody will be able to disprove, because it isn't based on any actual evidence. (Maybe the article gives some, I haven't read it yet).

I say the idea is extremely dubious. Why would organized religion arise before agriculture? It makes no logical sense - early organized religions (in Mesopotamian city-states) were all about a) keeping track of stuff needed for agriculture to work (building irrigation canals, having a reliable calendar to be able to plan harvests, etc.); b) providing a supernatural justification for despotic rule by an individual/dynasty. Organized religion is of no advantage to people who have very little social organization in their groups - and that apply to most hunters-gatherers.

 

[Yeekim]

(Maybe the article gives some, I haven't read it yet).

Dude, instead of idle speculation, go and read it then. Seriously.