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

[Winner]

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

No time. ( ) Besides, what I said was more of a general point.

 

[Traitorfish]

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.

Certainly, and that will have played some role in influencing how and when agriculturalism was adopted- if in fact it was- as I said, not only do some societies maintain a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but some develop along different lines altogether, adopting a primarily pastoralist (and often nomadic) lifestyle, or one which is sedentary yet primarily based around fishing. (The latter seems to generate a tendency towards some level of horticulturalism, because, hey, you're not going anywhere to begin with, but fishing often remains the primary source of food.) There are no hard and fast rules for this, each process of social development is specific and unique, so my comment was only meant in the most general of terms. Stability of food sources is desirable, and so to the extent that this coincides with argriculture it may be desirable to adopt an agricultural way of life, but it's certainly not a universal or inevitable development.

The problem, though, is that this is an argument against the theory outlined in the OP, not for it. There are plenty of peoples, agriculturalist and non-agriculturalist, who don't live in existential dread because they feel that the gods just aren't happy without some big ridiculous temple, so why are we assuming that this would be a common enough neurosis to explain the expansion of agriculture? For people to go down this path it would have had to provide some benefit, real or imagined (or both, humans being the complicated things that they are), and while it's certainly possible that the development of a ceremonial culture that demanded more energy by invested to materially non-productive activities could make horticultural and later agricultural practices more attractive, but there's no real reason to assume that this alone could drive it, that the development of this ceremonial culture should itself be set apart from developments in material production, prior to and dictating the development of material culture, when that doesn't really seem to have been the case since. (The inverse, of course, is also the case, that ceremonial culture does not stem mechanically from material culture.)

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.

This is very true. Agricultural was generally adopted over a course of generations, even when it spread through diffusion rather than as an indigenous innovation, existing in a limited, horticultural fashion before becoming the primary food supply. Many indigenous North American societies were like this, having adopted certain horticultural practices originating in Mexico, but continuing to rely on hunting as a major source of food (both to varying extents).

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

Sounds like a case of correlation being confused with causation. There happens to be temples wherever you find ancient cities, therefore, it's easy to conclude that temples caused the cities to sprout up. The article even admits that this temple had no sign of habitation around it. How is that even a city? Someone builds a temple in the middle of a wilderness and it proves something about city founding? There were oracles in ancient Greece in the middle of the countryside, or on remote islands. That proves nothing of cities. The ancient Maya built temple cities which were rapidly abandoned when droughts appeared. I call this conclusion BS.

 

[Yeekim]

There are plenty of peoples, agriculturalist and non-agriculturalist, who don't live in existential dread because they feel that the gods just aren't happy without some big ridiculous temple, so why are we assuming that this would be a common enough neurosis to explain the expansion of agriculture?

I don't think it is fair to say that temples are necessarily built out of "existential dread".
Why is building a temple any more ridiculous than building an opera theater?

Sounds like a case of correlation being confused with causation. There happens to be temples wherever you find ancient cities, therefore, it's easy to conclude that temples caused the cities to sprout up. The article even admits that this temple had no sign of habitation around it. How is that even a city? Someone builds a temple in the middle of a wilderness and it proves something about city founding? There were oracles in ancient Greece in the middle of the countryside, or on remote islands. That proves nothing of cities. The ancient Maya built temple cities which were rapidly abandoned when droughts appeared. I call this conclusion BS.

It seems you missed the point completely. No-one is calling this complex a city. What is remarkable, is exactly the fact that is isn´t. And that it predates the oldest known cities by a good margin.

 

[Winner]

I don't think it is fair to say that temples are necessarily built out of "existential dread".
Why is building a temple any more ridiculous than building an opera theater?

Because generally people don't believe that what's happening in the opera is real. Otherwise, both are meant to entertain people (in different ways, of course).

 

[Smellincoffee]

Religion existing before cities is perfectly plausible; in fact, I would be surprised if it didn't predate settled life. It's not as if the credulity or or meaning/pattern-creating abilities of humankind are depedent on staying in the same place.

I once read an article, perhaps in Nat Geo, that posited that certain religious sites in Britain, Stonehenge among them, were used prior to 'civilization'...that they attracted yearly visitation during the stone age, presumably during one of the Solstices. Given that, I could see how this new idea might have merit in some locales, but in general I think population density and the increasing ineffectualness of hunting/gathering forced people to settle down.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Apparently, this idea has now become conventional wisdom among archaeologists.

From what I read, this is overstating the case a bit.

Naturally, some of Schmidt's colleagues disagree with his ideas. The lack of evidence of houses, for instance, doesn't prove that nobody lived at Göbekli Tepe. And increasingly, archaeologists studying the origins of civilization in the Fertile Crescent are suspicious of any attempt to find a one-size-fits-all scenario, to single out one primary trigger. It is more as if the occupants of various archaeological sites were all playing with the building blocks of civilization, looking for combinations that worked. In one place agriculture may have been the foundation; in another, art and religion; and over there, population pressures or social organization and hierarchy. Eventually they all ended up in the same place. Perhaps there is no single path to civilization; instead it was arrived at by different means in different places.

I'd not be surprised if the conclusion at the end is the right one.

 

[Traitorfish]

I don't think it is fair to say that temples are necessarily built out of "existential dread".
Why is building a temple any more ridiculous than building an opera theater?

It's not, insofar as both would be utterly ridiculous in a pre-agrarian society.

I'd not be surprised if the conclusion at the end is the right one.

I don't think it goes far enough: that there is no "path to civilisation" in the first place, and that we shouldn't approach the subject in such narrow an teleological terms. Even as phrased in the article, "civilisation" is still assumed to be something which is attained, with a certain set of naturally complementary ingredients that need to be assembled, however loose an order is permitted, rather than a generalisation we make to describe certain common features witnessed in a variety of unique and specific societies.

 

[Algeroth]

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.

No, I'm not assuming that. But first agriculturalists have no material benefits over hunter-gatherers. There are only negatives. first agricultural societies should be wiped out due to natural selection and group competetion. And you, Mr. Scientific, are wrong about the increase of population. The first agriculturalists have higher mortality than hunter-gatherers and it take some time before evolution increased fertility in agriculturalists. But that's some biological anthropology 101 stuff.

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).

You could read it. You will look less...ignorant. BTW, how this suddenly became a matter of justification of religion?

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.

Are you aware that organized religions are just small fraction of existing religions and there are traces of specialized shamans in palaeolithic societies, right?

The problem, though, is that this is an argument against the theory outlined in the OP, not for it. There are plenty of peoples, agriculturalist and non-agriculturalist, who don't live in existential dread because they feel that the gods just aren't happy without some big ridiculous temple, so why are we assuming that this would be a common enough neurosis to explain the expansion of agriculture? For people to go down this path it would have had to provide some benefit, real or imagined (or both, humans being the complicated things that they are), and while it's certainly possible that the development of a ceremonial culture that demanded more energy by invested to materially non-productive activities could make horticultural and later agricultural practices more attractive, but there's no real reason to assume that this alone could drive it, that the development of this ceremonial culture should itself be set apart from developments in material production, prior to and dictating the development of material culture, when that doesn't really seem to have been the case since. (The inverse, of course, is also the case, that ceremonial culture does not stem mechanically from material culture.)

Well, the perceived benefit had to be imagined, because there were no real benefits for early adopters of agriculture, it only made their lives shorter and brutish. It took a quite a while before they were able to outbred hunter-gatherers. That's why I'm fond on cultural explanation of origins of "civilization".
Your comment about "existential dread" and "neurosis" seems like an Iron Age anachronism and doesn't fit with what we think about neolithic religion. Afaik, the belief in some sort of lay lines was part of the proto indo-european religion. You don't need some complicated organized religion with gods punishing the unworthy, some primitive worship of significant places would suffice.

 

[Winner]

No, I'm not assuming that. But first agriculturalists have no material benefits over hunter-gatherers. There are only negatives.

That's simply not true. There are many negatives, but the main "benefit" is that agriculture allows for greater population densities. Once you reach these higher densities, you can't go back to hunting and gathering for obvious reasons (not enough food out there).

What I am saying is that transition to agriculture was gradual - some groups of hunter-gatherers started supplementing their diet with certain kinds of plants they could harvest from the environment, then they figured out they could actually plant them to get more the next year, and over long periods of time they developed agriculture. There was no sharp divide between mostly "hunting-gathering" and "mostly farming".

first agricultural societies should be wiped out due to natural selection and group competetion.

Some of them perhaps were. Maybe most of them. It's the one that succeeded that matter.

As I said, higher population densities -> win. It was as simple as that. Jared Diamond explained it quite well, so I'll paraphrase him:

"one on one, a hunter-gatherer (tall, well-fed, physically strong and skilled with hunting gear) will beat an early farmer (small, badly-fed, sickly, physically inferior) almost every time. However, when this hunter-gatherer faces 10 early farmers, he'll likely lose every time."

Later, agricultural societies managed to develop better technology, which further tilted the balance of power against hunter-gatherers.

And you, Mr. Scientific, are wrong about the increase of population. The first agriculturalists have higher mortality than hunter-gatherers and it take some time before evolution increased fertility in agriculturalists. But that's some biological anthropology 101 stuff.

What are you babbling about? There was no darwinian evolution involved, Mr. Jumping-to-Conclusions, no "increase in fertility" in any biological sense.

Agriculture simply allowed people to produce more food per square kilometre of land and when there was more food, there were more people living in one place (a village). Hunter gatherers usually lived in smaller bands, because their sources of food were spread thinly over the land (there are exceptions, for example the West-Coast Indian cultures, but in general this is the rule). When confronted with the agriculturalists, they were at numerical disadvantage, and this is why they lost - in the long run.

You could read it. You will look less...ignorant. BTW, how this suddenly became a matter of justification of religion?

How am I ignorant? Of what? What I am saying here - all of it - is pretty much the mainstream explanation of why agriculture succeeded. No religion is needed for this explanation to work, which is kind of my point.

Are you aware that organized religions are just small fraction of existing religions and there are traces of specialized shamans in palaeolithic societies, right?

How does it change anything? And I am speaking specifically about organized religions. So, why don't you just take a deep breath and calm down a little?

 

[Yeekim]

How am I ignorant? Of what? What I am saying here - all of it - is pretty much the mainstream explanation of why agriculture succeeded. No religion is needed for this explanation to work, which is kind of my point.

Yeah, see, that´s the point. You are ignorant of the article, which quite convincingly challenges this mainstream explanation. Frankly, that's quite frustrating. If you bother enough to write these walls of text, you just should bother enough to read it. It is not that long.

 

[warpus]

It seems you missed the point completely. No-one is calling this complex a city. What is remarkable, is exactly the fact that is isn´t. And that it predates the oldest known cities by a good margin.

I don't find that so surprising. Nomads worship deities too - not surprised that they'd have set-in-stone sites where they'd worship their gods.

"This is where so-and-so did such-and-such"

 

[Old Hippy]

several posts have mentioned Stonehenge and implied religion inspired settling and agrigcultualism... considering its just a giant calender, and there were many built of timber before it all over Britain, would it not make more sense to say agriculture (which requires settling) inspired religion... even Christianity has its events tied to seasonal days that revolve around early agricultural timings... knowing when to plough and plant your fields was important... to imply it was just accidental to your religious beliefs seems like putting the cart before the horse to me

 

[GoodGame]

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

I was only echoing what the article was stating. But really some form of writing, whether glyphs or what not, does ease the telling of information.

 

[madviking]

I know it ain't the best book out there, but Guns, Germs, and Steel.

 

[General Pilates]

No, I'm not assuming that. But first agriculturalists have no material benefits over hunter-gatherers. There are only negatives. first agricultural societies should be wiped out due to natural selection and group competetion. And you, Mr. Scientific, are wrong about the increase of population. The first agriculturalists have higher mortality than hunter-gatherers and it take some time before evolution increased fertility in agriculturalists. But that's some biological anthropology 101 stuff.

The basic fact of the matter is that climate change discouraged the survival of wild game in areas where agriculture first began. Until 11,000 years ago Gazelle bones are a plentiful artifact of the fertile crescent; they begin to disappear from the garbage heaps and are slowly replaced by various grains, mouflon and Auroch bones, as well as pulses. Agriculture was adopted due to the fact that there was an obvious need to find different ways of surviving than on game, and so they turned to alternate sources of fiber and protein. The transfer was a slow and steady process, but agriculturists did not suddenlt say 'Oh boy siree, let's get ourselves some malnutrition and increased mortality by eating these seeds!'. It was a need rather than a want in many areas, though by the time that agriculture spread from these various areas, the seeds had become large enough(and cattle had come with them) to ease the disadvantages quite a bit.

 

[Tycho Brahe]

Some of the megaliths in Bretagne has carvings that symbolises hunting (a "J" which is interpreted as a throwing-stick/boomerang) which was later "overwritten" by axe-symbols, axe being the tool of choice for clearing forrests and thus farming. Thats how it was laid out in "A History of Ancient Britain" anyway.

So large monuments predates farming. Thats interesting. Guess they have to change the Stonehenge-wonder in Civ 6.

 

[Yeekim]

several posts have mentioned Stonehenge and implied religion inspired settling and agrigcultualism... considering its just a giant calender, and there were many built of timber before it all over Britain, would it not make more sense to say agriculture (which requires settling) inspired religion... even Christianity has its events tied to seasonal days that revolve around early agricultural timings... knowing when to plough and plant your fields was important... to imply it was just accidental to your religious beliefs seems like putting the cart before the horse to me

Yeah, sure, agriculture changed religion.
But this find demonstrates that organized religion is simply older than agriculture. From wiki:

Thus, the structures not only predate pottery, metallurgy, and the invention of writing or the wheel; they were built before the so-called Neolithic Revolution, i.e., the beginning of agriculture and animal husbandry around 9000 BC. But the construction of Göbekli Tepe implies organisation of an order of complexity not hitherto associated with Paleolithic, PPNA, or PPNB societies. The archaeologists estimate that up to 500 persons were required to extract the heavy pillars from local quarries and move them 100–500 meters (330–1,640 ft) to the site.[23] The pillars weigh 10–20 metric tons (10–20 long tons; 11–22 short tons); with one found still in its quarry weighing 50 tons.[24] It is generally believed that an elite class of religious leaders supervised the work and later controlled whatever ceremonies took place here. If so, this would be the oldest known evidence for a priestly caste—much earlier than such social distinctions developed elsewhere in the Near East.[8]

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Yeah, sure, agriculture changed religion.
But this find demonstrates that organized religion is simply older than agriculture. From wiki:

In places. In other places agriculture preceded organised religion.

With localised events it's very hard to make general statements.

edit: Not sure if you meant that, but I thought I'd chime in anyway

 

[Yeekim]

In places. In other places agriculture preceded organised religion.

With localised events it's very hard to make general statements.

edit: Not sure if you meant that, but I thought I'd chime in anyway

Oh, in many places it probably did. But I was speaking in absolute terms here - based on our current knowledge, this particular temple seems to precede earliest attempts of agriculture anywhere.

It was not simply built by hunter-gatherers, it was built by hunter-gatherers before there were any agriculturalists.