Why did populations start increasing?

[Mouthwash]

The traditional view of the rise of civilization was that farming developed in regions with the appropriate crops, and people no longer had to hunt to survive. Less people starved, and the population grew accordingly. This created more of a need for food, and so humans became ever more dependent on crop-growing. As a side-effect, it also produced a higher class with more leisure time. This higher class became scribes, craftsmen, and professional warriors.

But I've also heard that this was a myth*, and that hunter-gatherer societies had all the food they needed, with plenty of leisure time to socialize. It was only in certain regions which were devoid of game that farming was practiced. If this is true, why exactly did populations increase at all? Agriculture wouldn't explain anything.

*From Jared Diamond, I think, but I could be wrong. It was a long time ago.

 

[Cutlass]

There are absolute limits on how many predators or gatherers can feed off any piece of land. It can't be increased. It's pretty much a hard limit.

With farming, that limit has changed fairly steadily ever since farming was invented. A given amount of land can support ever more people, and that has always continued.

In many respects, it's harder work than being a hunter gatherer. But the children of the farmer are more likely to grow up.

 

[Phrossack]

Hunter-gatherer societies often had plenty of food. And there was usually more game to be had.

Up to a point.

HG societies need a lot of land area per person. The density of edible plants isn't always that high, animals tend not to cover the ground, and they move around. You cannot sustain a population numbering in the millions off of hunting, gathering, and fishing alone without covering a vast amount of land.

Agricultural societies, in contrast, can grow quite a bit of food in a relatively small space. In wild or semi-cultivated fields, edibles don't predominate; you get all sorts of inedible vegetation. But fields of crops are practically covered with food. And then there's animal husbandry. Simply put, agricultural societies can produce much more food and sustain a larger population.

As for standards of living, it may be true that for most of history (and possibly still), hunter-gatherers were happier and healthier than members of agrarian societies. However, agrarian societies tend to outnumber, outproduce, outgun, and altogether outmatch the hunter-gatherers and drive them off the land (or out of existence) if they so choose. Selection favors the more powerful groups, not necessarily the happier ones. And that is why we cannot have nice things.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Man, I thought this thread was going to be about the effects/benefits of the grain revolution

 

[Mouthwash]

Man, I thought this thread was going to be about the effects/benefits of the grain revolution

It's not too late!

 

[Louis XXIV]

Hunter-gatherer societies often had plenty of food. And there was usually more game to be had.

Up to a point.

HG societies need a lot of land area per person. The density of edible plants isn't always that high, animals tend not to cover the ground, and they move around. You cannot sustain a population numbering in the millions off of hunting, gathering, and fishing alone without covering a vast amount of land.

Agricultural societies, in contrast, can grow quite a bit of food in a relatively small space. In wild or semi-cultivated fields, edibles don't predominate; you get all sorts of inedible vegetation. But fields of crops are practically covered with food. And then there's animal husbandry. Simply put, agricultural societies can produce much more food and sustain a larger population.

As for standards of living, it may be true that for most of history (and possibly still), hunter-gatherers were happier and healthier than members of agrarian societies. However, agrarian societies tend to outnumber, outproduce, outgun, and altogether outmatch the hunter-gatherers and drive them off the land (or out of existence) if they so choose. Selection favors the more powerful groups, not necessarily the happier ones. And that is why we cannot have nice things.

Yeah, this post is essentially correct. Hunter-Gatherer societies lived comfortable lives but had relatively few offspring. In addition to all the things you mentioned, (in nomadic societies, at least) they tended to wait until their children could at least walk and keep up with the group before they had another child.

 

[Traitorfish]

There's also the issue of stability and reliability of food sources. Hunter-gatherer societies have enough food for the next few days, but beyond that they can only assume that they'll find something else to eat, and a sudden change in circumstances can send a band from prosperity to starvation in a mere week. Even in regions that could comfortably house hunter-gatherers, you'll often find people practising horticulture alongside hunting and gathering, because that provides them with a certain calorific baseline.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Man, I thought this thread was going to be about the effects/benefits of the grain revolution

My first thought when I saw the title was 'which time?'

I think there have been a number of plateaus, with various events causing a rise to the next plateau.

 

[Masada]

Nah, actual population decline on a macro scale are rare and tend to be corrected for rather quickly in demographic terms.

 

[Gucumatz]

I have seen an alternative theory put up for the rise of civilization, based largely off of Gobekli Tepe and other monolithic structures still buried in the vicinty - that hunter gatherers with enough leisure time were able to come together to define a sacred place. As these focal points of hunter gather societies developed (IE Gobekli Tepe), wild grains that were waste/leftovers developed in the vicinity of these sacred structure led to the growth of agriculture. According to this theory, some community structure was necessary for the growth of agriculture rather than the other way around. In the case of Gobekli Tepe, it was a religious shrine that led to the first agriculture in the region. As these communities became more complex (Again using Gobekli Tepe as an example and its surrounding ruins built at later dates), feeding these communities became vital creating a shift away from a hunter-gather based system.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

People did the nasty more often.

 

[gay_Aleks]

A better explanation would be "more people did the nasty and had more children"

 

[schlaufuchs]

People did the nasty more often.

People did the nasty and the kids survived to adulthood more often*

 

[Domen]

Even most primitive methods of farming allow a population to survive in a much smaller territory than a population of hunter-gatherers of the same size. Therefore the carrying capacity of a given environment increases, and population density increases. Another factor were improving living conditions, and improving life expectancy.

When we look at lifespans of Ancient Greek philosophers and other famous people, we can see that some parts of their society lived very long lifes:

Plato - 80 years
Aristotle - 62 years
Democritus - 90 years
Socrates - 70 years
Epicurus - 71 years
Euclid - 79 years
Pythagoras - 75 years
Thales of Miletus - 75 years
Sophocles - 90 years
Ptolemy I Soter - 85 years
Ptolemy II - 66 years
Ptolemy III - 61 years
Ptolemy VIII - 66 years
Antigonus the One-Eyed - 81 years (killed in battle)
Alexis of Thurii - 106 years
Philemon of Syracuse - 99 years
Hippocrates - 90 years
Archimedes - 75 years (killed by Roman soldiers)
Aristotle - 62 years
Heraclitus of Ephesus - 60 years
Pericles - 66 years (the epidemic that swept Athens killed him)

 

[timtofly]

An agrarian lifestyle helped because as people reproduced so did the variety of domesticated grains and livestock reproduce. I am not saying that it could not for the hunter-gatherers, but agrarian lifestyles depended on a central concentration which re-enforced protected population centers. I think we can recognize today that animals that are not domesticated, either die out quickly or become harder to find, thus the need to travel from area to area allowing older areas to regenerate.

 

[Masada]

When we look at lifespans of Ancient Greek philosophers and other famous people, we can see that some parts of their society lived very long lifes:

No, we can see that certain individuals lived rather long lives which is a rather different claim.

 

[Leifmk]

But I've also heard that this was a myth*, and that hunter-gatherer societies had all the food they needed, with plenty of leisure time to socialize. It was only in certain regions which were devoid of game that farming was practiced. If this is true, why exactly did populations increase at all? Agriculture wouldn't explain anything.

I've always thought that the transition was probably a gradual one: It would happen in areas that were so fecund that a hunter-gatherer society didn't have to be nomadic, so they would stay put and over the years learn basic horticulture (tend to those plants that grow in that spot, and next year there's more of them) and eventually this would help their population to grow to the point where they could no longer sustain themselves without relying more and more on their developing agriculture, so it was either farm more or have half your tribe die, and after that things started getting out of hand (where they have been ever since).

 

[Domen]

The traditional view of the rise of civilization was that farming developed in regions with the appropriate crops, and people no longer had to hunt to survive. Less people starved, and the population grew accordingly. This created more of a need for food, and so humans became ever more dependent on crop-growing. As a side-effect, it also produced a higher class with more leisure time. This higher class became scribes, craftsmen, and professional warriors.

But I've also heard that this was a myth*, and that hunter-gatherer societies had all the food they needed, with plenty of leisure time to socialize. It was only in certain regions which were devoid of game that farming was practiced. If this is true, why exactly did populations increase at all? Agriculture wouldn't explain anything.

*From Jared Diamond, I think, but I could be wrong. It was a long time ago.

I think you might find this book interesting:

"Primitive Society and its Vital Statistics":

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4381154;view=1up;seq=15

http://zasoby.kangur.uek.krakow.pl/djvu/index.php?kat=6602&col=ksiazki

Table of contents:

 

[Domen]

BTW - Guanches - the indigenous inhabitants of the Canary Islands - were perhaps that group of White people who persisted as a primitive society for the longest time. Guanches were described by Spanish invaders as tall people with fair skin, blue eyes and blond hair. They continued to live on technological level of the Stone Age (no metal tools or weapons) until the Spanish invasion in the 15th century.

Their dwellings were caves, or in areas with not enough caves - small round huts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanches#Clothes_and_weapons

Guanches wore garments made from goat skins or woven from plant fibers, which have been found in the tombs of Tenerife. They had a taste for ornaments and necklaces of wood, bone and shells, worked in different designs. Beads of baked earth, cylindrical and of all shapes, with smooth or polished surfaces, mostly colored black and red, were fairly common. Dr. René Verneau suggested that the objects the Castilians referred to as pintaderas, baked clay seal-shaped objects, were used as vessels for painting the body in various colours. They manufactured rough pottery, mostly without decorations, or ornamented by making fingernail indentations.

Guanche weapons adapted to the insular environment (using wood, obsidian and stone as primary materials), with later influences from medieval European weaponry. Basic armaments in several of the islands included javelins of 1 to 2 m in length (known as Banot on Tenerife); round, polished stones; spears; maces (common in Gran Canaria and Tenerife, and known as Magado and Sunta, respectively); and shields (small in Tenerife and human-sized in Gran Canaria, where they were known as Tarja, made of Drago wood and painted with geometric shapes). After the arrival of the Europeans, Guanche nobility from Gran Canaria were known to wield large wooden swords (larger than the European two-handed type) called Magido, which were said to be very effective against both infantrymen and cavalry. Weaponry made of wood was hardened with fire. These armaments were commonly complemented with an obsidian knife known as Tabona.

Dwellings were situated in natural or artificial caves in the mountains. In areas where cave dwellings were not feasible, they built small round houses and, according to the Castilians, practiced crude fortification.

They were perhaps the first inhabitants:

http://www.cruisingmates.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=6939

The large island of Tenerife forms a triangle, with the port of Santa Cruz near the eastern point. The name 'Tenerife' is a Guanche word meaning 'snow-capped mountain'. The Guanches were a stone age people and thought to be the earliest natives.

Monument showing a native Guanche warrior:



Guanche culture was destroyed by WICs (White Iberian Catholics), and apparently aboriginal males were mostly exterminated (genetic studies have shown that only up to 16% of Y-DNA of modern population of Tenerife comes from the aboriginal Guanche men), but contribution of native Guanche females to the gene pool of modern inhabitants seems to be greater (about 42% of mtDNA).