From Springerlink: Stable climate and plant domestication linked
New study argues climate change was not responsible for the Agricultural Revolution
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Sustainable farming and the introduction of new crops relies on a relatively stable climate, not dramatic conditions attributable to climate change. Basing their argument on evolutionary, ecological, genetic and agronomic considerations, Dr. Shahal Abbo, from the Levi Eshkol School of Agriculture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and colleagues, demonstrate why climate change is not the likely cause of plant domestication in the Near East. Rather, the variety of crops in the Near East was chosen to function within the normal east Mediterranean rainfall pattern, in which good rainy years create enough surplus to sustain farming communities during drought years. In the authors’ view, climate change is unlikely to induce major cultural changes. Their thesis is published online in Springer’s journal Vegetation History and Archaeobotany.
Climate-based explanations for the beginning of new agricultural practices give environmental factors a central role, as prime movers for the cultural-economic change known as the Near Eastern Neolithic or Agricultural Revolution (about 8500 B.C., 10500 cal. B.P.*). Dr. Abbo and team studied the traditional farming systems which existed until the early twentieth century in the Near East, looking for insights into the agronomic basis of the early days of Near Eastern farming, and to shed light on the possible role of climatic factors as stimuli for the Agricultural Revolution.
Their detailed analysis demonstrates that climate change could not have been the reason for the emergence of grain farming in the Near East. They find that farming requires a relatively stable climate to function as a sustainable economy and therefore is not a sustainable option in times of climatic deterioration.
The authors conclude, “We argue against climate change being at the origin of Near Eastern agriculture and believe that a slow but real climatic change is unlikely to induce revolutionary cultural changes.”
*calibrated years before the present
Reference
1. Abbo S et al (2010). Yield stability: an agronomic perspective on the origin of Near Eastern Agriculture. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany; DOI 10.1007/s00334-009-0233-7
The full-text article is available to journalists as a pdf.
However, climate change was likely the cause of the development of urban societies. The Euphrates valley climate dried after the Holocene optimum (around 5,000 years ago) and this seems to have co-incided with the development of irrigation, which allowed high yield agriculture and the development of urban centers in the middle of the irrigated areas.
Those of you wondering what grain, it was almost certainly wheat, or the noble grasses that preceded wheat, the first genetically engineered (or at least domesticated) food. What I remember from my first semester of a four semester Technology in Civilization sequence is that wild grass seeds, like many seeds, were gathered by our ancestors. Our ancestors who first planted these in early farming efforts, when gathering seed, would have selected the larger grain heads to plant the next season, and would have been more successful in gathering grain that is slow to drop their seeds after maturation. After centuries of this something like modern wheat emerged somewhere around 10K years ago. Probably not coincidentally, the domestic cat lineage started with as few as 5 individual wildcats in about the same place and the same time. Stored grain attracts mice, and cats that could tolerate people would have a competitive advantage…
This seems to show whar Mr Gore has neglected, that humans are not daft and when life gets tough we think and come up with good stuff, well the ones who get it right survive and the early versions of warmists died of being incorrect, (oh yes please today!) I would expect the country that comes out of this ahead will be the one that is run by slightly right wing leaders with conservative principles and no carbon scams, I would like to think it will be Canada (that is why I came here) who will be the first to start quoting the biblical story of Noah’s Ark??
Who says you can’t publish a negative result?
I say that because I would presume that the null hypothesis is not that the agricultural revolution was caused by climate change!
Native American remains in the Mississippi Valley show similar deterioration when maize growing replaced hunting and gathering. Dental health also went downhill. Farming, however, produced enough spare people and time to pile up dirt into very large ceremonial mounds. Scientific American, years ago had an article claiming that hunting and gathering went on in the dense forests of N. Europe for long after agriculture came in because human and game animal populations were in balance. Also, cutting down old growth trees with stone axes is not fun. There are two books on human life during the lower sea levels of the last ice age. Graham Hancock’s “Underworld” is frustrating, lots of speculation but no evidence. Another book, “Eden in the East”, I can’t find the book in my overflowing shelves so I can’t list the author, is less wildly speculative and more grounded in what we do know about the geography of the continental shelves and the return of the sea stand. The author has a lot on Sundaland, an area south of S. E. Asia with twice the area of India that was dry land. And where does the onset of agriculture in the Americas fit into the climate history?
Climate change causes improvements in farming and livestock management practices.
I have spent over 50 years in agriculture, much of It in high desert Great basin area. Low rainfall and short growing seasons, climate change happens every year. Making changes to practices every year is nessesary to suceed.
Educated people often make poor farmers as they know all the answers.
Farmers that do the same thing the same way year after year are doomed to fail (starve). Farmers that invent new ways in a changing climate will prosper.
Based on the description here, the findings aren’t really that surprising. In times before rapid innovation, successful farming would have been based on a combination of crops and techniques evolved to be robust to seasonal (and multi-seasonal) variations around long-term climatic conditions, which we know change slowly in terms of human generations.
Changes would have happened at the margins, except in times of drought spanning many seasons. Migration and crop selection would have rewarded good decisions and penalized poor ones.
Successful societies will have left the most evidence of their civilizations for us to find. Favorable climatic conditions certainly help, but they probably aren’t the most important global determinant.
One of the oldest clay tablets with writing on it has what looks like a recipe for making bread… but wait, there’s more!
In some versions, the “bread” is just a mid point ingredient to show that there is yeast growing in the ground up grain and to preserve it (the “baking” is only enough to dry and sterilize the surface, but not ‘kill’ the interior).
It then continues to break up the bread and dissolve it in water and let it ferment until nice and frothy… i.e. making BEER.
Folks have recreated one of these recipes:
http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/pubs/nn/fal91_civil.html
This vocabulary is one of the more significant cultural contributions of Mesopotamian scribes, providing exhaustive lists of words […] The 23rd tablet is a list of about 350 lines with terms referring to a) soups and stews, b) brewing, and c) flours, breads and pastries.
Oppenheim’s publications included a technological study of the over 160 terms dealing with the manufacture of beer. […] I thought it appropriate to contribute an edition of two Sumerian drinking songs, preserved on clay tablets of the 18th century B.C.
When your language has 160 words in it, the process has been around for a while…
This tablet:
http://www.theplumber.com/cuneifor.html
gives the rations for a set of folks 2040 BC working for the Mesopotamian City Governor. They got equal rations of beer and bread.
For Bama: 5 quarts beer; 5 quarts bread; 5 ounces onions; 3 ounces oil; 2 ounces alkali
Notice which is listed first…
One of the common ingredients in the ancient Egyptian medical texts is beer (though in fairness, we have since found out that they didn’t have a very sterile grain storage process and a tetracycline producing bacteria often grew in the grain or beer). That is why mummies are found to have tetracycline in them and why Egyptian beer really did cure many ills… Here is a photograph of a statue / model of a pharonic tax collector overseeing the bottling of beer. The tax guy is the one in the back with a tablet…
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EMS-89615-Rosecrucian-Egyptian-BeerMaking.jpg
http://carecure.rutgers.edu/forum/showthread.php?t=3911&page=2
It is very clear from the presence throughout all of recorded history and from the fact that hunter gatherers spend fewer hours per day getting food than do agricultural societies, that the foundation of civilization was, and is, beer.
We settled down to farm so we could get a large excess of grain. And it wasn’t just for eating 😉
There you have it. “Smith’s Theorem of the Foundation of Civilization”. And given that prohibition in the USA lead directly to the Great Depression (followed by the Giant party… followed by the Worst World hangover II, sometimes abbreviated WWII) I suggest that we have confirmation that civilization as we know it collapses without beer, and thus would never have begun without it. 😉
From:
http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/images/neolithic_agriculture.htm
The cradle of civilization
In the Near East, archaeologists have been studying early agriculture for decades, and it was here that the idea of the Neolithic Revolution was born. Yet even here, it seems there was a long and winding transition to agriculture. And although settled village life appeared early in this region, its precise connection to farming is still obscure.
The latest findings come from Abu Hureyra, a settlement east of Aleppo, Syria, where the inhabitants were at least semisedentary, occupying the site from at least early spring to late autumn, judging from the harvest times of more than 150 plant species identified there to date. Among the plant remains are seeds of cultivated rye, distinguished from wild grains by their plumpness and much larger size. University College London archaeobotanists Gordon Hillman and Susan Colledge have now dated one of those seeds to some 13,000 years ago, according to unpublished work they presented at a major international workshop in September.dag If the date is confirmed, this rye will be the oldest domesticated cereal grain in the world.
“And them good ‘ol boys were drinkin’ whiskey ‘n Rye, and singin’ …”
I make that the oldest Octoberfest on record …
Hey, it’s not me saying it, it’s in the archaeology…
from:
http://www.alabev.com/history.htm
From the Gilgamesh Epic, written in the 3rd millennium B.C., we learn that not only bread but also beer was very important. This epic is recognized as one of the first great works of world literature. Ancient oral sagas from the beginning of human history were recorded in writing for the first time. The Gilgamesh Epic describes the evolution from primitive man to “cultured man”.
“Enkidu, a shaggy, unkempt, almost bestial primitive man, who ate grass and could milk wild animals, wanted to test his strength against Gilgamesh, the demigod-like sovereign. Taking no chances, Gilgamesh sent a (prostitute) to Enkidu to learn of his strengths and weaknesses. Enkidu enjoyed a week with her, during which she taught him of civilization. Enkidu knew not what bread was nor how one ate it. He had also not learned to drink beer. The (prostitute) opened her mouth and spoke to Enkidu: ‘Eat the bread now, O Enkidu, as it belongs to life. Drink also beer, as it is the custom of the land.’ Enkidu drank seven cups of beer and his heart soared. In this condition he washed himself and became a human being. “
The Babylonians became the rulers of Mesopotamia after the Sumerian empire collapsed during the 2nd millennium bc. Their culture was derived from that of the Sumerians, and as a consequence of this, they also mastered the art of brewing beer. Today we know that the Babylonians new how to brew 20 different types of beer.
So civilization had progressed from just a few beers, to making 20 varieties, and on to modern civilization with thousands. The progress of human civilization is directly measured in beer. QED.
Long before “scientists” came to be, farmers and those practicing animal husbandry did selective breeding. Farmers merely saved what appeared to be “the best” of the grain yield for seed the next spring. Same with animals . . . save the best for breeding. No need to know any science to do that.
Plants which survived the ravages of weather supplied the seeds for planting.
In a temperate zone, a farmer dared not eat the grain saved for the next spring planting, hungry or not . . . else the farmer would be “out of business” as a farmer right quickly.
Life for any farmer was darned grim throughout history in temperate zones, and only during that most benevolent of centuries, the 20th Century, from a weather standpoint, and for that matter, most benevolent from geologic calamities. Never until the last half of the 20th Century has a farming life or even a citified life been the least bit secure, and not even then for a goodly part of the Earth..
Not looking all that secure, in these early years of the 21st Century.
Yes, I know . . . that can’t happen to us again . . . not now that we have so much knowledge of science and technology. Sure it can’t. New Madrid earthquakes of 1811/1812 come to mind.
We in western culture nations are most arrogant . . . and most foolish.
I will be planting my own food to eat in the future shortly . . . but then, I was merely a “country boy”, went through K-8 in one of those one-room schools in rural Iowa, taught by a schoolmarm. What could she have known to teach me?
They find that farming requires a relatively stable climate to function as a sustainable economy and therefore is not a sustainable option in times of climatic deterioration.
That’s exactly what was lacking before the HCO. The global temperature variation from the Yonger Dryas to the HCO was in the order of 10ºC, forget about Weather stability before that rise. This article contradicts itself.
‘…farming requires a relatively stable climate to function as a sustainable economy and therefore is not a sustainable option in times of climatic deterioration.’
Did we really need a formal study to affirm this commonsensical conclusion?
Norm814 (14:28:30) :
Maize. Corn is (or was, in American English) the generic English term for any grain that isn’t barley.
Pamela Gray (14:08:14) :
Who doesn’t want to grow wine in Alaska?
The grapes would be huge, but you’d have to give the harvesters combat pay — the mosquitoes are huge, too.
I heard this theory a long time ago, when people seemed more hopeful. If it isn’t true, it should be.
It was stated that the ice melted very rapidly at the end of the last ice age, and cultures were put under great stress. Not only did the ocean flood the areas where people were most likely to live, but peoples who were dependant on herds of animals such as reindeer following predictable migration routes found the herds abruptly had vast areas further north to wander in, and these routes could not be predicted.
This idea suggested the great glaciers didn’t just gradually retreat; instead they melted from the top down. One result was the abrupt creation of vast areas of grassland, as grasses were the first to colonize the wastes where ice had once lain. For a very brief period of time these grasslands were able to not only support traditional grasses, but a variety of cross-breeds (hybrids) which, under more ordinary conditions, would not have been able to compete in the grass-eat-grass world of natural selection.
The conclusion was that, just when mankind was at its most desperate and hungry, there appeared wheat. (There also may have been a huge surge in the population of fish, as coastal lands flooded, but that is another story.)
In other words, it wasn’t man who saved mankind. It was a Higher Power, (or sheer coincidence,) which said, “Here you poor suckers; try this stuff out.”
” Norm814 (14:28:30) :
DirkH isn’t corn a new world grain…
I figured the grain mentioned was rice.”
Sorry, my english. What i meant is grain.
Hmm. http://www.leo.org says corn doesn’t only mean maize but also grain…
So – i actually said what i meant to say. Not that bad. Maybe a tad ambiguous.
In Britain the Government is getting ever more proscriptive about the use of grit for roads. Currently, only trunk roads are even considered for treatment and Lord Adonis, a Government spokesman has just asked that even less grit is used even in applicable localities.
It is becoming increasingly self-evident that the supplies of such material were seen as an additional and unnecessary cost against the State and local authorities, emphasised by the insistence of the bureaucracy that climate change was a reality. They second guessed the outcome and arrived at the conclusion that they favoured rather than working towards any real understanding of what may occur.
It was not as if grit once bought was an asset that would lessen the expenditure in the subsequent years, it just was not ordered and by that inaction jeopardised the economy and people’s lives. Is this not the summation of the whole warmest debate? The legislature wants to believe that Fahrenheit 451 exists and orders affairs to accommodate that supposition. Extrapolate that understanding and look to the billions that are currently being pledged to secure thousands of wind turbines, to institute a vast new power distribution network to counter the vagaries of the proposed power source and think on the real problems that have actual presence and determined outcomes to which we can minster with our precious, and limited, resources.
This a game about hubris and the imposition of someone’s will rather than an actual, factual, understanding of the state of play. We see here that fact has little to do with any of it. A determination has been taken that is every bit as resolute as the wish to go to war over Iraq and based on similarly flimsy evidence.
Ok! I’ve looked, read and re-read, and re-read, looked, and looked again. I give up! The point of this is what? I just know that someone has left something key out of this press release. Where’s the punch line? They say: “New study argues climate change was not responsible for the Agricultural Revolution”. Well just who the heck ever said it was? Was it Vegetation History and Archaeobotany’s Einstein? (His or her name escapes me at the moment.) Oh, and are we talking about the rather slow process of hunter gatherers ‘raising’ a litter of guinea pigs for lunch next week or something more significant? I thought –last time I thought about agriculture– that McCormick and Whitney and English breeders started the REVOLUTION in agriculture. Wasn’t that all during the Little Ice Age? No, I can’t see the punch line. Somebody tell me the punch line. Please?
I like the term “sudden” when talking about the climatic changes at the end of the last Ice Age. Sudden maybe in term of geological time, but sudden in terms of the human measure of time it is hours, maybe a day or week. A year is a long time for a human. Pretty of time to reaction to changes in the landscape/climate. Yes, you might be ill prepared to deal with the changes, but if the low lying areas are being reclaimed by the sea you move out of the way. We’re not trees rooted to one place. A decade would have been a third of a lifetime back in those days. A century, three generations. So this talk of glaciers melting suddenly, or the Black Sea suddenly filling up is sort of “Yeah, so what. They had relocate and adapt.” Not like there was a shortage of living space (the world-wide population of humans at this time is thought to be around 50 million).
As to the origins of The Flood story I like the theory of an asteroid landing in the Mediterranean Sea, vaporizing a lot of water which then fell back to earth “downwind” in the Near East as one heck of a rain storm. Literally raining cats and dogs for weeks on end with resulting massive flooding.
If, with all the ice melting and all the rain falling and all the flooding at the end of the last glacial period, people lived in low areas near coasts and rivers, where would we ever find anything that shed light on when humans started planting onions closer to their puptents? I still say the Agricultural REVOLUTION began a couple hundred years ago during the Little Ice Age.
DirkH (14:12:46) :
“Steve (13:33:54) :
[…]
So what other option is their. Hunter/gatherer? They would have to demonstrate that hunting/gathering is more stable than controlled agriculture. I don’t care how unstable the climate is – controlled agriculture is always going to be more stable than hunting/gathering, everything else being equal.”
“In a harsh climate, summers can be all wrong – too dry in early summer so that seedlings don’t grow, too wet later so that the corn fouls before ripe. Also the early varieties of corn had very little gain – you needed to preserve half of the harvest to have enough to seed the next year. Relying only on agriculture must have been like gambling for early farmers.
OTOH, when your population density is low, there will always be enough deer to hunt and fish in the river. Think again about reliability.”
Actually you practice BOTH at first. Work here in the USA showed hunter/gatherers selected and planted the best seeds at gather locations to harvest the next year. In times of climate change I imagine you would see migration to better farming areas. Think range wars over water rights here in the USA. People have feet they move if the location becomes inhospitable, and that spreads the ideas. Once farming evolved I do not see a farmer going back to being a hunter/gatherer. I see him pulling up stakes and moving or inventing irrigation.