Western Civilization.p

(Jacob Rumans) #1
The Ancient Near East: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Phoenicia, Israel 3

the Aegean by 5000 B.C. and from the Balkans up the
Danube and into central Europe in the years that fol-
lowed. Radiocarbon dating has established the exis-
tence of farming settlements in the Netherlands by
4000 B.C. and in Britain by 3200 B.C.
The diffusion of agricultural techniques came about
through borrowing and cultural contact as well as
through migration. Farming, in other words, developed
in response to local conditions. As the last ice age
ended and hunting and fishing techniques improved, a
general increase in population upset the Paleolithic
ecology. Game became scarcer and more elusive while
the human competition for dwindling resources grew
more intense. Herding and the cultivation of row crops
were soon essential to survival. In time, as the human
population continued to grow, herding diminished. It
provides fewer calories per unit of land than farming
and was increasingly restricted to tracts otherwise un-
suitable for cultivation. Though crop raising would al-
ways be supplemented to some extent by other sources
of food, it gradually emerged as the primary activity
wherever land could be tilled.
The invention of agriculture marked the beginning
of the Neolithic or New Stone Age. The cultivation of
plants, beginning with grains and expanding to include
beans, peas, olives, and eventually grapes, made food
supplies far more predictable than in a hunting or herd-
ing economy. At the same time, it greatly increased the
number of calories that could be produced from a given
area of land. Efficiency was further enhanced by the in-
vention of the wheel and the wooden plow, both of
which came into common use around 3000 B.C. Farm-
ing therefore promoted demographic growth both ab-
solutely and in the density of population that a given
area could support.
On the negative side, the transition to a farming
economy often resulted in diets that were deficient in
protein and other important elements. Bread became
the staff of life, largely because land supports more peo-
ple if planted with grain. The nuts, animal proteins, and
wild fruits typical of the Paleolithic diet became luxu-
ries to be eaten only on special occasions. As a result,
the skeletal remains of Neolithic farmers indicate that
they were shorter and less healthy than their Paleolithic
ancestors. Though beans, peas, lentils, and other pulses
became a valuable source of protein, ordinary people
consumed as much as 80 percent of their calories in the
form of carbohydrates.
Caloric intake varied widely. An adult male en-
gaged in heavy labor requires a minimum of thirty-
seven hundred calories per day. No way exists to


measure a normal diet in Neolithic or ancient times, but
the average peasant or laborer probably made do on far
less, perhaps only twenty-five hundred to twenty-seven
hundred calories per day. Grain yields on unfertilized
land are relatively inelastic, typically ranging from
three to twelve bushels per acre with a probable aver-
age of five. Populations expand to meet the availability
of resources, and Neolithic communities soon reached
their ecological limits. If they could not expand the
area under cultivation, they reached a balance that
barely sustained life. Moreover, because grain harvests
depend upon good weather and are susceptible to
destruction by pests, shortfalls were common. In years
of famine, caloric intake dropped below the level of
sustenance.
The establishment of permanent farming settle-
ments also encouraged the spread of disease. The
hunter-gatherers of Paleolithic times had lived in small
groups and moved frequently in pursuit of game, a way
of life that virtually precluded epidemics. Farming,
however, is by definition sedentary. Fields and orchards
require constant attention, and the old way of moving
about while camping in caves or temporary shelters had
to be abandoned. Early farmers built houses of sun-
dried brick or of reeds and wood in close proximity to
one another for security and to facilitate cooperation.
The establishment of such villages encouraged the ac-
cumulation of refuse and human waste. Water supplies
became contaminated while disease-bearing rats, flies,
lice, and cockroaches became the village or town
dweller’s constant companions.
Inadequate nutrition and susceptibility to epidemic
disease created the so-called biological old regime, a
demographic pattern that prevailed in Europe until the
middle of the nineteenth century. Though few people
starved, disease kept death rates high while poor nutri-
tion kept birth rates low. Malnutrition raises the age of
first menstruation and can prevent ovulation in mature
women, thereby reducing the rate of conception. After
conception, poor maternal diet led to a high rate of
stillbirths and of complications during pregnancy. If a
child were brought to term and survived the primitive
obstetrics of the age, it faced the possibility that its
mother would be too malnourished to nurse. Statistics
are unavailable, but infant mortality probably ranged
from 30 to 70 percent in the first two years of life.
The distribution of Neolithic and ancient popula-
tions therefore bore little resemblance to that of a mod-
ern industrial society. Ancient people were younger and
had far shorter working lives than their modern coun-
terparts. Their reproductive lifetimes were also shorter,
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