Text 4. The Transition to a Sedentary Way of Life

Still nomads, the same people most likely would have been content to gather their grain and other foods forever. But since grain could be stored particularly well, some groups of grain gatherers may have come gradually to rely on it more and more. In such cases the would have been adversely affected by a poor growing year or by gradual depletion caused by excessive harvesting. Then, paying more attention to keeping their wild grain growing profusely, they would have noticed that the grain would grow better if rival plants (weeds) were removed, still better if the soil were scratched so hat falling seeds could take root more easily, and still better if they themselves sprinkled some seeds into sparser patches of soil. The people who did these things were more influential discoverers and explorers in terms of the origins of our own modern existence than Columbus or Copernicus, yet from their point of view they were merely adjusting some of the details of their ongoing hunting and gathering way of life.

Imperceptibly, however, they became “hooked” and surrendered their nomadic ways for sedentary ones. Already having small herds as “insurance policies,” they must have decided at some point that it would be equally sensible to be able to count on having patches of planted grain awaiting them when they reached a given area on seasonal nomadic rounds. And then they would have learned that planting could be done better at a different time of year than harvesting, and then that their livestock might graze well on harvested stubble, and then that they might grow more than one crop a year in the same place. Meanwhile they would have become more and more accustomed to storing and would have seen less and less reason to move away from their fields and their stores. And so sedentary plant-food production, or agriculture, was invented.

The Emergence of Villages, Trade, and Civilization

Focusing here on developments in western Asia after the switch from food-gathering to food production, the next steps in the region’s accelerating evolution toward civilization were the emergence of villages, the rise of long-distance trade, and the onset of bitter warfare. Villages constituted the most advanced form of human organization in western Asia from about 6500 to about 3500-3000 B.C.E., when some villages gradually became cities. Village organization inevitably brought about long-distance trade, and it just as inevitably provoked the growth of war. No doubt warfare has been the bane of human existence, with famine and disease, at least since the appearance of agricultural villages, but since the growth of warfare in ancient times stimulated the growth of economic and social complexity it nonetheless must be counted as a step toward the emergence of civilization.

1. How did people learn to till the soil?

2. What significance did it have in their lives?

3. Why did the people see less and less reason to more away from their fields and stores?

4. What was the next step toward civilization?

5. What did village organization bring about?

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