The advent of agriculture drastically changed the way that humanity lived on the face of the Earth. It created more stable groups, allowed for increased lifespan, and increased the population. However, the advent of agriculture had negative effects as well; it can be linked to the rise of human conflict and in extension a newfound mechanism of human death.
The advent of agriculture switched the lifestyle of early humans from nomadic to static. Originally humans constantly moved to find food, but with the rise of agriculture they were forced to settle down to control the growth of their crops. Agriculture’s potential for supporting large numbers of people living in a concentrated setting, and its potential for creating surplus and thus wealth for some, laid the foundation for the great civilizations of the past. In other words, the beginning of agriculture increased population while allowing for the first notions of group wealth. This concept of wealth and a rising population lead to a rise in the scale of conflict beyond anything that had been seen before.
Agriculture created the first complex societies. Domestication fueled humans’ population growth in the Holocene, and it formed the foundation for the rise of complex societies, cities, and increasingly sophisticated technology. With domesticated plants and animals people started living in larger and larger groups. With a reliable food source people were no longer starving and had much more stable food supply. This increased the chances of survival of all members of a group. This greater survival led to greater numbers.
Food, however, was still the most important commodity for early humans. As groups increased in size the need for larger food supplies rose. The amount of land and resources that could originally sustain a population was no longer adequate for the constantly increasing demands. Early humans had no choice but to expand. Land was the way to obtain more amounts of food. Farms had to be extended. Neighboring groups soon came into conflicts as territories encroached upon one another. Eventually conflicts began to erupt more and more frequently. These fights were fought with the lives of those in the society and so maintaining a large group of people became increasingly paramount. The only way to maintain such a large group was through increasing agriculture which became synonymous with increasing amounts of land. To expand demanded more people which demanded more land which cyclically demanded more land. Agriculture and the land became the key to survival. Land became the essence of wealth.
Because of this inherent need to continue acquiring land, conflict between different populations broke out. With the continued acquisition of land, settlements grew into each other and the struggle to control more resources began. With the increased population pressure continuously demanding greater amounts of food, a society’s ability to control more and more land became paramount for survival. Because of this conflicting struggle for resources, the rise of agriculture can be said to have directly brought about the rise of organized warfare between the earliest human societies. While agriculture is often fairly credited for forming the basis upon which sizeable human congregation and urbanization began, it can also be credited for creating the environment upon which human conflict originated. While agriculture can still be said to have played a significantly positive role in the advancement of human evolution, it can also be said to have provided the mechanism upon which millions of people would be killed throughout the course of human history.
Sources:
http://www.questionswithanswer.com/what/what_were_the_changes_brought_by_the_agricultural_revolution.html
http://bss.sfsu.edu/mwilliams/hist110/lectures/hist110L1.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16463113
No comments:
Post a Comment