Listen to Anthro.mp3
Agriculture and Ancient Civilizations
Learn more about the beginnings of agriculture and how it relates to the rise of ancient civilizations with Claire and Lea.
Source:
- https://www.sierraclub.org/grassroots-network/food-agriculture/sustainable-grazing-practices#:~:text=Livestock%20grazing%20can%20be%20an,the%20amount%20of%20food%20produced
- https://www.umass.edu/classics/about/directory/joseph-wilsonhttps://cdn.agclassroom.org/ok/lessons/upper/symbiosis.pdf
- https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/info/symbiotic-gardening-relationships.htm
- https://www.geol.umd.edu/sgc/lectures/farming.html#:~:text=Origins%20of%20Agriculture%3A%20Advantages%20of,related%20diseases%20including%20tooth%20decay
Transcript:
Lea: Hello friends! And welcome back to anthro.mp3. We’re students from UMass who love anthropology. Anthro Hub is a website we help run that’s full of all things Anthro. Make sure to check it out to look at some incredible blog posts and creative works made by students from our school and others. My name is Lea, and I’ll be one of your hosts for today’s episode.
Claire: And I’m Claire, I’ll be your other host for today. So we’ve got a pretty cool topic to cover in this episode, in my opinion. We’re going to be looking at agriculture, which is a theme you’ll be noticing over a couple of future episodes as well. Today, we’re focusing on the beginnings of agriculture and how it affected the rise of ancient civilizations and the first cities, because agriculture and its development is widely recognized as one of, if not the most important catalysts for the human swap from migratory or seasonal living to a sedentary lifestyle. So instead of following the herds of animals, we hunted when they migrated or moving around to gather different plants at different times of the year, we began to stay in one area and build more permanent residences, which I’ll happily talk more about later. But for now, why? How did this begin? Lea, why did humans start domesticating crops? And maybe, what were the first ones?
Lea: Well, before I get into all the lore, I’m just gonna say I am an agriculture hater, and there are lots of layers to that opinion. Like, I don’t know, ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian societies shared very fundamentally similar social religious ideologies that placed disproportionate power into an elite class for the sake of agricultural supervision, underneath the guise of divinity.
Claire: Right.
Lea: So inequality, in my opinion, can’t really exist in a society without both economic and religious systems. So, just to sum up my opinion, agriculture laid the foundation for social stratification and capitalism as we know it today. So, since we wanted a little convenience, I’m in loan debt. Not got a little passionate. But to answer your question, hunting and gathering didn’t guarantee a constant, reliable source of food, so the amount of sustenance available was directly related to your skills, the skills of group members and factors outside of your control, engaging in husbandry, and then agriculture made it so humans had direct control over their food gathering strategies. In my opinion, though, agriculture also isn’t super reliable, since you are intentionally, like, manipulating the natural world in an unnatural way and setting off a series of domino effects that will inevitably force you to move and or like your crops will get sick or over watered or too dry, and your diet depends on all those seasonal changes. So anyway, an important impact of agriculture on the human population was an increase in diet related diseases and decreasing stature, which is reflective of a less varied diet and a lot less exercise. Although maintaining farms wasn’t as physically demanding as hunting and gathering, it wasn’t easy. Crops have very specific needs, and there was a lot of trial and error involved in upkeep.
Claire: Right. And that’s really interesting to think about, something I’ll be talking a little bit about later, is, you know, there’s this generally accepted definition of what a city is by an Australian archeologist who, again, I’ll introduce more later, but one of the items on the list that defines a city is that there has to be some sort of hierarchical differentiation. There has to be that level of difference in a society hierarchically. And it’s really interesting to look at how that’s intertwined with agriculture, because, especially as you see cities grow more one of the important things about cities is that the more densely populated areas where there was less farmland, so the major cosmopolitan hubs of the cities where it was different craft specializations relied really heavily on those outer ring portions of the cities where there was a lot of agriculture, and in turn, those outer rings had to rely really heavily upon the inner cosmopolitan hubs, because they were holding all the power over, you know, land distribution, money distribution, every other good distribution. So it’ll be interesting to talk a little more about that. But like you were saying, the development of agriculture was a new, technically more reliable source of food, at least then, but maintaining the crops did require a lot of attention and upkeep, like I mentioned earlier, due to this, groups of people began to settle in singular locations. We’re seeing the beginning of, again, cosmopolitan lifestyle, rather than following food sources and migrating based on the time of year, this new sedentism allowed for booming expansion of agriculture as people who were previously hunters and gatherers, people who, like you said, previously, had to do sort of every single job and rely on each other and be jacks of all trades. They began to specialize in farming. So as more people specialized in farming and were able to devote more of their time to it, other craft specializations also emerged. So I mentioned earlier the Australian archaeologist who sort of defined what a city is. His name was V Gordon Childe, and according to one facet of his recognized definition of a city, many citizens are farmers, but some citizens pursue crafts or alternative careers full-time. In a city, there are enough people to allow individuals to pursue specializations that support others and keep them alive. And the organization of agriculture allowed for excess food to be grown and stored, rather than every person needing to hunt and gather and fight and everything else necessary to keep themselves alive. Now, different individuals could pursue different things on a much larger and much more full-time scale. So now we see farmers growing more food than they need. So they start to trade with people who make more weapons than they need, and they all trade with people who raise more animals than they need, and so on. So basically, the development of agriculture increased food surplus, which gave people more time to pursue individual interests and passions. And this also resulted in an exponential population growth and allowed for greater development of religion or in all sorts of things. And that’s where we see the you know the difference, beginning in terms of the farmers on the outside needed to rely on the weapon Smiths and the political leaders on the inside to survive, and that’s where we see sort of the beginning of that difference in hierarchical status. So now we want to zoom out a little. In order to grow and sustain plants, you need a reliable source of water and fertile soil, right?
Lea: I’m pretty sure. Yeah.
Claire: Well, that’s why the earliest proto-cities, and true cities developed around, not necessarily in the Fertile Crescent, which is a location in Western Asia that is framed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. These rivers pull a lot of silt and fertile minerals and deposit them into the soil along the shores, which allows for great agricultural prosperity. What is interesting, though, is that the first true city was just outside of the Fertile Crescent. So true city would be defined as meeting all of the facets of V. Gordon Childe’s definition of a city. So Mesopotamia laid mostly within the crescent, except for its southernmost points. Here in the southernmost points lies a region called Sumer, which is now known as the cradle of civilization. This is because the Sumerians built the first true city, which was called Uruk. Here, they still had access to the Euphrates River and its great wealth of fertile soil deposits, so they could grow a lot of excess food. However, the big difference is that this land was not the most ideal for living. It was a flood plain between the Euphrates and the Tigris, so multiple times a year there would be unpredictable flooding, which could damage crops, kill livestock and destroy buildings.
Lea: Well, if it was outside the most fertile land region and in a place where the weather was so unpredictable, why would that be where the first city was born, like Wouldn’t they have a harder time accessing resources and therefore a lessened ability for job specialization?
Claire: You’d think, but it is really kind of a case of successful trial by fire. In order to survive and thrive, the Sumerians had to figure out a way to combat these strange situations, these strange conditions. So the people came together to create early aqueducts, earning themselves the title of a hydraulic primary civilization, or a city that was able to control water to their advantage and took no help or inspiration from any other cities. They developed entirely independently, which is only seen maybe four other times in history. But basically, in order to create this huge hydraulic system, the Sumerians needed to organize their labor. So a governing force was needed in order to divide this specialized labor between craft specialists of the proto city, and this governing body is what leads Uruk to become a functioning city under the academically accepted definition. So the hierarchical separation, where some people are craft specialists, some people are farmers, and we have this governing body that holds a lot of power,
Lea: But yeah, like I was gonna say, that’s exactly like what I had mentioned with. With agriculturalism leading to power being disproportionately placed across a civilization, and like you were saying before, with, you know, some specialists producing more than they needed, and then trading that access to others, and then that kind of like trade flow state happening. I think that because of agriculture and all that excess time, there’s a very clear level of importance placed on certain specializations, and we see that now too, with like some jobs or some career paths being so much more valued societally. And I think when we were hunting and gathering, there was more of a community based method of gathering food, it was, you know, if the elderly, if the sick, if the young couldn’t do it, people would go and gather and then split it evenly among everyone, despite, you know, the sort of imbalance in work. Whereas, now, in my opinion, because of agriculture, it’s very individualistic, and it’s a very kind of, you do it yourself, like you’re in your own trade, you’re in your own space, of like your own career, your own job, and like you’re responsible for yourself, rather than it being kind of, everyone works together.
Claire: Absolutely, it feels like it was definitely a catalyst to, sort of our modern day capitalist, everybody for themselves. Fight for your own survival sort of thing. Because, you know, there’s a lot of disproportionate power and resource distribution. Yeah, so precisely. And just to take it on a slightly different note, I would really like to use this space to chat about something that I first heard about in elementary school, actually. So I learned a lot about agriculture in my early school years because I grew up in a farming town in what was part of the original Lenni-Lenape nation. You know, my first job was at a fruit stand. I passed corn fields and soybean fields on my way to school. You know, I saw a lot of cows. And it’s really cool, because there’s still groups of people who do public demonstrations and classes on the traditions of the Lenni Lenape tribe in my area, which is, again, just so amazing, because it’s sort of, you know, a way to learn about the history of the people who have the right to the land and the original name of the land that holds my hometown is lenapehoking, which originally spanned New York to Delaware. Anyway, when I was little, I was taught in class and on field trips about things like soil fertility maintenance. Basically, my area was a big producer of soybeans and corn, and the farmers would swap which crop they grew annually because it would break the cycle of crop specific pests and also fixes nitrogen levels in the soil, because the crops took different amounts of nutrients from the soil. So crop rotation is important for improving profits and soil life, and that’s sort of something that we’ve managed to come up with over since the dawn of agriculture, to fight these issues like plant illness or pests that make it a less reliable food source. So along with this, I was lucky enough to go to some Lenape demonstrations, and I learned even more about agricultural, soil and crop health. The indigenous people co-planted three main crops within a single area, these being corn, beans and squash. These plants support each other and have a symbiotic relationship that benefits each other’s growth and yield. So corn provides structural support for the beans and shields them from intense sun or wind. The beans add nitrogen to the soil, which maintains the soil’s health and acts as a fertilizer for the other two crops, the squash suppresses weeds and retains moisture in the soil, and together, these cops these crops are called the Three Sisters, due to their support of each other. This organizational planting practice is still used today after so so many years, and it is also known to have been used in Cherokee and Iroquois practices since ancient times.
Lea: We actually see some other examples of this companion planting too, as it’s called, all over the world in both everyday gardens and large-scale farms.
Claire: Right. For example, marigolds are often planted near vegetables because the flowers deter aphids, rabbits and roundworms, but attract beneficial insects like ladybugs and lace wings,
Lea: Right. And certain herbs tend to be planted to attract lace wings as well, things like dill, fennel and cilantro. And we don’t just see entirely plant based organizational agricultural planning, either, for example, sometimes farmers graze livestock or allow their animals to forage on their agricultural pastures. When cattle are grazed into rotation, like you were talking about with the soybeans and corn, they allow more oxygen to enter the soil they walk on, and this aeration helps grasses and plants to grow and flourish much more strongly. Manure from the cattle also acts as a really great natural fertilizer, and it prevents some of the damage that would be caused to soils, fertility and richness by non-organic fertilizers and pesticides.
Claire: It is really interesting to see how humans notice these things over time and chose what to plant where and when based on their observations as to which plants certain animals and bugs tended to eat or land on or avoided, and such. Things that were discovered 1000s of years ago have been passed down via oral tradition and are now widely available online for people who farm as a profession or garden as a hobby for pleasure.
Lea: Yeah, and I think gardening and similar hobbies, or hobbies at all, wouldn’t have been able to come into fruition without the spare time that agriculture allowed.
Claire: Right.
Lea: But, you know, also circling back to my initial complaint, I wouldn’t be student loan debt if it weren’t for my ancestors looking for some downtime.
Claire: So true!
Lea: But, pessimism aside, I do really love waking up in the morning and seeing my roommate outside, like weeding and telling me all about the invasive species that are growing in our front yard. Or, like, telling me how you know my plant that’s dying has root rot, but she can, like, fix it or something by cutting some things or exchanging some soil from one plant to another.
Claire: It’s so interesting to see.
Lea: It’s so beautiful. And I just love that we learned about the natural world like that
Claire: For sure. You know, there’s a lot of negatives that we can definitely attribute to the development of agriculture at such a scale, but I think there’s a lot of beauty that we can take from it as well. And especially today, we need to focus on learning more about the world around us and how we can support, you know, local farmers, how we can support growing plants that help the environment, how we can support sustainable farming and such, and sort of try to help the world around us and continue these practices in a positive way.
Lea: Yeah, and, I mean, just to bounce off of that, I think, you know, I 100% agree that we should definitely, I mean, especially now, focus on anything sustainable and focus on like supporting these small businesses, small farmers.
Claire: Right?
Lea: But I have noticed this pattern of these kind of organic or sustainable foods or items being pretty expensive and inaccessible to a lot of people. And I think I don’t know we have agriculture to thank for that and capitalism, I would love to, you know, like, eat a fresh berry, or, like, have a lot of just, I don’t know, like fresh, beautiful produce in my fridge. But unfortunately, I shop at Aldis and, yeah, but one day, one day.
Claire: One day, one day. If I can beat the capitalist system, I do find that, you know, if you’re at a grocery store and you’re shopping in the organic aisle, it tends to be very expensive. But sometimes if you have the ability to go to a local farmer’s market or a local farm stand, sometimes the prices are a little more…
Lea: Make sense?
Claire: Yeah, they’re there. They make more sense, of course. And something that’s really interesting is that some communities have local gardens that people in a town work together to cultivate, or they’ll have, for example, here on UMass, we have a couple of permaculture gardens that students are allowed to take herbs from. I had no idea that we take stuff we can obviously, like, not a ton. You’re just, you take a little bit, and it’s sort of because they sell at the farmers market, and they use it to create fruit spreads, and they actually use these items from the permaculture garden in our dining plans. They use them for some of the foods and the desserts, which is really cool. But yeah, so farmers markets, I think, are a great way to sort of try and beat the..
Lea: The system.
Claire: The system. And is there anything else that you wanted to say?
Lea: I just want to apologize for my pessimism on agriculture. But you know what? Hot take about I said on it. You know?
Claire: Yeah, you know, I think you are entirely justified. So Lea, before we sign off for today, is there anything else that you think we should add.
Lea: Absolutely, I think our buddy Tim over here has something he wants to say.
Tim: So this is Tim. I’ve co-hosted other episodes, and I’m really interested in this topic because it gives me the opportunity to talk about co-ops, food co-ops, which I’m happy to talk about whenever. I used to work at one and it was great. Everything was farm to table. We knew all of the vendors that we bought from every everything was local within, you know, 25 miles. So we really did develop a bond with the people that we bought these products from, whether it be, you know, produce, whether it be like flour, whether it even be like, you know, meats and seafoods, which is pretty interesting. I think that these kinds of systems are really important if we are to have any sort of sustainable future, because it’s really easy to just, you know, go to your nearest Walmart or whatever and get, you know, the cheapest corn or whatever, or, you know, the, you know, the dollar beef. But that doesn’t really give back to your community at all, and it really perpetuates this neoliberal capitalist problem that we discussed in the episode wherein those who have you know the popular products get richer, and we kind of suffer, not only as a class, but also as you know this community that needs to eat, we can’t get back to our own community. So I think it’s really important that if you have a food Co-Op near you, you go and you support them. And like we had mentioned, sometimes it can be a bit more expensive, but it really is a matter of, if you can afford it, it’s worth the time, because not only do you give back to your community, but you also feel like you’re part of a certain community. People at the Co-op, they would talk about how they love being part of the Co-op, how they knew all the workers there, how some of them have even met the distributors, whether it be at a farmers market or, you know, whatever. And I think that’s pretty significant. It really is just like shopping at a farmers’ market, only in a grocery store format. It’s really important.
Lea: Can you maybe explain a little bit more about what exactly a co-op is, right?
Tim: Right? It is a farm to table cooperative of sorts, cooperative being between the members or the employees, most co-ops are employee-owned and the distributors themselves, which means that we work directly with distributors who will allow us to sell their products. And also, it helps the distributors, because maybe they’re a small family farm, and now they have a way of selling their corn, or a way of selling their soybeans or tofu that they make at home, which is really cool, which otherwise might not be possible, because maybe they can’t get a vending license. Or maybe, you know, farmers’ markets don’t happen all year round. Maybe some people just don’t want to go to them. It’s, you know, it’s highly accessible. Sometimes farmers’ markets aren’t acceptable for disabled folks, but the co-op is because it is a grocery store, and you can find these nationwide.
Lea: Thanks, Tim, that was really cool. And I totally I don’t just resonate with the fact that, you know, if you can afford it, it’s definitely worth the money. I think, you know, maybe what you said about some people, kind of, you know, going to Walmart and buying that $1 beef, me included, there’s just kind of a huge, like disparity in health too, that we should think about. Because, I mean, those people that can’t afford, you know, those Whole Foods leaks or something, versus people buy, like, you know, kind of some canned goods. Or, I don’t know, there’s just definitely a huge, it’s just a big conversation about how it intersects with race and class and, you know, disease and illness, but
Claire: Yeah, for sure, and I think that Leah, you and Tim bring up some really good points here about, again, the disparity in hierarchical society and city life. And, you know, sort of our capitalist world today, and I know that it’s not possible for everybody to afford to shop at these, you know, sustainable community co-ops and farmers markets, and that’s heartbreaking, because it should be possible for everybody to get the healthiest food and To get the safest food, to get the best quality food, and to be able to support their community and be part of it. And I really hope that one day we can manage to make, you know, good, fresh food accessible to everybody. And I love that. But anyway, we are starting to run out of time here, so unfortunately, we have to wrap this up, but I am excited to say that we’ll be talking more about agriculture in the future. It was really interesting to start this huge conversation about one of the catalysts of civilization as we know it, and not just civilization, but capitalism and a lot of other parts of society that are unavoidable today. So anyway, thank you all for tuning into our show. Another thanks to our team members and our collaborators of Anthro Hub to stay connected. You can find us on instagram@anthro.mp3. You can also find our sources, Transcripts of each episode and more in our Anthro hub Show Notes. I was one of your hosts today, Claire, joined by Lea and our absolutely wonderful tech crew. Special thanks to Tim and Phuong for helping with the recording today. If you enjoyed this episode, you’ll definitely love some of the upcoming ones we have in the works that expand on agriculture and humans. I believe Lea is actually recording one soon about agriculture and evolution.
Lea: Keep an eye out, guys.
Claire: So that’ll be very cool. Keep an eye out on our Instagram for future updates on shows, specials and events, to make sure you don’t miss anything and catch us next time. Have a great day, friends.