Map of Human Migration

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Map of Human Migration
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The agricultural revolution

• Its causes and consequences

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The neolithic revolution

• Neolithicnew stone age, associated with the rise
  of intensive agricultural practices, i.e. farming
  with the use of the plough and irrigation, as
  well as domesticated plants and animals.
• First evidence for farming is found in the
  highland areas of Mesopotamia about c. 14,000
  b.p. (barley).
• Intensive agriculture is much more productive
  than hfg, but is also much more labour-intensive.
  (remember hfg must work about 2-4 days per week
  only, even in marginal environments).
• Consequences of food production are very well
  known, although its initial causes are still
  being debated (Weisdorf).
• Clear that once agricultural production had taken
  hold, population increases meant that a
  large-scale return to hunting and food gathering
  would be impossible.

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The main consequences of agricultural production

• Populations became more sedentary and worked
  longer hours.
• Production of a social surplus, due to the fact
  that each household can produce about 5 times its
  own necessary consumption.
• Increased population and fertility, due to
  sedentarism, increased food supply, and the
  decline of birth-spacing.
• Emergence of towns, and later cities. The urban
  revolution closely followed the neolithic
  revolution.
• Emergence of full-time specialists not dependent
  on farming, e.g. craftsmen, such as metal
  workers, potters, weavers, and also priests,
  scribes, artists, bureaucrats, and aristocrats,
  law-makers, traders.
• Stimulated inventions in metallurgy, writing,
  astronomy, architecture, city-planning.
• Also increase in infectious diseases smallpox,
  measles, influenza, tuberculosis, malaria.

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First Cities

• Date back to 8000 to 7000 BCE
• Jerichowest bank of Jordon River
• Catal Huyukin Turkey
• DanpoChina
• Harrappa-Pakistan.
• Became more common after 4000-3000 BCE

• Jerichos Walls

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The neolithic revolution and social inequality

• Early stages of the neolithic revolution show
  evidence of specialists, but not major social
  inequalities all had access to food and land
  through kinship networks.
• Some archeologists think that inequality first
  emerged through differences in soil fertility
  between river valleys and more mountainous areas
  e.g. Indus River Valley, referred to as
  centre-place theory.
• In the fertile crescent, as city-states
  competed with each other for land, warfare
  emerged, accompanied by the enslavement of
  captured populations, usually women.
  (Mesopotamia, about 3,000 bp).
• Slavery and inequality were later legally
  instituted through Mesopotamian law codes, e.g.
  the middle Assyrian law code c. 2500 bc and the
  Hammurabic code, c. 1750 bc. Domestic slavery
  also recognized in these codes, as some women
  from poorer families were sold into domestic
  slavery. Origin of veiling (MALC)
• "Neither wives of seignoirs nor widors who go
  out on the street may have their heads undovered.
  These women...must veil themselves with either a
  shawl or robe or mantle if they go out on the
  street alone. A concubine who goes out on the
  street with her mistress must veil herself. A
  sacred prostitute whom a man married must veil
  herself on the street, but one whom a man did not
  marry must have her head uncovered on the street
  she must not veil herself. A harlot must not
  veil herself her head must be uncovered.
• Warfare also led to the emergence of permanent,
  centralized bureaucratic institutions, led first
  by priests. These are known as states.

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States and territories.

• From kinship based communities to territory based
  empires and nations.
• Chieftainships (rank-based) to state
  (class-based) societies.
• Functions of the state
• law and order
• maintains socioeconomic contrasts
• suppression of internal disorder
• defense against external threats

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Centres of neolithic cultures

• Most agree with Childe and Flannery that the
  neolithic revolution started first in the
  mountainous regions of Mesopotamia, i.e. the
  region of contemporary Iraq near the Tigris and
  Euphrates rivers.
• However, French archeologists in Vietnam claim
  that the Hoabinhian culture began food production
  about 14,000 bp also. Also, the Nile Valley has
  mortar and pestles from 15,000 bp, but these
  sites were later abandoned.
• The major centres of early food production
  include Baluchistan (Pakistan) 8,000 bp,
  northern China, the Nile Valley, and Central
  America.

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Neolithic started 10,000 bp
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Indus River Valley Map
Neolithic started c. 7,000 bp
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Gender, family and territory

• In horticultural and hfg societies, there are
  many example of matrilineal societies, i.e. those
  in which descent is traced through the mother.
• Women often have important ritual and political
  roles if they control valued goods, e.g. the
  Iroquois.
• Gradual change from matrilineal to patrilineal
  descent groups with intensive agriculture. Land
  is inherited by males, women receive dowry as
  family property.
• Plough agriculture nearly everywhere is
  exclusively male.
• Separation of the domestic realm from the realm
  of production, with women being associated with
  domestic duties and men with farming, politics,
  law.
• Status of women declined after the emergence of
  the state. Law codes differentiate in terms of
  status and gender, e.g. the middle assyrian law
  code and the hammurabic code.
• Extended family units become the main unit of
  production reciprocity between family units
  declines and state takes over the task of
  redistributing goods.