admin A new study by two Israeli researchers, published in the Royal Society’s journal Philosophical Transactions B, offers a groundbreaking new theory about the causes of the Neolithic Revolution, which represents perhaps the most profound cultural shift in human history.
Tackling the Neolithic Revolution from a New Angle
Professors Gonen Sharon and Ayelet Shavit, both affiliated with the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, applied an evolutionary model to the transition from hunter-gatherers to agriculture to see what ideas this innovative approach could lead to.
They were looking for a new perspective that might explain this hugely influential change, which did not necessarily make life easier for Ice Age and early Neolithic people. They concluded that this change was the result of people’s conscious choice to work together in new and different ways, which would likely bring them social and material benefits.
Once they did, the formation of denser, more complex, and socially stratified communities was inevitable, Israeli researchers said. Population growth, coupled with a lack of opportunity for those at the bottom of the social and economic ladder, would require a new way to secure enough food to ensure everyone’s survival.
This led to an agricultural revolution that many people are unaware of was actually a separate development from the initial Neolithic revolution.
Farming is Hard, So Why Did Everyone Become Farmers?
What first motivated these two scholars to take a closer look at the Neolithic Revolution was their confusion as to why it happened. The researchers point out that the transition from freedom and independence from hunting and gathering to farming from dawn to dusk for the individual likely worsened most people’s lives.
In addition, the researchers also noted that previous explanations for the transition and the start of the Neolithic Revolution were not entirely convincing. The usual suspects are climate change (the world is getting colder or drier), an increase in population growth, population losses due to disease or famine that have forced exhausted groups to form new alliances, and a lack of resources for reporting.
Although these factors may have been involved in the change, they cannot explain why the same change took place in different parts of the world, including China, Asia, Europe, Africa, and later the Americas. Conditions varied everywhere, but the Neolithic Revolution proved unstoppable on every continent and at every latitude.
To briefly summarize the ideas presented in their new study, Sharon and Shavit argued that human society has undergone a profound transformation following a three-stage evolutionary process that began over 12,000 years ago.
First, a higher level of coordination between units. This in turn led to increased collaboration between key groups, which represented the second phase of the process. Eventually, true communities emerged with a sedentary and ever-increasing population, the final stage of the three-tier model.
Exploring the Link between Collective Behavior and the Neolithic Revolution
This model for development was first proposed by philosopher James Griesemer, in his 2017 book entitled Landscapes of Collectivity in the Life Sciences (Shavit was one of the book’s editors, hence his familiarity with the theme). Griesemer used his concept to explain collective or cooperative behavior in all types of living systems. The Israeli academics have espoused the idea it is the only appropriate model for explaining how the lifestyle associated with the Neolithic Revolution and Agricultural Revolution became the standard everywhere.
His reference to a change that would “push matters over the brink” refers to a point of no return where survival would have required the development of farming and agriculture, while also ruling out any return to hunting and gathering as a primary source of finding sustenance.
Even if Sharon and Shavit’s thesis is accepted, the reasons for why this “grouping” began in the first place remain a matter for debate. Regardless of the cause, under this new model the most significant factor that led to the Neolithic Revolution was the increase in cooperation among individuals. This change had huge consequences, as it steered human society in a radically different direction that picked up momentum as it progressed.
Cooperation, Community and Agriculture, in that Evolutionary Order
By 10,000 BC, humanity’s collective transition away from hunting and gathering and toward the formation of communities, the domestication of animals and the cultivation of edible crops had begun in earnest. Referred to as the Neolithic Revolution, this transition took place across the globe.
It is often assumed that the Neolithic Revolution and the Agricultural Revolution are the same thing. But in fact, the former predated the latter by a few thousand years in most parts of the world. There were many ancient societies and cultural groups that formed communities before they started farming. One enlightening example is provided by the Natufian people, who lived in the Levant in the days before the Agricultural Revolution took place.
In approximately 13,000 BC, the Natufians began settling down in the lands of modern-day Israel, Lebanon and Syria. They built stone houses and lived in concentrated communities or neighborhoods. They were the earliest culture in the southern and eastern Mediterranean region to make fishing hooks from bones.
The Natufians buried their dead beneath their dwellings, extending their sense of continuity and community into the afterlife. They also domesticated dogs and learned how to bake flatbread and brew beer , and became interested in shamanism and the exploration of alternate realms.
The Natufians adopted many cultural practices associated with the Neolithic Revolution, but without making the complete shift into agriculture at the same time. “The Neolithic is much greater than agriculture,” Sharon explained. “Agriculture was part of the Neolithic Revolution, but the transition to Neolithic changed the entire way people looked at the world.”
The revelation, that community came first and agriculture later, adds support to the evolutionary thesis put forward by Sharon and Shavit. Agriculture represented a logical and necessary response to the new style of societal and cultural organization, an inevitable development once the food requirements of a larger and more settled population couldn’t be met by whatever hunting and gathering activities continued.
In other words, the Neolithic Revolution , defined as people’s decision to ditch hunting and gathering for a more sedentary and settled existence, was the change that allowed the Agricultural Revolution to take flight and perform its transformational magic.
People all over the world had to find a different way to meet their collective caloric needs — which they did, through the domestication of animals and crops that they’d hunted and gathered in the past. This was an ingenious solution and, if Sharon and Shavit are right, one made necessary by the evolution of human culture and society over the course of a few thousand years.
Top image: Representational image of human cooperation thought to have sparked the Neolithic Revolution. Source: Freve / Adobe Stock
