Yup - if you are thinking about what the story was in about 1978... Since then there's been a big change from the idea cities were the only locus of culture an

Yup - if you are thinking about what the story was in about 1978... Since then there's been a big change from the idea cities were the only locus of culture and technology to a view that nomadic peoples were able to create significant ritual art, technical knowlege, and complex cultures. Of course the view from the 19th and early 20th C's was significantly informed by the need to justify all the genociding of nomadic peoples ("it's for their own good"). The idea I've heard recently is that agriculture grew out of nomadic people encouraging the food plants that they would be looking for in a years time by planting selected seeds and then going off to the next area, over time this led to crops that were more and more adapted as food stuff and this then enabled settled agrarianism. Places like Göbeklitepe are thought to be the ritual centers of nomadic cultures doing this sort of per-agricultural precession. I have read (no expert) that are similar sights in the southern united states where (now genocided) nomadic people used to come together and conduct major rituals which required significant communal investment and co-ordination. Civilization with no cities... who'd have thought?