2 ms·
Agriculture took thousands of years of work in selectively breeding crop plants. For a long time it produced little food for a lot of effort, so until it became
by burnte 2y ago
Agriculture took thousands of years of work in selectively breeding crop plants. For a long time it produced little food for a lot of effort, so until it became easier reliably grow good food plants, it was not widely practiced.
- Qem 2y agoAlso while there was a lot of megafauna around, probably there was little incentive to settle and care for crops. It was better to chase the beasts.
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoI'm not convinced. Cultivation began about 20kya, and we begin to see seed stores roughly contemporaneous with Gobekli. If anything, population was simply not dense enough (or could be maintained in the climate) for there to be incentive sufficient to focus on even staying sedentary with areas devoted to growth of crops. Why build a city to protect food stores when wetlands still produced enough in the natural economy to support you through the average year?
- choilive 2y agoOne theory is the climate shifted around that time (coincident with the last gracial period) so that the relative abundance of resources available to hunter-gatherers declined, basically necessitating agriculture.
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoYes, one very obvious example of this is the desertification of the Sahara.