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I've read that in the Americas, some cultures abandoned farming, and went back to foraging. One reason was that having large stores of transportable food made y

I've read that in the Americas, some cultures abandoned farming, and went back to foraging. One reason was that having large stores of transportable food made you a sitting duck for your neighbors wanting to come and help themselves.

hollerith 1y ago
Even more true of those farmers who kept livestock. For example, the first written record (Tacitus) we have of the Germanic peoples (farmers who used livestock heavily) claims that the men did nothing but prepare for and engage in warfare: all the farming and taking care of the livestock was done by the women. (And when wheat farming and livestock-keeping were introduced to Britain, after an initial enthusiasm, many went back to fishing and gathering chestnuts. This was prehistory so there is some uncertainty about this.)
- roryirvine 1y ago
  As I understand it, there's currently evidence for arable farming in Britain between 4000BC - 3300BC, and again from 1500 BC onwards (those dates are very approximate, obviously!) What happened between is anyone's guess. There may have been a wholesale shift to pastoralism, or farming may have continued in some form that doesn't show up in the archaeological record that we've been able to decipher so far. Stevens and Fuller (2012) is the usual reference for the maximal claim for the abandonment of agriculture: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/did-neolithic-farming-fail-the-case-for-a-bronze-age-agricultural-revolution-in-the-british-isles/DDC019088534FB8D35AF356D346842E1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/ab...
dismalaf 1y ago
Yup. You can see in the Near East that the rise of fortified cities and armies came at pretty much the same time as the Agricultural Revolution. In fact, pretty much the whole history of farming has been that you farm the land of someone who will protect you.
fsckboy 1y ago
>One reason was that having large stores of transportable food made you a sitting duck for your neighbors wanting to come and help themselves. the socialist impulse is still alive and well in the Americas!

hollerith 1y ago

Even more true of those farmers who kept livestock. For example, the first written record (Tacitus) we have of the Germanic peoples (farmers who used livestock heavily) claims that the men did nothing but prepare for and engage in warfare: all the farming and taking care of the livestock was done by the women. (And when wheat farming and livestock-keeping were introduced to Britain, after an initial enthusiasm, many went back to fishing and gathering chestnuts. This was prehistory so there is some uncertainty about this.)

roryirvine 1y ago
As I understand it, there's currently evidence for arable farming in Britain between 4000BC - 3300BC, and again from 1500 BC onwards (those dates are very approximate, obviously!) What happened between is anyone's guess. There may have been a wholesale shift to pastoralism, or farming may have continued in some form that doesn't show up in the archaeological record that we've been able to decipher so far. Stevens and Fuller (2012) is the usual reference for the maximal claim for the abandonment of agriculture: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/did-neolithic-farming-fail-the-case-for-a-bronze-age-agricultural-revolution-in-the-british-isles/DDC019088534FB8D35AF356D346842E1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/ab...

dismalaf 1y ago

Yup. You can see in the Near East that the rise of fortified cities and armies came at pretty much the same time as the Agricultural Revolution. In fact, pretty much the whole history of farming has been that you farm the land of someone who will protect you.

fsckboy 1y ago

>One reason was that having large stores of transportable food made you a sitting duck for your neighbors wanting to come and help themselves. the socialist impulse is still alive and well in the Americas!