Today hunter-gatherers have been displaced by subsistence patterns which produce a surplus economy and more complex social forms. The roots of this change may be traced back into the Neolithic Age when man became food producer. This was a great turning point in the human history. Food production i.e. domestication of plant and animals, pottery and grinding and polishing of tools are the characteristic features of what is popularly called as ‘Neolithic Revolution’. However, weaving, housing and megaliths may also be added to this unique chapter of the first ‘revolution’ in human society.
Anthropologists and archaeologists have been ceaselessly and tirelessly trying to explain the factors behind the beginning of food production and how food production in the long run became a great ‘catalytic agent’ for further breakthroughs and landmarks in the ever developing civilisation worldwide. Many anthropologists are of the view that since food production, by and large, requires harder work than hunting and gathering, it may be summed that man probably did not become food producer through choice. No one model can explain all cases, but in some regions food production may have come about largely as an accidental by product of existing food resource management practices. In some other places, people may have been forced into it through a failure of traditional wild food resources. Food production in itself may not be considered as a spectacular break through if we over look the consequences of this human activity.
A general opinion among anthropologists is that although food production generally provides less leisure time than hunting and gathering, it does permit some reallocation of the workload. Some people produce enough food so that others can spend more time at other tasks, and so a number of technological developments, such as weaving and pottery making , generally accompany food production. In addition, it makes possible a more sedentary way of life in villages, with more substantial housing. Finally, the new modes of work and resource allocation require new ways of organising people, more occupational specialisation and specialists, organisation of society into lineages, clans, and common interest associations.
As Brian Fagan (1977) rightly explains in a very simple way, food production resulted in much higher population densities, for the domestication of plants and animals can result in an economic strategy that both increases and stabilises available food supplies. Farmers use concentrated tracts of territory for agriculture and grazing cattle or small stock, if they practice fixed farming. Their territory is much smaller than that of hunter-gatherers (although pastoralists need huge areas of grazing land for seasonal pasture).Within a smaller area of farming land, property lines are carefully delineated, as individual ownership of land and problems of inheritance of property arise. Scarcity of land can lead to disputes and to the founding of new village settlements on previously uncultivated soil. More enduring settlements brought other changes. The portable and light weight material possessions of many hunter-gatherers were replaced by heavier tool kits and more lasting houses. Grind stones, implements of tillage and axes with ground and polished edges were essential parts of farming culture. Food production led to changed attitudes towards the environement. Cereals crops enabled the people to store their food, creating surpluses for use in ‘winter’. The hunter-gatherer exploited game,fish,and vegetable foods but the farmer altered the environment by the very nature of exploitation. Shifting cultivation ‘slash and burn cultivation’ meant felling trees and burning vegetation to clear the ground for planting. Voracious animals stripped pastures of their grass cover,then heavy rainfalls denuded the hill of valuable soil and the pastures were never the same again. It implies that however elementary the agricultural technology, the farmer changed the environment. Animals were first domesticated where potentially tamable species like the wild ox, goat, sheep, and dog were widely distributed. Having one’s own herds of domesticated mammals ensured a regular meat supply. Later on, domesticated animals provided by products like milk, cheese, and butter, as well as skins, tent coverings and materials for leather shields and armour. Then, people learned how to harness animal energy for the purpose of transport and afterwards how to breed animals for specialised tasks like ploughing, egg and milk supply transport and a host of other utilities
Pottery making is another achievement of man during NeolithicAge.The manufacture of pottery is a difficult art and requires a high degree of technological sophistication. To make a useful pot requires a knowledge of day and the techniques of firing. Initially, Neolithic pottery was handmade and sun baked.Earlier,the tool maker had to be content with removing parts of the core (flaking/chipping) from a piece of stone. He was not in a position to easily manipulate hard stone. On the there hand, soft day rolled with water could be moulded into any shape. It gave him, beside satisfaction of creation, newer ideas.
Cultivation, domestication of animals and the new sedentary life style stimulated another technological development—house building. Palaeolithic hunter gatherers lived in the nature made dwellings—-rock shelters, caves and tree dwellings. Neolithic settlers required more complex and diverse dwellings. Thatched huts, houses made of wood with the provision of entry and exit points were Neolithic innovations. These houses were of permanent nature.
Clothing was yet another new development. For the first time in human history, clothing was made of woven textiles. The raw materials and technology necessary for the production of clothing came from flax and cotton from domesticated sheep, and the spindle for spinning and the loom for weaving came from the inventive human mind. Basket weaving was also evolved and different types of baskets were made of bamboo and other natural fibres. The above description is the result of excavation of several sites. The earliest evidence of food production in Europe comes from the Argissa-Maghula village mound in Greece. The Argissa-Maghula farmers were cultivating emmer wheat and barley and keeping sheep even as early 7000 B.C. Although hunting was still being practised, yet the economic pattern of life had changed radically. In the region, the earliest farmers lived in compact villages of one-room dwellings built of baked mud. These Karanovo culture settlements were occupied over long periods.
Danube river valley presents very important view of European Neolithic. At a time (around 4800 B.C.) when the Danubians were practising plant cultivation in the plains of western Europe, new farming economies becoming established around the shores of the Mediterranean. An important lake site that was first discovered hundred years ago was from Lake Zurich., Switzerland. It has yielded evidences of lake dwellings. Later, further sites came to light on the shores of Lakes Geneva and Neuchatel.Beside yielding lot of pottery, and wooden piles it throws light on early European farming. These lake shore settlers cultivated barley, wheat, peas, beans and lentils. They also grew small apples. Flax was cultivated for its oily seeds and for its fiber employed in making textiles. The Swiss farming cultures were characterised by scattered agricultural communities between the Mediterranean and the English Channel.
The earliest evidence of domestication of animals also comes from Agrissa-Maghula in Greece. Here, the skeletal remains of the domesticated sheep and pig found in the lower levels of the site have beendated to 7000 B.C. These are considered as the earliest evidence of domestication of animals in Europe. Varying climatic conditions facilitated different dwelling patterns in different regions of Europe. North western areas, Danube river valley area Mediterranean area all have their own characteristic dwellings. Plains of Euorpe had huts for housing in which floor was dug 2-3 feets deep. These huts were erected in rows and the adjoining areas were used for toilet facilities. In the aquatic and marshy areas of the southern slopes of Alps like North Germany and Central Italy pile dwellings were used. However, mountainous areas of France and Spain had rock shelters and caves as housing.
Another important feature of the Neolithic (and Bronze Age Cultures of Europe) was the diffusion of megaliths. Etymologically speaking it stands for mega (large) plus lithos (stone).These were large memorial stones on tombs erected in many parts of the world. Megalithic cults had a far as wide distribution in Europe. Megaliths have been found in Scandinavia, Britain, Ireland France, Spain, ; western Mediterranean, Corsica, and Malta. With their massive stones and large burial chambers, megaliths remain one of the mysteries of European prehistory. Creating megaliths required the cooperation of many persons because breaking and carrying,large stones not only involved joint venture but also the expertise to move and set up huge pieces of rocks. It gives us the due that perhaps food resources were plentiful enough to divert time from the food quest to this Herculean task.As early as 4000 B.C. French farmers were building megaliths. The most famous megalithic structure is Stonehenge on the Salesbury plain in England.
As far as the origin and diffusion of the landmarks of the Neolithic is concerned it has been found that the earliest known sites containing the remains of domesticated plants and animals areas old as 11,000 to 9000 years and these belong to south west Asia. These sites such as that of Jarmo, a settlement at the foot of the Zagros mountains in Iraq were mostly small villages of mud huts. There is evidence not only of cultivation and domestication of animals but also of trade. At the biblical city of Jericho, remains of tools, houses, and clothing indicate that the oasis was occupied by Neolithic people as early as 7800 B.C. Now, when all the evidences are pieced together, it seems that agriculture spreadout from south west Asia to djacent areas,eventually reaching south eastern Europe by 6000 B.C. and slowly spreading north and west.
Another centre from which agriculture spread is south east Asia where it began sometime between 6800 and 3000 B.C. Now it is more or less unanimous opinion among the scholars that by 4000 B.C. stone-using peasant farmers were well established over most of temperate Europe. Many stone age hunters had adopted the new economies; still others lived by hunting and gathering along with the farmers. Both subsistence patterns survived side by side for many centuries. For instance, in Scandinavia, fishermen and fowlers of the Ertebolle culture absorbed some new economic practices without making major changes in their traditional way of life. They traded fish for grain products grown by their neighbours , and lived on the outskirts of cleared farmlands. At this juncture man in Europe stood ready for a great leap forward. Another chapter in human history had already begun.
Neolithic Revolution Summery
It is interesting to observe that the term Neolithic, unlike the preceding terms viz., Palaeolithic, Mesolithic etc., is not referred to as merely a chrono-cultural category progressing under the forces of evolution. It is taken as a revolution and not merely an evolution. The possible combination of forces which give rise to the birth of full time dependency on farming, as such, forms an important area of study. Further it is far more important to investigate the manner in which diverse socio-cultural
rearrangements occur as a result of undertaking this economy.
One of the most widely current views about the emergence of farming has been an acute stress of subsistence because of the twin causes of population increase on the one hand (Malthus, 1895) and climate shift (Binford, 1968) on the other. Boserup‟s (1965) thesis purports that when a population grows more people per land unit are faced with the necessity of being provided with more food. This has to be done by intensifying their relationship with land and also adequately changing their technology. In addition to climate change and population increase weakening of social control is cited as the third factor by Benett (1968) and Amartya Sen (1981) which causes subsistence stress within a society. Which of the above factors results into what kind of resource retrieval strategies remain largely dependent on the character of the biodiversity available. The first ever thrust of hunger in early Holocene was met by rapidly shifting the subsistence base to r-selected species (i.e.,species with short
maturation period- both in the animal as well as plant world) from the earlier (Upper Pleistocene) adaptation of k-selected species (species with long maturation period). Probably the changed climate also heralded a proliferation of hundreds of graminae (grass species) all over the middle latitudes and banks of newly formed lakes and bogs. These tempted a large proportion of our ancestors to adapt to the wild growth of these grass seeds. It is important to mention here that rainforests which had shrunk to almost 15º latitude on both sides of the equator, provided no such opportunity. Obviously leaf, roots,
tubers and nuts in addition to the k-selected species continued to be the subsistence base for the populations inhabiting these regions. There are, however, many gaps within these rainforests cover where a different form of adaptation can originate. That is, one cannot have a blanket of latitude limits to generalize cultural adaptation. In fact mini eco-niches seem to have played a far more crucial role in developing cultural changes.
Generally speaking adaptation to few species of the grass family such as wheat, barley, rice and millets started well within Mesolithic period in the mid-latitudes (say, between 35º and 15º). Beidho in Jordan and the adjoining Natufians are probably the earliest evidence of such man to wild seed relationship known from these latitudes. But these variety of adaptation required animal source of protein as well. Consequently by the sixth millennium B.C. man was totally geared to exploiting only r-selected species in both the floral and faunal components of the biomass. For the west Asian sites collection of pistachio nuts or hunting of gazelle and wild ass are examples of such hunting-gathering economy. The archaeological evidences available from these sites also help in answering the question- Did sedentism precede agriculture or is it the other way round? Again, going by the evidences of excavated sites from west Asia it would appear that sedentism occurs at least 1000 years earlier, if not more, before domesticated seeds are identified. Thus, one can see that a simple choice made by man in early Holocene had an enormous effect on human destiny. Since wild wheat and barley could be obtained only at specific localities (like the slopes of Zagros mountains in present day Iraq), man had to, by necessity, become semi-sedentary. It is argued that this resulted in the rise of fat content in human body. Fat content in the body below a critical level inhibits ovulation, and this could keep an average birth spacing of 3 to 4 years for active hunters. Taking to sedentism, as such, is believed to have released this barrier and consequently human population started growing exponentially within a short time. The nature of the resource being geo-specific, these hunter-gatherers could not undergo fission which must have been an effective population management technique in the preceding period. The combined effect of these two contradictory factors finally led man to carry the wild seeds and plant them along alluvial stretches, bogs, and lakes. Thus, man enters into productive economy, without realising what such an economy entails in the long run.
Changes during Neolithic Revolution
The new economy requires a series of substantial changes in technology, social structure and ideology. These changes create such a degree of change in the society that one feels that the word revolution alone can adequately describe it. The changes may be briefly described as follows:
Technology: Clearing forest in order to allow sun to reach the farming field was by no means a simple task. Specially rubbed and ground homogeneous rock was chosen to create efficient axes. Possibly clearing by fire was also used to clear bushes and undergrowth. Heavy ring-stones were created to be used as thrasher. Logging is essentially a labour intensive activity and harnessing labour always brings about the cardinal issue of redistribution of harvest in the manner of wages. Production economy brings about a new challenge. Our ancestors were never confronted with the problem of surplus and their storage in the preceding economy. This new problem was solved by creating adequate technique and expertise of pottery making.
Social structure: Labour management can be done by many methods. For instance people from simple societies practising Mesolithic economy in the neighbourhood can be lured into a symbiotic relationship. Alternately these people could be forced to contribute their labour, but this requires a degree of militarisation which is not evidenced till early metal age (e.g. in Sumeria). If marriage is established as an institution supported by whole range of sanctions and regulatory mechanisms this can enable one to draw labour on the basis of obligatory kinship loyalties. Thus, besides regulating mate selection marriage starts functioning also as the assured source of labour management.
Ideology: Agriculture is based on a limited land space chosen for farming. This contrasts the psychic stand of accepting a limitless ecology of both forest and waterscape as subsistence base in the preceding cultural period. Early farming was not only rain dependent but also wide open to insects and parasites. Consequently a permanent security of supply was not always predictable. This led to complex rituals and allied activities to combat unpredictability. It is believed that ancestor worship
might have emerged at this stage. It is also through this link and allied rituals that inheritance rights have to be established. Inheritance becomes a central concern in agriculture because the subsistence base of a homestead is limited in this economy.
A community which is not capable of creating a regulatory mechanism for these diverse factors may not be able to sustain agriculture even if it has been able to domesticate wild seeds. In fact the manner in which these varieties of factors combine themselves can create different shades of societies. Gradually a peasant group emerges with the ability to possess a surplus which constructs power and this in turn creates hierarchical rights to resources. The call for intensification of agriculture occurs
only when a political authority rises from within the system and mobilises productivity above the culturally determined cut-off point. Role of farming in giving rise to a proper village culture has to be, therefore, understood more in terms of the rise of social institutions which went hand in hand with demographic strength. It is, consequently, understood that areas where demography did not show much change because of high rate of child mortality in endemic parasitic zones farming remained in a very rudimentary stage. Harris (1972) has also argued that, “On ecological grounds, therefore, we can postulate that a long initial phase of cultivation by ecosystem manipulation preceded the emergence of agriculture in the strict sense of the word.”
Features of Neolithic Revolution
It will be worth our while to examine the available archaeological evidences of Neolithic period in the backdrop of the issues delineated above. The cultural attributes can be reduced into the following discriminating antiquities: a) Celts, b) Potsherds and c) Habitation structure.
Celts: The earliest farmers had to cut the virgin forest to clear a patch for tilling. It is believed that the Neolithic celt was evolved to meet this end. A hard and compact rock is selected and flaked into an axe or adze. Then the sharp edges caused by the intersection of flake scars are knocked off in the manner of pecking. Finally the tool is rubbed on a hard rock with sand and water thrown in. This results into a smooth metal like sharp border. The final step is referred to as „grinding and polishing‟.
Axe, adze, wedges and ring-stones are some of the interesting tool types of this family. Of these the type called ring- stone is not a cutting implement. It is a stone rubbed flat and circular in shape and then an hour-glass like hole is driven in the centre by drilling. It is believed that these were hafted on thick wooden staffs and used as mace head for separating shaff from grain. In some parts of India these are so small in size that it is believed that these may have been used as net sinkers.
Pottery: If cultivation is to be accepted as a gainful economy, it requires storing of the harvest for regularity and security of supply. It is argued that during earlier economy man had never faced the problem of storing. Some excavations have shown that for temporary storing in late Palaeolithic period man used to dig a hole in the ground. It is possible that the first farmer tried the same trick but had discovered that his entire surplus has become plants within 24 hours. This led him to decide that the hole under the ground can be brought above the ground and this led to the discovery of pottery. Initially these were created by moulding with hand and then fired superficially. Thus, handmade and ill fired potteries are taken as early Neolithic ceramic attribute. Such pots do not have uniform thickness and show a blotchy grey appearance.
Habitation: Agriculture ties down man because he has to wait for more than 3 months for the plants to grow and seeds to ripen. Permanent habitation structure, therefore, is also linked with the economy chosen. It is important to note that man is known to have constructed habitation structures of some sort as early as 400,000 years ago at Terra Amata in France and also as early as 9000 B.C. at Sarai-Nahar-Rai in Allahabad. Besides these rare evidences the economy chosen by man during Palaeolithic and Mesolithic period did not require him to stay put at one place. During early farming stage he had no alternative but to construct a dwelling place. Most of these dwelling structures were of stone and mud bricks (sun dried bricks) in areas of less rainfall. In India almost all evidences of habitation are wattle-and-daub structure. The latter is a technique in which dried branches of trees and bushes are used to form a screen. Subsequently wet mud is plastered over this screen from both the surfaces.