[This is the eighth of a series of articles about the Neolithic Revolution, or First Agricultural Revolution, that saw most of humanity switch from hunter gatherers to settled farmers and agriculturalists. For the start of the series, Part I, click here]
Historian Yuval Noah Harari advances a groundbreaking argument in his international bestseller, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, about what made hunter gatherers become farmers. The thesis starts with the widely accepted premise that grains and their benefits were the chief motivation. There was a twist, however, when it came to our main staple crops such as wheat and rice. Arguably, the plants domesticated humans, not the other way around. How so?
The Explosive Expansion of Wheat Around the World
Take wheat as an example, and examine it from the perspective of the basic evolutionary criterion of survival and reproduction. Until about ten thousand years ago, wheat was just a species of wild grass that was confined to a relatively small range in the Middle East. Within a few millennia – a blink of an eye in an evolutionary time scale – wheat had spread all over the world. Few if any species have ever achieved such growth within such a short time.
Wheat went from an insignificant grass species that grew in only a relatively small part of the planet, to a globe-spanning plant by manipulating humans. Homo sapiens, a species that had been living a relatively easy hunter gatherer lifestyle for untold generations, suddenly gave up its wandering about ten thousand years ago. It settled down, and started to invest more and more time and effort into wheat cultivation. Within a few millennia, humans around the world were spending most of their time from sunrise to sunset caring for wheat plants.
Humans Put Up With a Lot for the Sake of Wheat
It was no easy task to take care of wheat, as it is a pretty finicky plant. Wheat is thirsty, so humans had to lug water or dig channels to bring it water. It is defenseless against critters that like eating it, so humans defended it against rabbits, locusts, and deer. Wheat likes nutrients, so humans collected feces to scatter over the fields. It gets sick, so humans had to keep a constant watch for blight and worms. Wheat does not like to share space with other plants, so humans spent hours stooped over to remove weeds. Wheat does not like rocks or pebbles, so humans wrecked their backs to clear wheat fields. We did all of that for the sake of wheat, even though our bodies were not made for that kind of work.
Did We Domesticate Wheat, or Did Wheat Domesticate Us?
Over millions of years, our bodies evolved to climb trees or chase wildebeest in the African Savannah. We were not made to bend over wheat fields to clear, weed, hoe, and water them, or perform many of the other myriad tasks associated with caring for that plant. Yet, wheat convinced us to do just that, and accept hernias, slipped disks, plus neck, knee, back, and foot pains, as an acceptable price for its cultivation. Seen from that perspective, the argument that it was wheat that actually domesticated humans, not humans who domesticated wheat, does not seem farfetched. The very word “domesticate” is derived from the Latin root domus, or house. It was wheat that convinced our ancestors to give up hunter gathering, and settled down in houses near their farms so they could be closer to wheat.
[This is the eighth in a series of articles about the Neolithic Revolution, also known as the First Agricultural Revolution. It saw most of humanity switch from hunter gatherers to settled farmers and agriculturalists
I: Why Did Humans Switch From Wandering Hunter Gatherers to Settled Farmers?
II: When Humans Got Too Good at Hunting
III: When Prehistoric Hunter Gatherers Depleted the Available Resources
IV: The Domestication of Sheep and Goats
V: Newly Emergent Farmers Had to Work a Lot Harder than Hunter Gatherers
VI: Did the Discovery of Bread Cause the Shift From Hunter Gathering to Farming?
VII: Was it Actually Beer, Not Bread, that Motivated Hunter Gatherers to Become Farmers?
VIII: Was it Wheat That Domesticated Humans, Instead of the Other Way Around?
IX: Early Farmers Enjoyed a Bonanza, But it Became a Borderline Bust for Their Descendants
X: Humanity Benefited Greatly From the Switch to Farming, But it Came at a High Cost
XI: Humankind’s Greatest Revolution]
_________________
Some Sources & Further Reading
Barker, Graeme – The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory: Why Did Foragers Become Farmers? (2006)
Diamond, Jared – Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997)
Encyclopedia Britannica – Neolithic Revolution
Gonick, Larry – The Cartoon History of the Universe (1990)
Harari, Yuval Noah – Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2014)
