That makes me wonder about the hunter-gatherer lifestyle in areas that became the centres for farming, like the fertile crescent.
When they do find one of these primitive groups of people who are still living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, they’re always going to be in some remote, inaccessible area. That’s the only way that they could still be doing hunting and gathering without the modern world catching up to them. But, that means that a whole lot of the world’s best land is unavailable to them because it’s where modern civilization exists.
So, what would a hunter-gatherer lifestyle have been like in the Fertile Crescent? Would it have been significantly easier than a hunter-gatherer lifestyle deep in the jungle in Indonesia or in the Amazon? It would have to have been easier than the hunter-gatherers who still hunt and gather in the Kalahari Desert, for example.
I’m no historian or anthropologist so I’m just making things up here. But, I would guess that it’s not significantly easier than the hunter-gatherer that still exist. Mostly because I think otherwise they wouldn’t have switched to farming. The hunter-gathers that exist nowadays may lack formal education, but that doesn’t mean they’re all complete idiots. Somewhere in the last 30000 years some of them must have figured out that plants grow on the place you drop seeds. They haven’t switched to farming because it wasn’t worth the effort. Of course this is complicated by the issue that the amount of effort it takes to farm also varies from place to place. I’d guess farming is very hard in the desert. In the jungle farming is also difficult if you don’t have durable (i.e steel) implements to cut down hardwood trees. But given the climate hunting and gathering year round seems relatively easy there.
The fertile crescent has relatively easy farming, but enough seasonal changes to make year round hunting-gathering much more risky.
That makes me wonder about the hunter-gatherer lifestyle in areas that became the centres for farming, like the fertile crescent.
When they do find one of these primitive groups of people who are still living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, they’re always going to be in some remote, inaccessible area. That’s the only way that they could still be doing hunting and gathering without the modern world catching up to them. But, that means that a whole lot of the world’s best land is unavailable to them because it’s where modern civilization exists.
So, what would a hunter-gatherer lifestyle have been like in the Fertile Crescent? Would it have been significantly easier than a hunter-gatherer lifestyle deep in the jungle in Indonesia or in the Amazon? It would have to have been easier than the hunter-gatherers who still hunt and gather in the Kalahari Desert, for example.
I’m no historian or anthropologist so I’m just making things up here. But, I would guess that it’s not significantly easier than the hunter-gatherer that still exist. Mostly because I think otherwise they wouldn’t have switched to farming. The hunter-gathers that exist nowadays may lack formal education, but that doesn’t mean they’re all complete idiots. Somewhere in the last 30000 years some of them must have figured out that plants grow on the place you drop seeds. They haven’t switched to farming because it wasn’t worth the effort. Of course this is complicated by the issue that the amount of effort it takes to farm also varies from place to place. I’d guess farming is very hard in the desert. In the jungle farming is also difficult if you don’t have durable (i.e steel) implements to cut down hardwood trees. But given the climate hunting and gathering year round seems relatively easy there. The fertile crescent has relatively easy farming, but enough seasonal changes to make year round hunting-gathering much more risky.