Medieval (?) ice cellar for meat storage (Sweden). Link: runlamaIn northern climates, the yearly cycle of changing temperatures encouraged humans to think ahead to the next season.
My last post mentioned the debate over the provenance of present-day Europeans. Do they descend from the hunter-gatherers of Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic Europe? Or were those people a dead end? Were they replaced by Middle Eastern farmers when agriculture spread into Europe 9,000 to 3,000 years ago?
This debate will eventually be settled when we can genetically compare late European hunter-gatherers with early European farmers. And ‘eventually’ is not far off. Much data will come on-stream over the next three years, probably enough to end the debate. The evidence will probably show that European hunter-gatherers did adopt farming, but not all of them to the same extent. Some did so before others and thus expanded at the latter’s expense. So my hunch is that European farming spread both culturally and demographically. The early farmers were not a random sample of the late hunter-gatherers.
But why is there so much resistance to the idea that European hunter-gatherers became farmers? One reason is that hunter-gatherers do not easily take to farming. This is a point that the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins made. Becoming a farmer is not just a matter of learning new techniques. It’s also a matter of acquiring a different outlook that is geared to future consumption. “Short-term pain for long-term gain.” Food has to be planted in the spring, harvested in the fall, and stored for winter.
Such a trade-off is rare in hunter-gatherer societies. There’s no point in tending a plot of land because you’re constantly on the move. There’s also no point in holding on to stuff because it has to be carried around.
As Sahlins (2005) puts it:
The hunter, one is tempted to say, is "uneconomic man". At least as concerns non subsistence goods, he is the reverse of that standard caricature immortalised in any General Principles of Economics, page one. His wants are scarce and his means (in relation) plentiful. Consequently he is "comparatively free of material pressures", has "no sense of possession", shows "an undeveloped sense of property", is "completely indifferent to any material pressures", manifests a "lack of interest" in developing his technological equipment.
Sahlins quotes from a monograph on the Yahgan Indians:
They do not know how to take care of their belongings. No one dreams of putting them in order, folding them, drying or cleaning them, hanging them up, or putting them in a neat pile. If they are looking for some particular thing, they rummage carelessly through the hodgepodge of trifles in the little baskets. Larger objects that are piled up in a heap in the hut are dragged hither and thither with no regard for the damage that might be done them.
The European observer has the impression that these (Yahgan) Indians place no value whatever on their utensils and that they have completely forgotten the effort it took to make them. Actually, no one clings to his few goods and chattels which, as it is, are often and easily lost, but just as easily replaced [...] The Indian does not even exercise care when he could conveniently do so. A European is likely to shake his head at the boundless indifference of these people who drag brand-new objects, precious clothing, fresh provisions and valuable items through thick mud, or abandon them to their swift destruction by children and dogs [...] Expensive things that are given them are treasured for a few hours, out of curiosity; after that they thoughtlessly let everything deteriorate in the mud and wet. The less they own, the more comfortable they can travel, and what is ruined they occasionally replace. Hence, they are completely indifferent to any material possessions.
For all these reasons, farming has spread more through the expansion of an existing population of farmers than through the conversion of hunter-gatherers.
Sahlins based his conclusions on those hunter-gatherer groups that exist today, generally tropical or semi-tropical groups like the !Kung and the Australian Aborigines. We know much less about the hunter-gatherers who used to roam across Europe. But we do know that they were more future-oriented and possession-oriented.
First, the changing seasons imposed a yearly cycle of resource availability. Natural selection thus favored humans who could plan their behavior with an eye to the next season. For example, it favored the construction of “ice cellars”—deep storage pits dug down to the permafrost as a way to store meat for future use (Hoffecker 2002, p. 161).
Second, the colder climate limited the number of game animals per square kilometer, thus forcing hunters to cover a larger land surface. This in turn favored a capacity to generate mental models of animal movement over space and time. It also favored a capacity (or rather a willingness) to manage traps and snares by periodically checking them.
As Hoffecker (2002, p. 135) notes about early modern humans, tools and weapons were more complex at arctic latitudes than at tropical latitudes. “Technological complexity in colder environments seems to reflect the need for greater foraging efficiency in settings where many resources are available only for limited periods of time.”
Non-tropical humans coped with seasonal variation in resources by planning ahead. They were thus “pre-adapted” for later developments in cultural evolution, including the advent of agriculture.
References
Hoffecker, J.F. (2002). Desolate Landscapes. Ice-Age Settlement in Eastern Europe. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Martin, G. (1961). The Yamana, 5 vols. New Haven, Conn.: Human Relations Area Files. (German edition 1931).
Sahlins, M. (2005).