Re: To Be a Farmer's Boy (was Dennis on Glen(was Hebrew and Arabic))

Dennis wrote

> I've snipped the stuff about the Sahara. I've written a long and

quite

> possibly tedious posting about what I think about that.

Not at all. Not tedious. Well assembled... unfortunately some of
the
evidence is wrong. Other misinterpreteted. A good try given that EB
is your only source.

> Enc.Britt. associates the Aterian industry with Neanderthals - so

this can't

> be the source of Nostratic.

EB is wrong here, and partly right. Aterian is a tradition that went
straight from a Middle Paleolithic culture to a mesolithic one,
without passing through the European Upper Paleolithic. To assume
Middle Paleolithic ---> Upper Paleolithic ---> Mesolithic --->
Neolithic sequence is Eurocentric and disproven by African and Far
Eastern modern archaeology. In fact, the earliest blades are in
Australia, and Australia has neolithic ground stone tools at 40,000
years ago! To EB Middle-Paleolithic is "Neanderthaloid" and "Upper
Paleolithic" is Hss. But that is based on the misleading assumption
that Hss only appeared 40,000 years ago, at the same time as Upper
Paleolithic. This has been totally disproven by Klassies River Mouth
and Border Cave.

I wrote

> > Hmm... Interesting. Then on this count Semitic may be a
> > non-Afro-Asiatic language that has become Afro-Asiaticised.

Dennis replied

> Or vice-versa - an AfroAsiatic language that got Near-Eastern-ised.

Yes, this is my point about the end of PPNB in Palestine and the
coming of Afro-Asiatic.

Dennis wrote

> Or AfroAsiatic arriving in Yemen with the Capsian post-Gamblian

migration

> and moving north (see my other post).

Sorry Dennis - no Capsian has ever been found in Yemen. Yemenite
stone traditions show clear affinity to either Aurignacian blades
(20-25,000 BCE) then with a hiatus during the arid 18,000 BCE,
resumes
with a microlithic tradition related to and later than Palestinian
Kebaran.

Dennis asked

> Why can't a forager be sedentary, at least for as long as the

resources

> support him and his family? If I was a forager and found a nice

valley with

> running water, wild edible plants, some game, birds, eggs etc., I'd

stick

> around as long as possible, certainly more than a year or two,

which
is all

> it would take to observe the naturally occurring flora and growing

cycle.

> Then, what happens? You either move on, or stick around and start

farming.

> Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the earliest farmers would have

practised a

> mixed economy of farming, foraging and hunting.

The mixed economy is clearly established. (PNG people have it to
this
day!) Foragers can be sedentary, under suitable conditions. The
conditions have to be clear though - the utilisation of food-stocks
that are in surfeit abundance, and in no likelihood of depletion.
The
NW Chiefs of the Salmon runs in British Columbia down to Northern
California were sedentary foragers. Others no doubt existed
throughout history. The Natufians seem to have been. Where
population densities are low, the answer is always "move on" - never
stick around and become farmers. Sticking around in the absence of
modern hygeine brings disease. The healthy way - the way to keep
work
loads down - the way of avoiding costly burdens, overheads etc - was
always to move on - for hundreds of thousands of years.

Sedentarism seems at first glance opportunistic. Only when
populations exceed carrying capacities everywhere does it become
obligate. Obligate sedentarism led to farming.

To my point

> > The final "push" into full-fledged farming in the Near East seems

to

> > have been aridity. Harvesting the naturally occurring fields of

wild

> > grain is fine when it is wet, but when you move to a semi arid
> > condition - you either revert to nomadism (as happened with

southern

> > Natufians), or begin farming (as happened with Anatolia and

Zagros),

> > or you perish!

Dennis wrote

> I quite agree, but I still maintain that the "knowledge revolution"

that

> provided this choice had already happened, and that that could have

happened

> elsewhere, amongst a semi-sedentary foraging people who only

practised

> agriculture when necessary (or for fun and profit).

Yes! In Oceania, and South East Asia, where paleoclimatological data
shows vegetation was much more stable! Europe, the Middle East and
the Sahara were much slower as a result of the climatic changes all
the time during the Ice Ages, shifting vegetation zones all over the
place.

Regards

John