[tied] Re: Agriculture and IE

From: jdcroft
Message: 13416
Date: 2002-04-22

Hi Folks

Regarding speculations regarding origins of agriculture and the Indo-
Europeans, I would suggest that we are confusing two separate events
in history.

Firstly we have the origins of grain agriculture in the Middle East.
This saw the domestication of plants in the hilly piedmont zone of
rain-fed agriculture moving down into the less mountainous, less well
watered areas. Crops were planted using digging sticks, used for a
couple of years and then abandonned to recover fertility. These
people were aceramic (did not use pots), harvested unfenced fields
with flint sickles and made flour with domestic querns. The animals
that were domesticated were used for meet only. This culture spread
from Eastern Anatolia and the upper Tigris and Euphrates watershed
south into Palestine, east into Iran and West to the Aegean. It even
crossed the sea to Cyprus and Crete. This movement of agriculture
*was not* associated with PIE movements. It seems that gender
relations within these cultures were marked by a fair degree of
egalitarianism.

By 6,200-5,800 BCE, a serious climatic reversal in the area of
aceramic agriculture seems to have led to real suffering and hardship
amongst these people. Soil fertility, depleted through continuous
cropping fell. Increased population pressure on increasingly fragile
environments saw a number of inter-related trends.

1. Increased signs of malnutrition, with increasing death rates
amongst the very young and the very old.
2. Attempts at outmigration, spread of cultures into more marginal
areas outside the zone originally used for primary agriculture.
3. Collapse of systems of complex agriculture and reversion to more
simple hunter-gathering (as in the Sinai for example).
4. Institution of infanticide and even canibalism as a means of
reducing social stress (found historically in the region from Canaan
to Gambutas's "Old Europe").
5. Rise in intergroup (and intra-group) violence, with an increase in
instutions for defence from agressive neighbours (the Walls of
Jericho and the fortresses of Mersin and Troy etc)
6. Attempts to intensify agricultural production, increasing inputs
of human labour in order to maintain satisfactory outputs.

This lead to Andrew Sherrat's "Secondary Products Revolution", which,
although a development upon the first system of Primary Agriculture
saw some remarkable new techniques. Firstly these were ceramic
cultures, the invention of pottery allowing a variety of cooking abd
baking methods not present before. These were cultures which saw the
development of both yeast breads and beer manufacture. Animal
products other than meat were used, milk was gathered from cattle,
sheep and goats, and drunk as a beverage, or used to make butters,
yoghurts and cheezes. Wool supplimented the use of flax and (in
Egypt) cotton, and new technologies for spinning and weaving also
spread. The use of animals for traction (originally oxen, later
horses), saw the development of the plough replace the digging stick
which remained limited to the domestic gardens. A variety of new
crops was added to the mix, especially vines and olives, permitting
the development of a new mixed agricultural "mediterranean" economy.

These trends saw an increase required in duties inside the home - for
example, with spinning, weaving, bewing and baking. Agricultural
work outside the home, for example ploughing and harvest, remained
collective tasks. The increased use of animals in these systems
allowed the use of animal manures, with the rise of greater densities
of population, and the growth of what can only be called a "sedentary
peasantry". These cultures were less mobile than the earlier
shifting cultivators, permitting the increase in accumulated wealth.
The increased opportunity for violent means of expropriation - of
herds, of crops gathered, of lands, and of possessions - saw an
increase in organised agression. Forms of social stratification, not
possible in the simpler shifting subsistence agriculturists of the
first phase, with upper-class warrior parasitism on the backs of the
peasantry, becoming possible. Societies became less egalitarian,
women's roles were increasingly confined to the domestic sphere, and
more patriarchal sultures appeared.

Given the presence in PIE of such terms for plough and wheel, shows
that the spread of Indo-European cultures while long before the
presence attested of Mycenaean, Hittite and Indo-Aryan, occurred not
with the primary spread of agriculture (as proposed by Renfrew and
others), but after the Secondary Products revolution of 4,500-5,500
BCE (depending in which parts of the world we are speaking).

This secondary products revolution quickly spread to the limits and
beyond of the frontier between primary agriculture and sub-Neolithic
hunter-gatherer cultures (in Northern Germany and Southern
Scandinavia for instance). More recent techniques of examining bones
can destinguish diets of their bearers, and it appears that the first
settlers in Western Europe were already bearers of a secondary
products culture. See

http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba12/ba12feat.html

For examples of how this may have played itself out in the
development of Anatolian languages see

http://iiasnt.leidenuniv.nl/pie/ielangs/anatolian.html

One of the most interesting development of the secondary product
revolution was the growth of a wholly new form of agriculture
associated with a specialisation into pastoralism. These pastoral
economies, with a far less sedentary mode of life, moved into areas
considered marginal for conventional farming, specialising upon
animals and animal products. Mobility between seasonal pastures and
the search for suitable water sources pre-occupied these cultures.
Wealth was in ones herds, and raiding ones neighbours became a
popular pastime. These cultures saw egalitarianism increase -
avoiding the highly socially stratified form of their neighbours.
The higher than average levels of institutionalised violence, forced
by the competition between groups for pasture or water resources, saw
a stengthened tribal organisation, in which all were trained as
warriors.

Sexual differentiation within nomadic pastoralist groups seem at
first to have been minimised, by comparison to their more sedentary
neighbours. Rather than all male conquering kurganiy proposed by
Gambutas, we find that women in these early cultures had a
surprisingly high status, being accepted as warriors in their own
right. See

http://www.linguafranca.com/9712/nosborne.html

What can we say therefore, of the origins of patriarchy, which
Gambutas saw as originating with the conquering "Indo-Europeans"?

Patriarchal stuctures seem found in Chimpanzees, where bands are
dominated by an alpha male in alliance with a group of "henchmen"
whereas Bonobos seem to be dominated by a sisterhood, using sexual
favours as rewards to maintain a degree of social harmony. So a wide
cross section is found amongst our near neighbours. A great degree
of sexual dimorphism seems to have characterised Australopitheines
suggestive of social groups dominated by senior males, similar to
that found in gorilla and orang utan. Nevertheless, the evolution of
homo erectus shows a marked degree of equality between males and
females with females finishing up about 15% smaller than males.

Hunter gatherer bands as a general rule, when social conditions are
stable, seem to allow a great degree of equality and autonomy of men
and women. Institutionalised violence amongst all social groups,
generally leads to various forms of male dominance, and so we can
look towards evidence of the appearance of a special caste or class
of warriors as generally being associated with an increasing trend
towards patriarchy.

Nevertheless the slow erosion of women's rights - from being allowed
to own property, be represented independently in legal cases, and
being able to initiate divorce whilst retaining one's independent
wealth - seems to have been progressively erroded historically, to a
minimum in the days of classical Athens. From then on throughout the
Middle East the veiling and seclusion of women seems to have become
commonplace, especially amongst the social elite. Genealogies seem
to have become strictly patriarchal, and it has been argued that
seclusion of women was a way for male patriarchs of being able to
guarantee paternity.

What does this say about early PIE society. Although Dumezil
suggests a degree of social stratification and separation between
agricultural, warrior and priestly functions, the rigid separation
and submission of women to men seems to have occurred with exposure
of Indo-Europeans to Mediterranean civilisation (and later
Christianity). The conquering hordes of misogynistic kurgan
warriors, found in Gambutas's writings seems not to have occurred.

Interested in people's thoughts

Regards

John