----- Original Message -----
From: "jdcroft" <jdcroft@...>
To: <nostratic@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2002 9:57 AM
Subject: [nostratic] Re: Problems with Bomhard


[John]
> I tend to find bows and microliths part of a "cluster" of Mesolithic
> features which spread out of Africa associated with Flannery's "Broad
> Spectrum Revolution". After 20,000 BP this saw a predominant
> hunting-gathering way of life with an increased utilization of
> labour intensive small game, waterfowl, fish, wild cereals, etc. We
> see the first appearance of some of the preadaptations to cultivation:
> grinding tools, storage pits, and greater food security when faced
> with microclimatic fluctuations. Coming out of Africa we find the
> appearance of microliths, bow and arrow and grinding stones for seeds,
> with the use of storage pits. In the Middle East (particularly
> Zarzian culture), the dog was added to this assemblage, allowing the
> rapid expansion which we see in the Nostratic. The key feature of
> this change was adaptiveness to local environmental conditions. As
> they moved northwards, canoes, nets, snow-shoes, and skis were added
> to their technological repertoire.

[Alexander]
Do you mean that the Mesolithic "Broad Spectrum Revolution" is a unitary
process, and ALL the variants of it went from one center? In other words,
fishermen tribes and gatherers of wild cereals developed in different ways
the same inventions made by their common (Nostratic according to your
conception) ancestors?

I think that different variants of the "Mesolithic revolution" are
alternative processes. When ecological conditions changed every tribe had to
invent a new adaptation or die out. If one has invented a fishing net, he
need not to invent a sickle. It's impossible to sit on 2 chairs.



[A]
> > Transition to farming was just an episode, not very principle one,
> > and occurred independently in different Nostratic groups, if I
> > understand you correctly.
[J]
> Yes

[A]
An episode, in result of which the density of population in Neolithic
increased 50-fold, at least.

From my point of view the transition to farming is the most important what
ever happened with mankind (although it happened independently several times
in different parts of the world). From the point of view of ecology before
it Homo sapiens was just 1 species of about 1000000 animals populated the
Earth. Not better and not worse than any other species. Homo had a large
brain, but some other animals had a long tail. Sometimes a long tail is more
useful than a large brain. The only real advantage of human populations was
the ability to change their behaviour relatively quickly due to teaching.
But the places where people appeared (forests, steppe, lakes, mountains)
remained practically the same (perhaps only the frequency of fires
increased). If all the people disappeared from the planet, nobody would
notice a difference. Pigs or bears would occupy their ecological niche
immediately.

The situation changed principally when some people passed to farming. New
biomes were created artificially - a garden, a field, a pasture, a
farmyard - they are new worlds, which would never arise spontaneously and
which are not able to exist without constant influence of people. The human
being started to create an artificial biosphere for himself. Only from this
moment we can say that he is something more than just an animal.

Could such an event to leave without influence anything what occurred on the
Earth?

Alexander