Climate change a catalyst for agriculture
About 10,000 years ago humans started domesticating plants and animals–commonly called the Agricultural Revolution. In doing this people had to stop their nomadic/hunter-gatherer ways and settle down. Yes, animals were domesticated first in all likelihood–much easier to move your cow/sheep/goat/horse/dog with you as you move than a patch of grains growing.
Settling down and the development of agriculture is generally seen as the first step to modern human society. People found they had time to do other things and the need to invent things (plows, pumps, more and different tools)–it all started from there.
One of the big questions has always been why would they do this anyway? Hunter-gatherers have more leisure time than farmers. They eat just as well. But that’s now, what about 10,00 years ago? What was happening then. 10,000 years ago the Earth’s climate was moving from a glacial to interglacial state. Ice sheets were retreating, sea level was fluctuating, the atmosphere was changing, and it was getting warmer. All together these factors might have been the catalyst to make stopping in one place to grow food a better survival option than continuing to wander about.
Via Arstechnica and Wired there is research that is putting these pieces together:
It ends up with the big mystery: why did people suddenly think domesticating plants was a good idea? The 10,000 year figure is suspiciously close to the rapid climactic changes that accompanied the end of the last ice age, suggesting that changing temperatures might have disrupted food supplies enough to make domestic plants essential. The end of the ice age also pushed atmospheric carbon levels up by nearly 50 percent, which may have triggered favorable changes in the plants themselves. But it ends on an enigmatic note: maybe there was something cultural going on that we may never be able to reconstruct….” Source: Beyond the Beyond – Wired Blogs
This will be a hard thing to prove, but the work I used to do in paleoecology would be used to try to understand what was going on. Building models and profiles of how vegetation was changing one could start to see if some areas were suddenly better for some plants over others. And if the plants that do better can be eaten, well you can see where this is going.
Implications for now is how fast this can happen. What happens if areas that are breadbaskets now become deserts later? Would we be ready to start farming in areas that aren’t suitable now?
Makes you wonder sometimes if shouldn’t have just stayed nomadic wanderers.
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