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Authors: John L. Locke
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animals that remained. Fortunately, an alternative developed. It was
global warming
, a significant increase in temperature and rainfall, occurring between eleven and fifteen thousand years ago. This climate change stimulated the proliferation of annual cereals and legumes, giving our ancestors new nutritional possibilities on a more local scale. Where dwindling herds had necessitated a change in the human diet, these new plants enabled it. The new cuisine, small animals, vegetables, and wild cereals, 6 were less palatable than horse and reindeer, but they could be reliably found in one place. 7
These changes enabled people to get by, but the population continued to rise, and this increased competition for the new diet. Fortunately, solutions lay in the large and inventive human brain. Having enough intelligence to modify the natural environment, and more time to themselves than ever, our Holocene ancestors discovered that seeds and shoots, with proper handling, could become an important new source of nutrition. They also found ways to domesticate pigs, goats, and other animals. About twelvethousand years ago, people began to herd, farm, and fish, and it was around this time that people began to settle down. 8
Settling down
The new ways of acquiring food required little or no roaming. So for the first time in history, it made sense for most humans to develop fixed areas of residence. It was also discovered that farming was ideally pursued on a cooperative basis, with the possibility of formal systems of storage and exchange, and this led to the establishment of farming communities. Population centers arose in Egypt and Mesopotamia as well as China, the Americas, Africa, and other places. 9
In time, agriculture and sedentism made their own contribution to population growth. When migration stopped, infants no longer needed to be carried from one place to another, reducing the rate of infanticide. With grain in their diets, it also became possible to wean infants earlier. This shortened the period of lactation, enabling women to bear more infants in their reproductive lifetime. Adults were also living longer. These additions to the populace encouraged even more sedentism and farming.
The transition into sedentism increased the frequency and stealth of eavesdropping. For one thing, sedentary societies were larger, more complex and competitive, and more stressful than nomadic ones. In the event of a heated conflict—something that was increasing—it was harder for disputants to vote with their feet. Wars of words—which might once have remained at the verbal level—became violent. Moreover, many of these transitional groups were still attempting to live in a structurally flat, egalitarian way, and with no tribal leaders to resolve their conflicts, sedentist villages became more militant than nomadic ones had ever been. 10 These social changes encouraged the construction of more substantial dwellings. The walls were weight-bearing structures that supported the roof, protecting occupants from the sun and rain,but they would also serve as shields, protecting residents from the perceptual invasion of others.
Having social as well as climatic functions, the new domestic walls could only have been regarded as a wonderful new invention. But it was not so simple. There was still a hidden factor, one that is missing in most anthropological and archaeological accounts of human domestication.
Resistance
In some places, people
resisted the construction of dwellings. In
his book
House Form and Culture
anthropological architect Amos Rapoport described the housing that existed, or had existed, in a wide variety of places around the world. After surveying countless dwellings, he concluded that “house building
is not a natural act
and is not universal.” 11 He based this on housing patterns in various places, from southeast Asia to South America and Australia, where tribes continued to live without houses.
One of the places was Tierra
global warming
, a significant increase in temperature and rainfall, occurring between eleven and fifteen thousand years ago. This climate change stimulated the proliferation of annual cereals and legumes, giving our ancestors new nutritional possibilities on a more local scale. Where dwindling herds had necessitated a change in the human diet, these new plants enabled it. The new cuisine, small animals, vegetables, and wild cereals, 6 were less palatable than horse and reindeer, but they could be reliably found in one place. 7
These changes enabled people to get by, but the population continued to rise, and this increased competition for the new diet. Fortunately, solutions lay in the large and inventive human brain. Having enough intelligence to modify the natural environment, and more time to themselves than ever, our Holocene ancestors discovered that seeds and shoots, with proper handling, could become an important new source of nutrition. They also found ways to domesticate pigs, goats, and other animals. About twelvethousand years ago, people began to herd, farm, and fish, and it was around this time that people began to settle down. 8
Settling down
The new ways of acquiring food required little or no roaming. So for the first time in history, it made sense for most humans to develop fixed areas of residence. It was also discovered that farming was ideally pursued on a cooperative basis, with the possibility of formal systems of storage and exchange, and this led to the establishment of farming communities. Population centers arose in Egypt and Mesopotamia as well as China, the Americas, Africa, and other places. 9
In time, agriculture and sedentism made their own contribution to population growth. When migration stopped, infants no longer needed to be carried from one place to another, reducing the rate of infanticide. With grain in their diets, it also became possible to wean infants earlier. This shortened the period of lactation, enabling women to bear more infants in their reproductive lifetime. Adults were also living longer. These additions to the populace encouraged even more sedentism and farming.
The transition into sedentism increased the frequency and stealth of eavesdropping. For one thing, sedentary societies were larger, more complex and competitive, and more stressful than nomadic ones. In the event of a heated conflict—something that was increasing—it was harder for disputants to vote with their feet. Wars of words—which might once have remained at the verbal level—became violent. Moreover, many of these transitional groups were still attempting to live in a structurally flat, egalitarian way, and with no tribal leaders to resolve their conflicts, sedentist villages became more militant than nomadic ones had ever been. 10 These social changes encouraged the construction of more substantial dwellings. The walls were weight-bearing structures that supported the roof, protecting occupants from the sun and rain,but they would also serve as shields, protecting residents from the perceptual invasion of others.
Having social as well as climatic functions, the new domestic walls could only have been regarded as a wonderful new invention. But it was not so simple. There was still a hidden factor, one that is missing in most anthropological and archaeological accounts of human domestication.
Resistance
In some places, people
resisted the construction of dwellings. In
his book
House Form and Culture
anthropological architect Amos Rapoport described the housing that existed, or had existed, in a wide variety of places around the world. After surveying countless dwellings, he concluded that “house building
is not a natural act
and is not universal.” 11 He based this on housing patterns in various places, from southeast Asia to South America and Australia, where tribes continued to live without houses.
One of the places was Tierra
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