Dawn of civilisations. How right do you think I am?, page 1

I thought I might state my understanding of our development over the millennia and invite you guys to help me analyse it. This thread will deal mainly in anthropology.

[size=2]At the risk of being confrontational, I'll say that I am in the evolution camp because I have eyes to see and ears to hear. To accept creationism is to say wind doesn't exist and the trees move by themselves.[/size]

The typical human populace will start out as a hunter-gatherer community, hunting big game, while foraging for for fruit, nuts, berries etc. Even at the very early stages, language would be present as it is synonymous with the presence of society which is why many types of other animals have rudimentary language.

At some stage, the community will move from being hunter-gatherers to an agriculture community with the domestication of the plants and animals.

Watching various documentaries I learnt that this change happened simultaneously in north Africa and Greenland due to significant climate change. The Egyptian civilisation is said to have been brought down by the same thing that started it, the drying up of the Sahara from forest to desert. As the forest receded, the hunter-gather peoples within receded too. They settled around the Nile river where vegetation still thrived. Shortly after the people generated agriculture. Annually, the rains in the Niger area flooded the Nile bringing the 'black earth' which kept the soil fertile. The end came when the rains failed to come and the black earth did not replenish the food supply to support the large society. Without the food, everything was thrown into turmoil, yet someone still managed to record in hieroglyphs that cannibalism had infested the land.

At around the same time as the forests receded, the people living in Europe experienced the beginning of the Little Ice Age. During the hard times, people converted from hunters to farmers to stay alive.

The common denominator for these two cases is that great ocean conveyor failed to transport heat around the globe as it usually does, resulting in the heating Africa and the cooling of Europe (Before this happened, Greenland would have actually been green rather than iced over as it is now).


The role of agriculture, IMHO, acts as a catalyst for the advancement of a society. When the most important thing in your life, food, is coming from the ground, and the types of food consumed and the quality of that food is dependant on the season, then the passing of the seasons will become very important to the farmer. I believe this in turn inspires the advent of astrology and in turn, religion. The heavenly bodies would have been seen as central to the food supply and thus the health and life of the people. I believe this inspires people to believe that the sun and the earth are purposefully contributing to the lives of the people which brings about the worship of the Sun, moon, earth etc.

I think that the fundamental importance of the earth is the reason for their worship and as time goes on, the things that are worshipped gain an anthropomorphic façade - the gods, angels and the rest of the beings replete through metaphysics.

As a side note, my own ponderings, have brought me to believe that the common maternal nature attributed to the Earth, "Mother Earth/Nature" is because all food and hence life comes direct from it, similar to how the new born comes direct form the woman's womb. And I also think that the paternal nature attributed to the sun is because it contributes to life but from a distance, similar to the father "bringing home the bacon".

How right am I? Am I over simplifying things? What do you agree/disagree with?


Mod Edit: BB Code.



Edit: On the subject of language.

I neglected to add my thoughts on the developments of language, so I'll just stick 'em on the end here.

During the early days of man, language would have been based around hunter and gathering, obviously, but with the advent of astrology, in the intense drive to understand the weather and the seasons, language had to diversify.

One consequence of agriculture is that new concepts are introduced to young humanity. Namely; territory, property, organising and most important of all, inter-human competition. These things brought a lot, not only to language, to human nature- men were fighting over land for the first time.

Suddenly, men were talking about things contextually, things that don't apply to now. This is something that no other species has emulated to the best of human understanding.

As astrology became more complete, there was the need to store the information. Apart from cave-art, the first written language would appear around now. With written language, the stage is set for this fledgling civ to start advancing rapidly out of ignorance.

[edit on 9/11/2008 by Good Wolf]

[edit on 9/11/2008 by Good Wolf]

You have made some interesting insights.

Maybe you would be interested in a couple of my threads. They are similar to yours but with differences.

www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by Good Wolf
Yea. Wikipedia talks about how in some cases, a surplus of food would be used as a gift. To other tribes i'm guessing.

Well, I suppose so, but the main point being people could concentrate on something other than agriculture - art, science, religion, technology, etc.

And, of course, brewing beer. As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to come out of the caves and start toiling the land.

reply to post by Good Wolf

---

I'd say that switching from hunter/gatherers to farmers caused some pretty dramatic changes in human society. Every step in improving the efficiency of farming meant another person didn't have to farm to survive. Just as walking on two legs freed up our hands to use tools, freeing people from directly providing for themselves created a growing surplus of minds, bodies, and time to learn more about our world. Couple that with our impressive language skills, and you have the first real progressive cultures that can cause more change in 10 years than previous cultures could in 100. And then came the industrial revolution, which accelerated learning and technology very rapidly, causing even more progress.

I find the story of human development absolutely fascinating. We really are animals, just with a couple of different traits that superficially set us apart from the other beasts. Great post, Mr. Wolf!

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