3

The Possibility of Civilization

Human beings have existed for at least twenty times as long as the civilizations they have created. The waning of the last Ice Age allowed the long march to civilization to be completed and is the immediate prelude to History. Within five or six thousand years a succession of momentous changes took place of which unquestionably the most important was an increase in food supply. Nothing so sharply accelerated human development or had such widespread results until the changes called industrialization which have gone on over the last three centuries.

One scholar summed up these changes which mark the end of prehistory as the ‘Neolithic revolution’. Here begins another little tangle of potentially misleading terminology, though the last we need consider in prehistory. Archaeologists follow the Palaeolithic era by the Mesolithic and that by the Neolithic (some add a fourth, the Chalcolithic, by which they mean a phase of society in which artifacts of stone and copper are in simultaneous use). The distinction between the first two is really of interest only to the specialist, but all these terms describe cultural facts; they identify sequences of artifacts which show growing resources and capacities. Only the term ‘Neolithic’ need concern us. It means, at its narrowest and most precise, a culture in which ground or polished stone tools replace chipped ones (though other criteria are sometimes added to this). This may not seem so startling a change as to justify the excitement over the Neolithic which has been shown by some prehistorians, far less talk of a ‘Neolithic revolution’. In fact, though the phrase is still sometimes used, it is unsatisfactory because it has had to cover too many different ideas. None the less, it was an attempt to pin down an important and complex change which took place with many local variations and it is worthwhile to try to assess its general significance.

We can start by noting that even in the narrowest technological sense, the Neolithic phase of human development does not begin, flower or end everywhere at the same time. In one place it may last thousands of years longer than in another and its beginnings are separated from what went before, not by a clear line but by a mysterious zone of cultural change. Then, within it, not all societies possess the same range of skills and resources; some discover how to make pottery, as well as polished stone tools, others go on to domesticate animals and begin to gather or raise cereal crops. Slow evolution is the rule and not all societies had reached the same level by the time literate civilization appears. Nevertheless, Neolithic culture is the matrix from which civilization appears and provides the preconditions on which it rests, and they are by no means limited to the production of the highly finished stone tools which gave the phase its name.

We must also qualify the word ‘revolution’ when discussing this change. Though we leave behind the slow evolutions of the Pleistocene and move into an accelerating era of prehistory, there are still no clear-cut divisions. They are pretty rare in later history; even when they try to do so, few societies ever wholly break with their past. What we can observe is a slow but radical transformation of human behaviour and organization over more and more of the world, not a sudden new departure. It is made up of several crucial changes which make the last period of prehistory identifiable as a unity, whatever we call it.

At the end of the Upper Palaeolithic, Man existed physically much as we know him. He was, of course, still to change somewhat in height and weight, most obviously in those areas of the world where he gained in stature and life expectancy as nutrition improved. In the Old Stone Age it was still unlikely that a man or a woman would reach an age of forty and if they did then they were likely to live pretty miserable lives, in our eyes prematurely aged, tormented by arthritis, rheumatism and the casual accidents of broken bones or rotting teeth. This would only slowly change for the better. The shape of the human face would go on evolving, too, as diet altered. (It seems to be only after ad 1066 that the edge-to-edge bite gave way among Anglo-Saxons to the overbite which was the ultimate consequence of a shift to more starch and carbohydrate, a development of some importance for the later appearance of the English.)

The physical types of men differed in different continents, but we cannot presume that capacities did. In all parts of the world Homo sapiens sapiens was showing great versatility in adapting his heritage to the climatic and geographical upheavals of the ebbing phase of the last Ice Age. In the beginnings of settlements of some size and permanence, in the elaboration of technology and in the growth of language and the dawn of characterization in art lay some of the rudimentary elements of the compound which was eventually to crystallize as civilization. But much more than these were needed. Above all, there had to be the possibility of some sort of economic surplus to daily requirements.

This was hardly conceivable except in occasional, specially favourable areas of the hunting and gathering economy which sustained all human life and was the only one known to human beings until about ten thousand years ago. What made it possible was the invention of agriculture.

The importance of this was so great that it does seem to justify a strong metaphor and ‘farming revolution’ or ‘food-gathering revolution’ are terms whose meaning is readily clear. They single out the fact which explains why the Neolithic era could provide the circumstances in which civilizations could appear. Even a knowledge of metallurgy, which was spreading in some societies during their Neolithic phases, is not so fundamental. Farming truly revolutionized the conditions of human existence and it is the main thing to bear in mind when considering the meaning of Neolithic, a meaning once concisely summarized as ‘a period between the end of the hunting way of life and the beginning of a full metal-using economy, when the practice of farming arose and spread through most of Europe, Asia and North Africa like a slow-moving wave’. The essentials of agriculture are the growing of crops and the practice of animal husbandry. How these came about and at what places and times is more mysterious. Some environments must have helped more than others; while some peoples pursued game across plains uncovered by the retreating ice, others were intensifying the skills needed to exploit the new, prolific river valleys and coastal inlets rich in edible plants and fish. The same must be true of cultivation and herding. On the whole, the Old World of Africa and Eurasia was better off for animals which might be domesticated than what would later be called the Americas. Not surprisingly, then, agriculture began in more than one place and in different forms. It has been claimed that the earliest instance, based on the cultivation of primitive forms of millet and rice, occurred in south-east Asia, somewhere about 10,000 BC. Yet for thousands of years, and until only a couple of centuries ago, the increase of human food supply was to come from methods already available, though only slowly discovered, and in rudimentary form, in prehistoric times. New land could be broken in for crops, elementary observation and selection began the conscious modification of species, plant forms were transferred to new locations, and labour was applied to cultivation through digging, draining and irrigating. These made possible a growth in food production which could sustain a slow and steady rise in human numbers until the great changes brought by chemical fertilizers and modern genetic science.

The accidents of survival and the direction of scholarly effort have meant until recently that much more was known about early agriculture in the Near East than about its possible precursors in further Asia. Rice may have been cultivated in the Yangtze valley as early as 7000 BC. None the less, there is good reason to regard the Near East as a crucial zone. Both the predisposing conditions and the evidence point to the region later called the ‘Fertile Crescent’ as especially significant; this is the arc of territory running northwards from Egypt through Palestine and the Levant, through Anatolia to the hills between Iran and the south Caspian to enclose the river valleys of Mesopotamia. Much of it now looks very different from the same area’s lush landscape when the climate was at its best, five thousand or so years ago. Wild barley and a wheatlike cereal then grew in southern Turkey and emmer, a wild wheat, in the Jordan valley. Egypt enjoyed enough rain for the hunting of big game well into historical times, and elephants were still to be found in Syrian forests in 1000 BC. The region today is still fertile by comparison with the deserts which encircle it, but in prehistoric times it was even more favoured. The cereal grasses which are the ancestors of later crops have been traced back furthest in these lands. There is evidence of the harvesting, though not necessarily of the cultivating, of wild grasses in Asia Minor in about 9500 BC. There, too, the afforestation which followed the end of the last Ice Age seems to have presented a manageable challenge; population pressure might well have stimulated attempts to extend living-space by clearing and planting when hunting-gathering areas became overcrowded. From this region the new foods and the techniques for planting and harvesting them seem to have spread into Europe in about 7000 BC. Within the region, of course, contacts were relatively easier than outside it; a date as early as 8000 BC has been given to discoveries of bladed tools found in south-west Iran but made from obsidian which came from Anatolia. But diffusion need not have been the only process at work. Agriculture later appeared in the Americas, seemingly without any import of techniques from outside.

The jump from gathering wild cereals to planting and harvesting them seems marginally greater than that from driving game for hunting to herding, but the domestication of animals was almost as momentous. The first traces of the keeping of sheep come from northern Iraq, in about 9000 BC. Over such hilly, grassy areas the wild forebears of the Jersey cow and the Gloucester Old Spot pig roamed untroubled for thousands of years except by occasional contact with their hunters. Pigs, it is true, could be found all over the Old World, but sheep and goats were especially plentiful in Asia Minor and a region running across much of Asia itself. From their systematic exploitation would follow the control of their breeding and other economic and technological innovations. The use of skins and wool opened new possibilities; the taking of milk launched dairying. Riding and the use of animals for traction would come later. So would domestic poultry.

The story of mankind is now far past the point at which the impact of such changes can be easily grasped. Suddenly, with the coming of agriculture, the whole material fabric on which subsequent human history was to be based flashes into view, though not yet into existence. It was the beginning of the greatest of man’s transformations of the environment. In a hunting-gathering society thousands of acres are needed to support a family, whereas in primitive agricultural society about twenty-five acres is enough. In terms of population growth alone, a huge acceleration became possible. An assured or virtually assured food surplus also meant settlements of a new solidity. Bigger populations could live on smaller areas and true villages could appear. Specialists not engaged in food production could be tolerated and fed more easily while they practised their own skills. Before 9000 BC there was a village (and perhaps a shrine) at Jericho. A thousand years later it had grown to some eight to ten acres of mud-brick houses with substantial walls.

It is a long time before we can discern much of the social organization and behaviour of early farming communities. It seems possible that at this time, as much as at any other, local divisions of mankind were decisively influential. Physically, humanity was more uniform than ever, but culturally it was diversifying as it grappled with different problems and appropriated different resources. The adaptability of different branches of Homo sapiens in the conditions left behind after the retreat of the last Ice Age is very striking and produced variations in experience unlike those following earlier glaciations. They lived for the most part in isolated, settled traditions, in which the importance of routine was overwhelming. This would give new stability to the divisions of culture and race which had appeared so slowly throughout Palaeolithic times. It would take much less time in the historical future which lay ahead for these local peculiarities to crumble under the impact of population growth, speedier communication and the coming of trade - a mere ten thousand years, at most. Within the new farming communities it seems likely that distinctions of role multiplied and new collective disciplines had to be accepted. For some people there must have been more leisure (though for others actually engaged in the production of food, leisure may well have diminished). It certainly seems likely that social distinctions became more marked. This may be connected with new possibilities as surpluses became available for barter which led eventually to trade.

The same surpluses may also have encouraged humanity’s oldest sport after hunting - warfare. Hunting was long to be the sport of kings, and mastery of the animal world was an attribute of the first heroes of whose exploits we have records in sculpture and legend. Yet the possibility of human and material prizes must have made raids and conquest more tempting. Perhaps, too, a conflict, which was to have centuries of vitality before it, finds its origins here - that between nomads and settlers. Political power may have an origin in the need to organize protection for crops and stock from human predators. We may even speculate that the dim roots of the notion of aristocracy are to be sought in the successes (which must have been frequent) of hunter-gatherers, representatives of an older social order, in exploiting the vulnerability of the settlers, tied to their areas of cultivation, by enslaving them. None the less, though the just prehistoric world must have been lawless and brutal, it is worth remembering that there was an offsetting factor: the world was still not very full. The replacement of hunter-gatherers by farmers did not have to be a violent process. The ample space and thin populations of Europe on the eve of the introduction of farming may explain the lack of archaeological evidence of struggle. It was only slowly that growing populations and pressure on the new farming resources increased the likelihood of competition.

In the long run metallurgy changed things as much as did farming, but it was to be a very much longer run. Immediately, it made a less rapid and fundamental difference. This is probably because the deposits of ore first discovered were few and scattered: for a long time there was just not much metal around. The first of whose use we find evidence is copper (which rather weakens the attractiveness of the old term ‘Bronze Age’ for the beginning of metal-using culture). At some time between 6000 and 7000 BC it was first being hammered into shape without heating and then smelted at Catal Huyuk, in Anatolia, though the earliest known metal artifacts date from about 4000 BC and are beaten copper pins found in Egypt. Once the technique of blending copper with tin to produce bronze was discovered, a metal was available which was both relatively easy to cast and retained a much better cutting edge. It was in use in Mesopotamia soon after 3000 BC. On bronze much was to be built; from it, too, much derived, among other results the quite new importance of ore-bearing areas. In its turn, this was to give a new twist to trade, to markets and to routes. Still further complications, of course, followed the coming of iron, which appeared after some cultures had indisputably evolved into civilizations - another reflection of the way in which the historical and prehistoric eras run so untidily into one another. Its obvious military value springs to the eye, but it had just as much importance when turned into agricultural tools. This is looking a long way ahead, but it made possible a huge extension of living space and food-producing soil: however successfully he burned woodland and scrub, Neolithic man could only use a stone adze or scratch at heavy soils with an antler or wooden pick. Turning them over and digging deep began to be possible only when the invention of ploughing (in the Near East in about 3000 bc) brought animal muscle-power to the assistance of humans, and when iron tools became common.

It is already clear how quickly - the term is legitimate against the background of earlier prehistory even if it takes thousands of years in some places - interpenetration and interplay begin to influence the pace and direction of change. Long before these processes have exhausted their effects in some areas, too, the first civilizations are in being. Prehistorians used to argue whether innovations were diffused from a single source or appeared spontaneously and independently in different places, but so complex a background has made this seem a waste of time and energy. Both views, if put forward in an unqualified way, seem untenable. To say that in one place, and in one place only, all the conditions for the appearance of new phenomena existed and that these were then simply diffused elsewhere is as implausible as saying that in widely differing circumstances of geography, climate and cultural inheritance exactly the same inventions could be thrown up, as it were, time and time again. What we can observe is a concentration of factors in the Near East which made it at one crucial moment immeasurably the most evident, active and important centre of new developments. It does not mean that similar individual developments may not have occurred elsewhere: pottery, it seems, was first produced in Japan in about 10,000 BC, and agriculture evolved in America perhaps as early as 5000 BC in complete isolation from the Old World.

This means that human prehistory comes to an end in a ragged, untidy way; once again, there is 110 neat dividing line from history. At the end of prehistory and on the eve of the first civilizations we confront a world of human societies more differentiated than ever before and more successful than ever in mastering different environments and surviving. Some will continue into history. It is only within the last century or so that the Ainus of northern Japan have disappeared, taking with them a life that is said to have been very similar to one they lived fifteen thousand years ago. Englishmen and Frenchmen who went to North America in the sixteenth century ad found hunter-gatherers there who must have lived much as their own ancestors had done ten thousand years before. Plato and Aristotle were to live and die before prehistory in America gave way to the appearance of the great Maya civilization of Yucatan, and prehistory lasted for Eskimos and Australian aborigines until the nineteenth century.

No crude divisions of chronology, therefore, will help in unravelling so interwoven a pattern. But its most important feature is clear enough: by 6000 or 5000 BC, there existed in at least one area of the Old World all the essential constituents of civilized life. Their deepest roots lay hundreds of thousands of years further back, in ages dominated by the slow rhythm of genetic evolution. Through the Upper Palaeolithic eras the pace of change had quickened by a huge factor as culture slowly became more important, but this was as nothing to what was to follow. Civilization was to bring conscious attempts on a quite new scale to control and organize men and their environment. It builds on a basis of cumulative mental and technological resources and the feedback from its own transformations further accelerates the process of change. Ahead lies faster development in every field, in the technical control of environment, in the elaboration of mental patterns, in the changing of social organization, in the accumulation of wealth, in the growth of population.

It is important to get our perspective in this matter right. From some modern points of view the centuries of the European Middle Ages look like a long slumber. No medievalist would agree, of course, but a twentieth-century man who is impressed by the rapidity of the change which encompasses him and the relative immobility of medieval society ought to reflect that the art which develops from the Romanesque of Charlemagne’s Aachen to the Flamboyant of fifteenth-century France was revolutionized in five or six centuries; in a period about ten times as long, the first known art, that of Upper Palaeolithic Europe, shows, by comparison, insignificant stylistic change. Further back, the pace is even slower as the long persistence of early tool types shows. Still more fundamental changes are even less easy to comprehend. So far as we know, the last twelve thousand years register nothing new in human physiology comparable to the colossal transformations of the early Pleistocene which are registered for us in a handful of fossil relics of a few of nature’s experiments, yet those took hundreds of thousands of years.

In part, the contrast in the rate of change is the one with which we began, that between Nature and Man as makers of change. Mankind increasingly chooses for itself, and even in prehistory the story of change is therefore increasingly one of conscious adaptation. So the story will continue into historical times, more intensively still. This is why the most important part of the human story is the story of consciousness; when, long ago, it broke the genetic slow march, it made everything else possible. Nature and nurture are there from the moment that human beings are first identifiable; perhaps they can never be quite disentangled, but man-made culture and tradition are increasingly the determinants of change.

Two reflections ought, none the less, to be made to balance this indisputable fact. The first is that our species has almost certainly not shown any improvement in innate capacity since the Upper Palaeolithic. Human physique has not changed fundamentally in forty thousand years or so and it would be surprising if raw human mental capacity had done so. So short a time could hardly suffice for genetic changes comparable to those of earlier eras. The rapidity with which humanity has achieved so much since prehistoric times can be accounted for quite simply: there are many more of us upon whose talents humanity can draw and, more important still, human achievements are essentially cumulative. They rest upon a heritage itself accumulating at, as it were, compound interest. Primitive societies had far less inherited advantage in the bank. This makes the magnitude of their greatest steps forward all the more amazing.

If this is speculative, the second reflection need not be: his genetic inheritance not only enables Homo sapiens to make conscious change, to undertake an unprecedented kind of evolution, but also controls and limits him. The irrationalities of this century show the narrow limits of our capacity for conscious control of our destiny. To this extent, we are still determined, still unfree, still a part of a nature which produced our unique qualities in the first place only by evolutionary selection. It is not easy to separate this part of our inheritance, either, from the emotional shaping the human psyche has received from the processes through which it has evolved. That shaping still lies deep at the heart of all our aesthetic and affective life. Man must live with an in-built dualism. To deal with it has been the aim of most of the great philosophies and religions and the mythologies by which we still live, but they are themselves moulded by it. As we move from prehistory to history it is important not to forget that its determining effect still proves much more resistant to control than those blind prehistoric forces of geography and climate which were so quickly overcome. Nevertheless, at the edge of an opening history we already encounter a creature we know - Man the change-maker.