Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
6,700 years ago (the oldest). Remnants of at least 51 sites of human habita-
tion dotted the intermontane countryside around the canals. Thus began the
incipient production of food in an artificially created, wet agro-ecosystem.
Evidence indicates this early irrigation farming was accomplished through
communally organized labor to construct and maintain the canals, which
necessitated the scheduling of daily activities beyond individual households.
Nevertheless, to support the inevitable increase in the local population required
an economy wherein farming was combined with hunting and gathering. The
commitment to agriculture was more than simply the transition to a sedentary
life structured around sustainable, small-scale production of food, it was also
the commitment to a set of decisions and responses that resulted in fundamen-
tal, organizational changes in society, increased risks and uncertainties, and
shifts in social roles as a result of the dependence on irrigation technology. 9
As indicated by the necessity to schedule daily activities beyond indi-
vidual households, agriculture brought with it both a sedentary way of life
and a permanent change in the flow of living. Whereas the daily life of a
hunter-gatherer was a seamless whole, a farmer's life became divided into
home (rest) and ield (work). While a hunter-gatherer had intrinsic value as a
human being with respect to the community, a farmer's sense of self-worth
became extrinsic, both personally and with respect to the community as
symbolized by, and permanently attached to, productivity —a measure based
primarily on how hard a farmer worked and thus the quantity of good or
services the farmer produced. In addition, the sedentary life of a farmer
changed the notion of property .
On the other hand, the growing agricultural lifestyle caused many people
to suffer ill health, as illustrated by the analyses of human skeletons exca-
vated at a variety of prehistoric farming villages. As fecal waste from the vil-
lagers accumulated, disease and parasites flourished, contaminating water
supplies whereby they infected the residents. In addition, the people's skele-
tal structure became weaker due to poorer nutrition than people experienced
prior to the agricultural way of life. Evidence also indicates that infants and
young children perished more frequently than they had at the height of the
Stone Age. 10
So, the dawn of agriculture, which ultimately gave birth to civilizations,
created another powerful, albeit unconscious, bias in the human psyche. For
the first time, humans saw themselves as clearly distinct—in their reason-
ing at least—from and superior to the rest of nature. They began to consider
themselves as masters of, rather than members of, nature's community of
life. It seems that farmers had a mindset of utility that was opposed to biodi-
versity from the beginning—an attitude that still prevails among the world's
farmers of today. In fact, wild nature, humankind's millennial life-support
system, suddenly came to be seen as a fierce competitor—a perpetual enemy
to be vanquished when possible and subjugated when not. 11
Accordingly, to those who lived a progressively sedentary life as farm-
ers, land became a commodity to be bought, owned, and sold. Thus, when
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