The transition to settled life and the beginning of the property stratification of society. §2

IN Central Asia in the X-XI centuries. Along with the existence of separate semi-sedentary and sedentary groups also engaged in nomadic extensive cattle breeding. Hunting was a great help to the nomads. In the cities, Oguz and Turkmen were also engaged in crafts. Approximately the same situation arose at the beginning among the Oguzes and Turkmens (who were mainly Oguzes and Turkmens) in Anatolia: their main occupation remained nomadic cattle breeding. So, the memoirist of the third crusade Tagenon wrote (1190) that the Turks in Konya lived in tents. Marco Polo gives the following description of the Turkmens of Anatolia: “they live in the mountains and in the plains, wherever they know that there are free pastures, since they are engaged in cattle breeding.” The Italian Dominican monk R. Montecroce, who visited Asia Minor at the turn of the 13th-14th centuries, described the Turkmen in approximately the same way. Marco Polo mentions “good Turkmen horses” and “good expensive mules.” Highton also talks about “good horses”. Apparently, these were the famous Turkmen horses brought by the Turkmen from across the Caspian Sea. Later, as before, Anatolia was no longer famous for horses. Marco Polo also talks about periodic migrations: in the summer, “crowds of Levantine Tatars (Turks - D.E.) come to the northeastern regions of Asia Minor, because in the summer there are free pastures, in the winter they go to where it is warm, there is grass and pastures” . It is also known that in addition to cattle breeding, they were engaged in cartage and carpet making.

However, some Oguzes and Turkmen began to settle down. Thus, in the epic “Dede Korkud”, along with stories that the Oguzes often hunt, raid infidels, migrate to summer camps, live in tents, have huge herds of sheep and herds of horses (and it is emphasized that this is their main wealth), there is a very characteristic reference to the vineyards they owned in the mountains. Thus, the Oguzes already had their own vineyards. A. Yu. Yakubovsky drew attention to this. And Ibn Battuta met a Turkmen village. Here we are dealing with the beginning of the process of settlement of the Turkic nomads on the land in Anatolia, which was the first step towards their permanent settlement in the occupied territories, introduction among the local population, rapprochement with them and their subsequent assimilation.

Looking ahead, we note that this process lasted for a very long time: even to this day, the Yuryuks, who continue to lead a purely nomadic lifestyle, have survived in Turkey. In eastern Anatolia, some former nomads retained a semi-nomadic lifestyle. These are Turkmens. The difference between the Yuryuks and the Turkmen lies, in particular, in the fact that the former apparently retained more ancient Turkic elements (pre-Oguz and Oguz), which were more characteristic of a purely nomadic way of life. And the latter partly go back to a later layer, which absorbed many more elements of settled life, mainly Iranian. This is evidenced, for example, by the XIII-XIV centuries. It contains a lot - armud (pear), nar (pomegranate), zerdalu (peach), ka"wun (melon), leblebi (peas), marchimak (lentils), harman (threshing floor), bag (garden), bostan (vegetable garden) All these terms are of Iranian origin.

Some of the Turks settled, settling in new villages, or settling in already existing villages and cities, forming new neighborhoods in them.

Sometimes the Turks occupied villages abandoned by local residents. These settled Turks, who began to study, laid the foundation. They retained the self-name “Turk”, common to them, but lost their former tribal ethnonyms.

The squads of beys and emirs who participated in the conquest of Anatolia settled in the cities. Along with them appeared tax collectors and other servants of the administrative apparatus, imams, mullahs, etc. These elements constituted a privileged class. They most often called themselves Muslims, in contrast to other religious groups that were in an oppressed position. In addition, as we will see later, among them it was not the Turks who predominated, but Muslims of other ethnic groups or local converts.

Sedentism and domestication, together and separately, transformed human life in ways that still influence our lives today.

“Our Earth”

Sedentism and domestication represent not only technological changes, but also changes in worldview. Land is no longer a free commodity available to everyone, with resources randomly scattered throughout its territory - it has become a special territory, owned by someone or a group of people, on which people grow plants and livestock. Thus, a sedentary lifestyle and high levels of resource extraction lead to property ownership that was rare in previous foraging societies. Burial sites, heavy goods, permanent housing, grain processing equipment, and fields and livestock tied people to their place of residence. Human influence on the environment has become stronger and more noticeable since the transition to sedentism and the growth of agriculture; people began to increasingly change the surrounding area - building terraces and walls to protect against floods.

Fertility, sedentary lifestyle and food system

The most dramatic consequences of sedentism are changes in female fertility and population growth. Row various effects together led to an increase in population.

Fertility Distribution Intervals

Among modern foragers, female pregnancy occurs once every 3-4 years, due to the long period breastfeeding, characteristic of such communities. Duration does not mean that children are weaned at 3-4 years, but that feeding will last as long as the child needs it, even in cases of several times an hour (Shostak 1981). This feeding stimulates the secretion of hormones that suppress ovulation (Henry 1989). Henry points out that “the adaptive significance of such a mechanism is obvious in the context of nomadic foragers, because one child, who must be cared for for 3-4 years, creates serious problems mother, but the second or third during this interval will create an unsolvable problem for her and jeopardize her health...”
There are many more reasons why feeding lasts 3-4 years among foragers. Their diet is rich in proteins, also low in carbohydrates, and lacks soft foods that are easy for babies to digest. In fact, Marjorie Szostak noted that among the Bushmen, modern foragers in the Kalahari Desert, food is coarse and difficult to digest: “To survive in such conditions, a child must be over 2 years old, preferably much older” (1981). After six months of nursing, the mother has no food that can be found and prepared for the baby in addition to her own milk. Among the Bushmen, infants over 6 months old are given solid, already chewed or crushed food, complementary foods, which begin the transition to solid food.
The length of time between pregnancies serves to maintain long-term energy balance in women during their reproductive years. In many foraging societies, increased calorie intake during nursing requires mobility, and this feeding style (high protein, low carbohydrate) may leave the mother's energy balance low. In cases where food supply is limited, the period of pregnancy and lactation can become a net drain of energy, leading to a sharp reduction in fertility. Under such circumstances, this gives the woman more time to restore her fertility. Thus, the period when she is neither pregnant nor lactating becomes necessary to build her energy balance for future reproduction.

Changes in Fertility Rate

In addition to the effects of breastfeeding, Allison notes the age, nutritional status, energy balance, diet, and exercise of women during a given period (1990). This means that intense aerobic exercise can lead to changes in period intervals (amenorrhea), but less intense aerobic exercise can lead to poorer fertility in less obvious but important ways.
Recent studies of North American women whose activities require high levels of endurance (long-distance runners and young ballet dancers, for example) have indicated some changes in fertility. These findings are relevant to sedentism because the activity levels of the women studied are consistent with the activity levels of women in modern foraging societies.
Researchers found 2 different effects on fertility. The young, active ballerinas experienced their first menstruation at age 15.5 years, much later than the inactive control group, whose members experienced their first menstruation at age 12.5 years. High level activity also appears to influence endocrine system, reducing the time during which a woman is capable of conceiving by 1-3 times.
To summarize the influence of foraging on female fertility, Henry notes: “It appears that a number of interrelated factors associated with a nomadic foraging lifestyle exert natural fertility control and perhaps explain low population densities in the Paleolithic. In nomadic foraging societies, women appear to experience as many long intervals of breastfeeding during child rearing as the high energy drains associated with foraging and periodic wandering. In addition, their diet, which is relatively high in protein, tends to maintain low levels of fat, thereby reducing fertility.” (1989)
With increasing sedentism, these limits to female fertility were weakened. The period of breastfeeding was reduced, as was the amount of energy expended by the woman (Bushman women, for example, walked an average of 1,500 miles per year, carrying 25 pounds of equipment, collected food, and, in some cases, children). This does not mean that a sedentary lifestyle is physically undemanding. Farming requires its own hard work from both men and women. The only difference is in the types of physical activity. Walking long distances, transporting heavy loads and children were replaced by sowing, cultivating the land, collecting, storing and processing grain. A diet rich in grains significantly changed the ratio of proteins and carbohydrates in the diet. This changed prolactin levels, increased positive energy balance and led to increased growth in children and more early start menstruation

The constant availability of grains allowed mothers to feed their children soft, high-carbohydrate cereals. Analysis of children's feces in Egypt showed that a similar practice was used, but with root vegetables, on the banks of the Nile 19,000 years ago ( Hillman 1989). The influence of grains on fertility has been noted Richard Lee among the sedentary Bushmen, who have recently begun to eat grain and are experiencing a marked increase in birth rates. Renee Pennington(1992) noted that the increase in reproductive success of the Bushmen was possibly associated with a decrease in infant and child mortality.

Decline in Nutrition Quality

The West has long viewed agriculture as a step forward from gathering, a sign of human progress. Although, however, the first farmers did not eat as well as the gatherers.
Jared Diamond(1987) wrote: “When farmers focus on high-carbohydrate crops such as potatoes or rice, the mix of wild plants and animals in the hunter/gatherer diet provides more protein and a better balance of other nutrients. One study noted that Bushmen consumed an average of 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein per day, well above the recommended daily intake for people their size. It is almost impossible that Bushmen, eating 75 species of wild plants, could starve to death, as happened to thousands of Irish farmers and their families in 1840.”
In skeletal studies we will come to the same point of view. The skeletons, found in Greece and Turkey and dating back to the late Paleolithic, averaged 5 feet 9 inches in height for men and 5 feet 5 inches for women. With the adoption of agriculture average height height decreased - about 5,000 years ago the average height of a man was 5 feet 3 inches, and a woman about 5 feet. Even modern Greeks and Turks are not, on average, as tall as their Paleolithic ancestors.

Increased danger

Roughly speaking, agriculture probably first emerged in ancient southwest Asia, and perhaps elsewhere, to increase food supply to support an expanding population under severe resource stress. Over time, however, as dependence on domesticated crops increased, so did the overall insecurity of the food supply system. Why?

Share of Domesticated Plants in Food

There are several reasons why early farmers became increasingly dependent on cultivated plants. Farmers were able to use previously unsuitable land. When such a vital necessity as water could be brought to the lands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the land that was native to wheat and barley could grow them. Domesticated plants also provided more and more edible plants and were easier to collect, process, and prepare. They are also better in taste. Rindos listed a number of modern food plants that were developed from bitter wild varieties. Finally, the increase in the yield of domesticated plants per unit of land led to an increase in their proportion in the diet, even if wild plants were still used and available as before.
Dependence on a Small Number of Plants.
Unfortunately, depending on fewer and fewer plants is quite risky if the yield is poor. According to Richard Lee, the Bushmen living in the Kalahari Desert ate more than 100 plants (14 fruits and nuts, 15 berries, 18 edible resins, 41 edible roots and bulbs, and 17 leafy foods, beans, melons and other foods) (1992). In contrast, modern farmers rely primarily on 20 plants, of which three—wheat, corn, and rice—feed most of the world's people. Historically, there were only one or two grain products for a specific group of people. The decline in the yield of these crops had catastrophic consequences for the population.

Selective Breeding, Monocultures and the Gene Pool

Selective breeding of any plant species reduces the variability of its gene pool, eliminating its natural resistance to rare natural pests and diseases and reducing its long-term chances of survival, increasing the risk of serious losses at harvest. Again, many people depend on specific types of plants, risking their future. Monoculture is the practice of growing only one type of plant in a field. While this increases crop efficiency, it also leaves the entire field exposed to disease or pest damage. The result may be hunger.

Increased Dependence on Plants

As cultivated plants began to play an increasingly important role in their nutrition, people became dependent on plants and plants, in turn, became dependent on people, or more precisely, on the environment created by man. But people cannot completely control the environment. Hail, flood, drought, pests, frost, heat, erosion and many other factors can destroy or significantly affect crops, all of which are beyond human control. The risk of failure and starvation increases.

Increase in the Number of Diseases

The increase in the number of diseases is especially associated with the evolution of domesticated plants, for which there were several reasons. First, before sedentary life, human waste was disposed of outside the residential area. As the number of people living nearby in relatively permanent settlements increased, waste disposal became increasingly problematic. The large amount of feces has led to the emergence of diseases, and insects, some of which are carriers of diseases, feed on animal and plant waste.
Secondly, a large number of people living nearby serves as a reservoir for pathogens. Once the population becomes large enough, the likelihood of disease transmission increases. By the time one person recovers from the disease, another may reach the infectious stage and infect the first one again. Consequently, the disease will never leave the settlement. The speed with which colds, flu, or chickenpox spread among schoolchildren perfectly illustrates the interaction of dense populations and disease.
Thirdly, sedentary people cannot simply escape the disease; on the contrary, if one of the foragers gets sick, the rest can leave for a while, reducing the likelihood of the disease spreading. Fourth, agricultural nutrition may reduce disease resistance. Finally, population growth has provided ample opportunities for microbial development. Indeed, as previously discussed in Chapter 3, there is good evidence that the clearing of land for farming in sub-Saharan Africa has created an excellent breeding ground for malaria-carrying mosquitoes, leading to a sharp rise in malaria cases.

Environmental Degradation

With the development of agriculture, people began to actively influence the environment. Deforestation, soil deterioration, clogging of streams, and the death of many wild species - all this accompanies domestication. In the valley on the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates, the irrigation waters used by early farmers carried large quantities of soluble salts, poisoning its soil, thereby rendering it unusable to this day.

Increase in Work

Increasing domestication requires much more labor than foraging. People must clear the land, plant seeds, take care of young shoots, protect them from pests, collect them, process the seeds, store them, select seeds for the next sowing; In addition, people must care for and protect domesticated animals, select herds, shear sheep, milk goats, and so on.

(c) Emily A. Schultz & Robert H. Lavenda, excerpt from the college textbook “Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition Second Edition.”

There are things in historical science that baffle people. They are said to be intuitive and do not require decoding. This does not make things any easier for pupils and students. For example, what is a “sedentary lifestyle”? What image should appear in your head when this expression is used in relation to peoples? Do not know? Let's figure it out.

Sedentary lifestyle: definition

It must be said right away that our expression concerns (for now) history and the natural world. Remember what characterized the society of the past, what do you know about ancient tribes? In ancient times, people moved after their prey. Such behavior was natural then, since the opposite would leave people without food. But as a result of the progress of that time, man learned to produce the necessary product himself. This is what determines the transition to sedentary life. That is, people stopped wandering, began to build houses, take care of the land, grow plants and raise livestock. Previously, they had to go with their entire family to pick up the animals and move to where the fruits were ripe. This is the difference between nomadic and sedentary lifestyles. In the first case, the people do not have permanent permanent houses (all kinds of huts and yurts do not count), cultivated land, comfortable enterprises and similar useful things. A sedentary lifestyle contains all of the above, or rather consists of it. People are beginning to develop a territory that they consider their own. In addition, they also protect her from strangers.

Animal world

We've basically sorted things out with people, let's turn our attention to nature. Animal world is also divided into those who live in one place and move after food. The most telling example is birds. In the fall, some species fly from northern latitudes to the south, and in the spring they make the return journey. or migratory birds. Other species prefer to remain sedentary. That is, they are not attracted to any rich overseas countries, and they are fine at home. Our city sparrows and pigeons live permanently on the same certain territory. They build nests, lay eggs, feed and reproduce. They divide the territory into small zones of influence, where outsiders are not allowed, and so on. Animals also prefer to settle down, although their behavior depends on their habitat. Animals go where there is food. What makes them lead a sedentary lifestyle? In winter, for example, there are not enough reserves, therefore, one has to vegetate from hand to mouth. This is what their instincts, passed on by blood, dictate. Animals define and defend their territory, in which everything “belongs” to them.

Movement of Peoples and Settlement

Nomads should not be confused with immigrants. By settling down we mean a principle of life, and not a specific event. For example, peoples in history often moved from one territory to another. Thus, they conquered new zones of influence from nature or competitors to their society. But such things are fundamentally different from nomadism. Moving to a new place, people equipped it and improved it as best they could. That is, they built houses and cultivated land. Nomads don't do that. Their principle is to be in harmony (by and large) with nature. She gave birth - people took advantage. They themselves have practically no influence on her world. Sedentary tribes build their lives differently. They prefer to influence the natural world, adjusting it to suit themselves. This is the root fundamental difference lifestyles. We are all sedentary now. There are, of course, individual tribes that live according to the behests of their ancestors. They do not affect civilization as a whole. And most of humanity consciously came to settle down as a principle of interaction with the outside world. This is a consolidated solution.

Will people's sedentary lifestyle continue?

Let's try to look into the distant future. But let's start by repeating the past. People chose to settle down because this way of life allowed them to produce more products, that is, it turned out to be more efficient. Let's look at modern times: we are consuming the planet's resources at such a pace that they do not have time to reproduce, and there is practically no such possibility; human influence dominates everywhere. What's next? Will we eat the whole earth and die? Nowadays people are talking about nature-like technologies. That is, progressive thinkers understand that we live only due to the forces of nature, which we use excessively. Will the solution to this problem lead to the abandonment of sedentarism as a principle? What do you think?

The reason for a person's transition to a sedentary life.
I was prompted to take on this topic by what seems to me to be a false understanding of historical science about the processes that led people to a sedentary life and the emergence of agriculture and animal husbandry. It is currently believed main reason The transition of people to a settled life was the development of ancient society to such a level at which people began to understand that food production was more promising than hunting and gathering. Some authors even call this period the first intellectual revolution of the Stone Age, which allowed our ancestors to rise to a higher level of development. Yes, of course, at first glance it seems that this is so, because during a sedentary life, people had to invent more and more new necessary tools and devices for farming or animal husbandry. From scratch, come up with ways to preserve and process the harvest and build long-term housing. But scientists do not give an answer to the most important question, what made ancient people radically change their lives. But this is the most important question that needs to be answered, because only then will it become clear why people began to live in one place and took up agriculture and animal husbandry? To understand the root cause that prompted people to change their lives, it is necessary to go back to the very distant past, when Homo sapiens began to use the first tools. People of that time were still not much different from wild animals, therefore, as an example of the beginning of the use of tools by ancient man, we can cite modern Chimpanzees, who are also still at this initial stage of development. As is known, Chimpanzees use smooth stones rolled in water to break strong nut shells, and they carry suitable tools found on the shore of a reservoir over considerable distances to the place of their use. Usually this is a larger stone that serves as an anvil and a smaller pebble that they use as a hammer. Sometimes a third stone is used to serve as a support to securely hold the anvil in the ground. It is clear that in this case, the monkeys’ use of stone tools resulted from the inability to crack the strong shells of nuts with their teeth. Apparently, the first people began to use tools in the same way, looking for suitable stones created by nature itself. The first people lived, most likely also like Chimpanzees, in small family groups, in a certain territory and have not yet led a nomadic lifestyle. So when, and why, did ancient people switch to a nomadic lifestyle? Most likely, this happened due to changes in the diet of ancient man, and his transition from using mainly plant foods to consuming meat. Such a transition to eating meat most likely occurred as a result of fairly rapid climate changes in the habitats of ancient man, and as a result, led to a decrease in traditional plant food sources. Natural changes forced ancient man to the fact that initially eating mainly plant foods, they were forced to turn into omnivorous carnivores . It is likely that initially people, who did not have sharp fangs and claws, hunted small herbivorous animals, which constantly moved from one pasture to another in search of food. Apparently already at this stage of the first human migrations, following the migration of animals, individual families began to unite into groups, because this way it was possible to hunt animals more successfully. The desire to include larger and stronger animals among the hunting prey, which were impossible to handle with bare hands, led to the fact that people were forced to invent new tools specially adapted for this purpose. This is how the first weapon created by Stone Age man appeared, the so-called pointed tip, or stone chopper, which allowed him to hunt larger animals. Then people invented a stone axe, a knife, a scraper, and a spear with a bone or stone tip. Following the herds of migrating animals, people began to explore territories where summer warmth gave way to winter cold, and this required the invention of clothing to protect against the cold. Over time, man figured out how to make fire and use it for cooking, protection from the cold and hunting wild animals. Some of the people who roamed near water bodies mastered a new source of food, meaning fish, all kinds of shellfish, algae, bird eggs, and even waterfowl themselves. To do this, they had to invent such a weapon as a spear with a jagged end for catching fish and a bow that made it possible to hit prey at a considerable distance. The man had to figure out how to make a boat from a single tree trunk. Observing the work of a spider weaving a web apparently told people how to make a net, or weave a trap for catching fish from thin rods. Having mastered such a near-aquatic way of life, people naturally lost the opportunity to freely roam the land, since they found themselves tied to a specific body of water, due to the large number of devices they had, which became difficult to move from one place to another. Over time, all the tribes of hunters and gatherers who wandered after the herds of wild animals found themselves in exactly the same situation. If at first, people could move freely, from one place to another, armed only with a stone chopper or an ax, then over time, when they acquired a lot of material values, this became much more difficult. Now they had to carry with them several types of weapons, various tools, clay and wooden dishes, and a stone grain grinder for grinding wild grains, acorns or nuts. It was necessary to move to a new parking place, valuable in the opinion of people, the skins of animals that served them as a bed, clothing, a supply of water and food, if the path lay through unfamiliar terrain. Among things necessary for a person You can also call figurines of gods, or totem animals that people worshiped and many other things. For these purposes, people invented, and apparently wove, special shoulder baskets, like a backpack, from thin rods, and also used stretchers, or drags, made of two poles on which the transported load was attached. A clear example of how this looked in ancient times can be the existing tribes from the Amazon River basin, who lived back in the Stone Age, but have already lost the ability to freely roam from place to place, due to the large number of objects used and long-term dwellings built by them. Having occupied their specific niche, and without changing their lives in any way, these tribes stopped in their development at the level of Stone Age people who did not yet conduct agriculture, and were still limited to only the rudiments of animal husbandry. The living Australian aborigines found themselves in approximately the same situation, only the latter, continuing to live in the Stone Age, and due to the small number of tools, did not even switch to a sedentary lifestyle. At some stage of evolution, people increasingly began to face the question of what to do next in this situation, because moving all their belongings from place to place became more and more difficult. From this point on, the development of the tribes took two different paths. Some tribes who managed to tame a horse or camel were able to remain nomadic, because using the power of these animals allowed them to transport all their belongings from one place to another. The subsequent invention of the wheel and the appearance of carts were the result of the evolution of a nomadic lifestyle. In approximately the same way, all known to us appeared nomadic peoples antiquities. Of course, it should be noted that the technical development of such peoples was limited by how much payload they could move from place to place. Tribes that were unable to tame large pack animals began to lead a sedentary lifestyle, so they had to look for ways to feed themselves while living in one place. Such tribes were forced to look for new ways to obtain food by farming or raising small livestock. Nomadic peoples who moved long distances could only engage in the breeding of small animals driven from one pasture to another. But the nomads had the additional opportunity to simultaneously engage in trade. But they were limited in further technical development due to their specific way of life. Peoples leading a sedentary lifestyle, on the contrary, had more opportunities in terms of technical development. They could build big houses, various outbuildings, improve the tools they need to cultivate the land. Find ways to preserve or process harvested crops, invent and produce increasingly complex household items. A person settled on the earth, in creative terms, was not limited by the number of pack animals, or the size of the cart, which could only accommodate a certain amount of cargo. Therefore, it seems quite logical that over time, nomadic peoples, such as the Cumans or Scythians, simply disappeared from the historical arena, giving way to more technically advanced agricultural cultures. Concluding the consideration of this issue, it should be noted that in the development of human society several separate stages are visible at once, through which we had to go ancient man. The first such stage can be considered the period when our ancestors had not yet made tools, but, like modern Chimpanzees, used stones created by nature as tools. During this very long period, people still led a sedentary lifestyle, occupying one specific feeding area. The next stage began when people were forced to master a new food source. This means a transition from eating mainly plant foods in favor of a meat diet. It was during this period that people began to wander following the migration of herbivores. This way of life led to the fact that small groups of people began to unite into tribes for more successful hunting of herd animals. At the same time, people mastered the manufacture of stone tools, which they needed to successfully hunt larger prey. Thanks to this nomadic lifestyle, people, following their potential food, precisely at this stage, managed to populate all areas of the earth suitable for life. Then, as a result of technological progress, when people began to produce more and more items they needed for life, it became increasingly difficult for tribes burdened with household belongings to lead their former nomadic lifestyle, following herds of wild animals. As a result of this, people were forced to switch to the so-called semi-nomadic lifestyle. Now they built temporary hunting camps, and continued to live in them until the surrounding nature could adequately feed the entire tribe. When the food resources at their previous place of residence were depleted, the tribe moved to a new area, moving there all the things they needed and setting up a new camp there. Apparently at this stage in the life of ancient society, attempts were made for the first time to cultivate plants and domesticate wild animals. Some tribes managed to domesticate wild horses, camels, or reindeer, again gained the opportunity to lead their former nomadic lifestyle. As we see from subsequent history, many tribes took advantage of this opportunity, later turning into nomadic peoples. The remaining tribes who have achieved results in agriculture and cattle breeding, but are burdened big amount tools, and tied to a certain piece of land, had to stop regular migrations and live a settled life. Apparently something like this, over the course of several tens of thousands of years, there was a gradual transition of people,
from nomadic to sedentary lifestyle. Every modern person who has read this article can look around him and see what a huge number of different things surround him. It is clear that moving to a new place with such a large pile of goods is currently no longer realistic. After all, even moving from one apartment to another is considered by the people almost a disaster, comparable only to a flood or fire.

As has been shown, different types Early primitive economic and cultural systems also presupposed different types, or rather different qualities of human individuality. And the type and quality of man as a subject of the historical process, along with objective factors of the climate, animal and plant worlds, etc., played a very important, but, unfortunately, almost elusive role in the history of primitive society using the methods of scientific analysis.

We find the most favorable conditions for the development of personal qualities of people in consanguineous communities of the subtropical-temperate zone with its clearly defined gender and age division of labor (including within the family) and a developed reciprocal system (within which, as noted, everyone was interested in contributing to the social consumption fund as large as possible in order to receive more, but in the form of prestigious symbols and signs of public respect and recognition). In these conditions, faster than in other places, there was an improvement in the tools of individual labor (bows and arrows, the so-called “harvesting knives” and other things made using the microlithic-liner technique appeared), the development of individual ambitions (a powerful incentive for activity to satisfy them ) and an individual sense of responsibility both as a person (primarily a male breadwinner) to the community, and as members of a nuclear family to each other (wife and husband, parents and children). These trends, of course, had to be consolidated in traditional culture and reflected in ritual practice and myths.

Thus, By the time of the catastrophic climatic and landscape shifts that occurred at the boundary of the Pleistocene and Holocene about 10 thousand years ago, a type of society had already developed on Earth, potentially capable of 190

the development of more complex, including productive, forms of life activity than hunting and gathering. Its representatives (due to a sufficient degree of individualization of economic and public life) were capable of relatively quick and effective adaptation to new conditions, and multidirectional adaptation. The choice of forms of adaptation to changing conditions of existence was determined by a complex interweaving of objective (landscape, climate, relief, number of people) and subjective (the volume and nature of people’s knowledge, the presence among them of authoritative enthusiastic innovators - the Toynbean “creative minority”, the willingness of others to take risks and change forms of life) moments. There were significant differences between different regions.

Planetary catastrophe caused by rapid melting of glaciers, shifting and changing boundaries climatic zones and landscape zones, rising sea levels and flooding of colossal areas of coastal lowlands, changes coastline throughout the planet - caused a crisis in almost all life support systems of the late Pleistocene. The only exception was the societies of tropical gatherers, since near the equator the climate remained almost unchanged, although vast expanses of land went under water, especially in the regions of Indochina - Indonesia - the Philippines. The former ecological balance, a certain balance between the hunting-gathering communities scattered across the planet and the environment, was destroyed everywhere. This, in turn, was associated with a crisis in information support for the life of people whose traditional knowledge did not meet the requirements of changed circumstances.

Humanity has found itself at a bifurcation point. In conditions when the degree of instability of traditional systems (based on an appropriating economy) has sharply increased, a crisis of previous forms of life activity has broken out. Accordingly, a rapid increase in spontaneous fluctuations began - in the form of experimental, so to speak, “blind” searches for effective “responses” to the “challenges” of changed circumstances.

Success in this fight against the challenges of external forces was associated not least with the active and creative potential of people who found themselves in a critical situation. And they depended to a decisive extent on the type of sociocultural system that they represented. Among them, the greatest flexibility and mobility (including in spiritual terms) were demonstrated by those whose individual creative potential was less constrained by the traditional regulation of life activity. The corresponding societies had (other things being equal) the best chances of success.

However, we should not forget that external conditions in different regions were very different. The optimal combination of the challenge of external forces, the socio-cultural type of society (with the corresponding character of human individuality) and those favorable for the transition to new types economic activity external conditions(mild climate, the presence of reservoirs rich in fish, as well as plant and animal species suitable for domestication) was observed in the Middle East. Local protoneolithic societies at the turn of the Pleistocene and Holocene created, for the first time in human history, the prerequisites for the beginning of the civilizational process. Formation of a productive economy and breeding organization 191

Here, in the Eastern Mediterranean-Foreign Asian region, among communities, quite individualized in production and social terms, hunters and gatherers of rugged coastal-foothill-forest subtropical landscapes, approximately 12 thousand years ago we observe the formation of several lines of further evolution of primitive humanity. Among them, only one, associated with agricultural and pastoral farming, directly led to civilization. Somewhat later, similar processes occur in other regions globe, particularly in East Asia and Central and South America.

Planetary environmental shifts associated with the melting of the glacier led to a divergence in the development paths of hunting-gathering groups of the Mediterranean-Central Asian region. I will note two of their main directions. On the one hand, in the conditions of the spread of forests north of the Alps and the Carpathians, hunting-gathering groups from the Northern Mediterranean (from the Iberian and Apennine Peninsulas, Southern France and the Balkans) began to develop wide areas of Central and Eastern, and then Northern and Northeastern Europe. The excess population settled in new, already forested spaces left by hunters who had gone to the high latitudes for herds of reindeer. On the other hand, with increasing desiccation North Africa and Western Asia and the parallel advance of the seas, the population of many regions of the Middle East found itself in a critical situation. The number of game animals was rapidly declining, which was especially acutely felt in Palestine, sandwiched between the sea, the spurs of Lebanon and the deserts approaching from the south (Sinai) and east (Arabia). Under these conditions, the “responses” to the “challenge” of external forces were, firstly, a reorientation towards the intensive use of food resources of water bodies, which quickly led to the development of specialized fishing, and, secondly, the formation of an early agricultural-pastoral economic and cultural complex - the basis further civilization process.

The first, Western Mediterranean-Central European line of development of hunting-gathering societies of closed landscapes of the first millennia of the Holocene is represented by materials from numerous Mesolithic cultures of the forest and forest-steppe spaces of Europe. They were characterized by adaptation to existing natural conditions and settlement within the corresponding landscape zone familiar to them. Wielding a bow and arrow, and being well adapted to life in the water-rich forest zone of Europe, small consanguineous communities of several families formed, as before in the Mediterranean, groups of related proto-ethnic groups. Within such intercommunity communities, information circulated and marriage partners, useful experiences and achievements were exchanged.

Constantly living near water, such people, without abandoning hunting and gathering, paid increasing attention over time to the use of food resources of water bodies. The first permanent settlements of specialized fishermen appeared in Europe (at the Dnieper rapids, in the area of ​​the Iron Gates on the Danube, along the southern coast of the North Sea, in the Southern Baltic, etc.) approximately in the 8th-7th millennium BC. BC, while in the Eastern Mediterranean they date back at least one to two millennia earlier. Therefore, it is difficult to say whether shuttle-net fishing is being formed 192 ________________________________________

production in the most convenient places in Europe independently, or by borrowing the corresponding economic and technical achievements from the Middle East, from where groups of fishermen through the Mediterranean and the Aegean could get to the Black Sea and Danube regions quite early.

In conditions of a balanced hunting-fishing-gathering (with an increasingly focused on fishing) economic system, the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic proto-ethnic groups were distinguished by low population density and its very slow growth. With the increase in the number of people, it was possible to resettle several young families down or up the river, since there was plenty of space suitable for conducting complex appropriative farming in Europe, as in North America, Siberia or the Far East, for many millennia.

As in Paleolithic times, these kind of consanguineous communities organically fit into the landscape, becoming the highest link of the corresponding biocenoses. But consumer attitude towards environment, which presupposed the already conscious" (as evidenced by ethnographic data) maintaining a balance between the number of people and the natural food supply, blocked the possibilities of further evolution. Therefore, significant economic and sociocultural changes in the forest belt of Neolithic Europe were caused, first of all, by the spread of foreign ethnic , more developed population groups from the south, mainly from the Middle East through the Balkan-Danube-Carpathian region and the Caucasus.

In the Middle East, during the first millennia of the Holocene, a fundamentally different picture was observed, determined by the “Neolithic revolution” that swept the region. Researchers, in particular V.A. Shnirelman, managed to connect the areas of the most ancient agricultural crops with the centers of origin of cultivated plants N.I. Vavilova.

The emergence of agriculture was preceded by fairly effective gathering, thanks to which man learned the vegetative properties of plants and created the appropriate tools. However, the undoubted origin of agriculture based on gathering does not yet answer the question: why do people, instead of collecting ready-made crops in areas where edible plants naturally grow (as was the case in Paleolithic times), begin to cultivate the land in other places? Such places of land cultivation have always been areas located near places of permanent residence of people. Consequently, the origin of agriculture presupposed the presence of at least early forms of sedentary life, which should have appeared somewhat earlier than the cultivation of cultivated plants. According to the well-founded conclusion of V.F. Geninga, sedentarism arises primarily as a result of the reorientation of hunting-gathering communities to the specialized use of aquatic food resources. This was due (particularly in the Middle East) to a catastrophic decrease in the number of game animals.

The focus on the active use of food resources in water bodies contributed to the concentration of the population along the banks of rivers, lakes and seas. Here the first permanent settlements appeared, known in Palestine from the X-IX millennium BC. e. - on Lake Hule (Einan settlement) and near the Mediterranean Sea near Mount Carmel. In both cases, evidence was found of sufficient Formation of a producing farm and breeding organization ___________________________193

but developed net-shuttle fishing (sinkers from nets, deep-sea bones sea ​​fish etc.).

The reduction in the number of game animals and the success of fishing thus contributed to the concentration of people around water bodies, creating conditions for the transition to sedentism. Fishing provided constant food without the need to move all members of the community. Men could sail for a day or more, while women and children remained in the communal village. Such changes in lifestyle contributed to the beginning of a rapid increase in population size and density. They made it easier (compared to the mobile lifestyle of hunters and gatherers) for pregnant and lactating women, and helped reduce the number of cases of death or injury to men (more frequent during hunting than during fishing).

Since fishing settlements were usually located at a considerable distance from fields of wild cereals and places of growth of other edible plants, there was a natural desire to bring such fields closer to communal settlements, especially since the conditions for growing plants (well-manured soils around settlements located near water, protection from wild animals and flocks of birds) were very favorable here. In other words, for the emergence of agriculture it was necessary the presence of at least three conditions (not taking into account the very fact of the crisis of the appropriating economy):

1) the presence in the environment of plant species that are fundamentally suitable for domestication;

2) the emergence, as a result of thousands of years of specialized collecting practice, of sufficient knowledge about the vegetative properties of plants and the tools necessary for agricultural work (at first, not very different from those used by the gatherers);

3) transition to a sedentary lifestyle near water bodies due to long-term intensive use of their food resources, primarily through the development of fisheries.

However, it is noteworthy that the primary cells of agriculture everywhere arise near reservoirs with limited supplies of food resources, while in sea ​​coasts, in the floodplains and mouths of great rivers, fishing is still for a long time retains a leading role. Thus, in the Middle East, the most ancient forms of agriculture are found in the Jordan Valley, as well as along the tributaries of the Tigris in the foothills of the Zagros and near the lakes of Central Anatolia (where they apparently came from Palestine and Syria), in areas where there were wild ancestors many domestic plants, and the food resources of water bodies were limited, but not in the then swampy Nile Valley, the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates, or on the Syro-Cilicia coast.

In the same way, the lakeside area of ​​the Valley of Mexico, located among the dry plateau of Central Mexico, and the nearest coasts of the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, lakes and river valleys of the Andean plateau are contrasted with the Peruvian coast. The same, it seems, can be said about the relationship between economic development trends in the interior regions of Indochina with the eastern foothills of Tibet - and the coast South-East Asia, China and Japan.

Opportunities for the emergence of agriculture probably existed in much wider areas than those where it first appeared. 194 Primitive foundations of civilization

But under conditions of fairly productive fishing, people, leading settled life and even having the necessary knowledge in the field of agriculture, they quite consciously retain their traditional way life activity.

The reorientation of the economy to the cultivation of edible plants occurs only in the case when the declining food resources of water bodies were no longer able to satisfy the needs of the growing population. Only the crisis of the traditional appropriating economy forces people to switch to agriculture and animal husbandry. As R. Carneiro showed using ethnographic materials from the Amazon, unless absolutely necessary, hunters and fishermen do not reorient themselves to agriculture.

That is why the Neolithic population of the valleys of the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, the coasts of Syria and Cilicia, the Persian Gulf and Japan, the Caspian and Aral, Yucatan and Peru, and many other regions for a long time, maintaining direct relations with neighboring agricultural and pastoral societies and being familiar with the basics of their economic structure, remained committed to the fishing way of life, only partially and to a low extent supplementing it with hunting and gathering, and then with early forms of agriculture and cattle breeding.

During the 9th-6th millennium BC. e. specialized fishing societies in thin chains from the Middle East spread throughout the Mediterranean, rise to the middle reaches of the Nile, and develop the coasts of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. Groups similar to them at the same time become the leading ethnocultural force in the Caspian and Aral regions, the lower reaches of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. Such communities have left traces of Neolithic settlements in the area Kerch Strait, on the Dnieper and Danube, along the coasts of the Baltic and North Seas etc. But, being strictly tied to their ecological niches, fishing groups, in general, have little influence on the hunting societies of neighboring, internal regions. In addition, the possibilities for their development were fundamentally limited by natural resources, which man could only deplete, but not restore. Therefore, the line of evolution based on specialized fishing leads to a dead end, the only way out of which can be a reorientation to agricultural and pastoral activities. As G. Child rightly noted at one time. If societies with an appropriating economy live at the expense of nature, then those oriented towards a reproducing economy enter into cooperation with it. The latter provides further development towards civilization.

Thus, in areas with limited food resources of water bodies, in the presence of favorable external factors, under conditions of increasing demographic pressure, a relatively rapid transition occurs from fishing-hunting-gathering forms of economy to an early agricultural-pastoral economy. However, in areas rich in fish resources, society can exist for quite a long time on the basis of specialized fishing and sea hunting. Over a sufficiently long period, both noted lines of evolution provide approximately equal opportunities for advancement - based on the regular receipt of surplus food products and sedentary lifestyle - demographic potential, efficiency of the system of social organization, accumulation and movement of cultural information, development of religious and mythological ideas, ritual and magical practices, various types of formation of a producing economy and tribal organization

arts, etc. Among the early farmers and higher fishermen, we equally see large stationary settlements and clan cults, a system of gender and age stratification with the first elements of dominance within the communities of individual noble clans and families. Ethnographically, this is well illustrated by materials from New Guinea and Melanesia.

At the same time, it is important to emphasize that, as V.F. rightly noted. Gening, the actual clan relations, based on the idea of ​​vertical kinship associated with the counting of tribes and genealogical lines, going into the depths of the past, appear only with the transition to settled life. They have a certain socio-economic content: justification (through the continuity of generations) of the right of those living to permanent fishing grounds (primarily fishing) and land used (for agricultural crops or pastures). Tribal settled communities own their territories on the basis that these lands belonged to their ancestors, whose spirits retain supreme patronage over them.

It was in the Neolithic, with the transition to sedentarism based on higher forms fishing and early agriculture, the genus appears as social institution with a clear knowledge by its members of the stages of kinship, as well as rituals of honoring the founder of the clan and other ancestors, including those that no one living has seen, but heard about them from representatives of older generations. This is reflected in the veneration of graves and the cult of the skulls of ancestors, in the practice of creating ancestral burial grounds and the appearance of totem poles with symbolically represented images of ancestors, often endowed with expressive totemic features. Such pillars are well known, for example, among the Polynesians or the Indians of the northwestern coast of North America.

Meanwhile, as the food resources of water bodies are depleted and the crisis of fishing societies begins, especially with the increase in population, when some people were forced to settle far from water bodies rich in fish, we observe a constant increase in the role of agriculture and livestock farming (naturally, where it was possible ).

Moreover, in many places previously inhabited by groups wholly focused on fishing, rapid rates of development (in relation to neighboring territories with more ancient agricultural traditions) are observed. The above applies to Egypt, Sumer and the river valley. Indus (compared to Palestine and Syria, Zagros and Central Anatolia) starting from the 5th millennium BC. e., and to the coasts of Yucatan and Peru (compared to the plateau of Central Mexico and the valleys of the Andes) from, respectively, the 2nd and 1st millennium BC. e.

It should also be noted that while the population of the centers of rapid development, based on increasingly improved forms of agriculture, intensified its development, on their periphery the rate of evolution and population growth was much lower. Therefore, the excess human mass from such centers increasingly settled in the surrounding lands, where natural conditions were favorable for farming.

The demographic potential of the early farmers was always significantly greater than that of their neighbors, and their economic and cultural type was higher and more perfect. Therefore, when interacting with their neighbors, they, as a rule, either displaced or assimilated them. However, in some cases, if

Primitive foundations of civilization

Fishermen came into contact with the advancing farmers; the latter, perceiving the basis of a reproducing economy, could preserve their ethno-linguistic identity. This, obviously, happened in Lower Mesopotamia during the formation of the community of the ancient Sumerians.