Civilization #1: Explaining Humanity's Transition to Agriculture

okay so in this first lecture I want to ask a question the question is why did Humanity transition from Hunter gather Society to agriculture okay and in the traditional Paradigm okay Paradigm Paradigm is um a very sophisticated English word and all it means is story or model or understanding okay so in in the traditional story Paradigm we transitioned because we're first hunter gatherers and we lived in groups of about 20 to 50 people and we roam the land looking for food it was uncertain it was unstable and then suddenly there was a revolution we discover farming and farming provided a stable source of food that we could control okay the word we use is domestication okay domestication just means that we bring it under our control and because of farming we can now create more food than we need the word we use for this is Surplus and because there's a surplus people now could do things besides farming so for example we could have um leaders which creates the idea of politics right we could also have priests which introduces the idea of religion and then we can have creative people which then gives us arts and slowly over time these Villages grew into cities and because there was a lot of people and a lot of surplus we could now have literature reading and writing so we can now store knowledge and then pass it from generation to generation and across cultures okay we can now have science and technology and slowly over the course of this process we create modernity okay which is the world that we live in today so the pivotal step towards modernity was this transition into Agriculture and this is traditionally what we believed about the world unfortunately there's no evidence for this okay and in fact the more evidence we collect the more we realize this is not true in fact what we now know is it was actually pretty stupid to transition from hunter gatherer into farming okay for a variety of reasons the first reason is that when you're a hunter gatherer it's actually a pretty easy life because there's food everywhere okay when you're a farmer it's a hard life because you have to grow that food so maybe maybe as a hunter gatherer you're working maybe an hour a day but as a farmer you were working six seven hours a day it was very hard to grow that food so in the book um sapiens the Israeli um historian named yuel Harari he's very famous sapen is also a very famous book there's a very famous sentence okay the sentence is like this we did not domesticate wheat wheat domesticated us okay so we F that we made wheat okay the food wheat into our slave but in reality wheat made us its slave and the reasoning for this is this out in nature if you're wheat and you want to survive you have to make yourself attractive to other people and to animals okay so you have to be tasty and you have to be easy to fine you have to do a lot of work but when you're on a farm in your wheat you can just lay back do nothing and make humans do all the work okay so it was a bad deal for humans and a very good deal for wheat okay so that's the first problem you actually do more work on the farm than you do as a hunter gatherer which means that now you have to have more children right you need to have Labor to do all that work which creates a problem all overpopulation which means that you are using too much land and then eventually the land becomes dead okay or uh not arabo anymore so that's the first problem second problem is that we're able to dig up the skeletons of hunter gatherers and farmers and what we and what we see is that um Hunter gathers are a lot taller than Farmers why protein right food as a hund gatherer you have access to meat you have access to fruits and nuts and vegetables okay your diet is varied um and very nutritious but as a farmer you're eating only what you grow which is mainly wheat and some vegetables okay so you're not getting that much nutrition then the third problem is that is as a farmer you are much more likely to die early than if you're a hunter gatherer why have you guys been to a farm what's the problem problem on a farm exactly thank you pigs right animals they're everywhere plus where do you put the garbage where do you go to the restroom right so because people are together in a very unclean place it's much more likely to contract disease and then die okay so for these three reasons the transition from Hunter gather to farming makes no sense and even today we are not able to explain to you why this transition happened okay we don't know why why we did this so the only thing we can do is construct theories as to why this might have happened so even though we can't go in the past and look at why we did this we can do some research and collect evidence and then create theories as to why this might have happened okay so there are four different disciplines from which we can collect evidence the first discipline is called archaeology Archaeology is just the study of the past so basically you go and you dig stuff up and you see what you can find okay maybe you can dig up someone's house or you can take up someone's skeleton or someone's um clothing okay and from that you're able to figure out what happened in the past and so three pieces of evidence from AR archaeology we will look at today are go tape Jericho and Kaya Hoak okay and these are places that we've actually dug up and we know what life is like in these three places that's so that's archaeology second discipline we can look at is anthropology and anthropology um is the study of other cultures so in other words There Are Places still on this planet where people live a hunter gatherer lifestyle maybe in the Amazon maybe in our Australia maybe in Africa okay and so we're able to go and study these people to understand why how originally we thought and why we might have transitioned into farming okay so anthropology the Third Field that we can look at is psychology or Neuroscience basically how the brain works how do we feel what motivates us why do we behave the way we behave okay so that's a third field we can look at the last field we can look at is primatology the study of primates okay or monkeys because guess what guys we're monkeys we're primates 99% of our DNA are monkey DNA so we can look at certain groups of monkeys to understand how they behave and there are three types of um primates that we look at very closely okay the first is gorillas we also look at champanes and we look at uh Bol BS okay uh chenes and bonobos are very close to us genetically they're the closest uh to us of all the primates so um by looking at these four different fields we're able to collect evidence to construct theories as to why we transition from hunter gatherer into farming okay so now I will share some of these theories with you and again what's really important to understand is we don't know what happened we can only guess about what happened so the first theory is the idea of cotion okay and what this basically means is that there's an elite group of people who didn't want to work so they made everyone else work okay so that's cion and the evidence for this is is that well guess what gorillas do this right if you study gorillas you will see that they always have an alpha male the male who's bigger than everyone else and who makes everyone do all the work he just sits and naps every day but he gets all the girls and he gets all the food okay so gorillas that's the first Theory the second theory is war okay and the idea here is that if you are on a farm it's easier to protect yourself in a time of War than you're out in the forest right you can build walls around your farm you can uh defend yourself a lot easier you can see the enemy coming okay so um War the evidence for this is that chimpanzees okay again who are like us they go to war a lot they're very violent they're always funing each other so the argument here is that uh we human beings are just a violent people who are always at War and we must be afraid of each other and therefore when when we have the chance we'll settle down build fortifications build walls and fight each other okay that's a second theory and again the evidence for this um are champanes the third theory is um respect for elders meaning that as a h 100 gatherer it's very hard on old people right so at a certain point you're going to have to leave the old people to just stay there and die and maybe we as human beings we are biologically programmed to take care of Elders for whatever reason okay and again uh the evidence for this is anthropology where every culture respects its Elders right so so that's a third Theory the last theory is religion okay meaning that we settle down in order to celebrate a religion to practice a religion and uh just to be clear um there's evidence and Arguments for all four theories and there are Scholars who argued for different theories okay but the consensus what most people agree on today okay most Scholars not every scholar but most Scholars is religion okay so let me explain why we think the answer has to be religion slowly all right okay so porion while it is true that with gorillas there's an alpha male who controls everything the problem is that if you look at gorillas the alpha male is huge okay and males are a lot bigger than females so it's possible for one gorilla to exert force and pressure on the others okay with human beings that's harder right because let's just say a 9 foot giant human being comes into this room and it's like I'm now your boss you have to you have to grow food for me you have to give me all your woman okay what can we do as a class beat the crap out of him okay you understand because we have big brains and these big brains allow us to cooperate together okay so this guy is around and at first we're afraid of him so we let him do whatever he wants but then he goes to bed and then the and then we as a class discuss hey what can we do well we can make weapons right or we can trap him or we can trick him we can give him poison food okay so coercion among humans is very very hard to do the worst case scenario scenario we can't beat them up what we'll do is just run away okay doesn't does that make sense so we don't think cotion is an explanation because there's so many ways for us to fight back and to rebel against uh bigger people okay so uh cotion doesn't really work War okay so we don't think war is a good explanation either so it is true that champanes are naturally violent okay they're always being the crap out of each other but guess what Bob who are actually closer to us genetically than champanes they're actually very peaceful they don't fight each other okay so there's no evidence that we human beings are naturally violent also if it is war then we should be able to find weapons um and we don't really find weapons okay in archaeology we don't really find weapons of early humans now there is a lot of violence in in early human history okay there there's human sacrifice there's group bual where a group of people are killed but that's basically um violence within a group we don't find evidence of large violence among different groups okay we don't find that so War we don't really think is a possibility now it's possible that in the future we'll find evidence but I'm just saying that right now in archaeology and anthropology we do not have any EV any evidence okay the last then we look at respect for elders and even though this is a Theory um there's an argument that back then they didn't really care about dying that much the reason why is that for most of human history we human beings have seen life history as a circle right so for example um right now it's summer it's going to turn into fall then winter then spring then summer again okay so the world history moves in a cycle well human life also moves in a cycle you're born you die then you're reborn then you die again then you're reborn again okay so back then they really didn't care if you die in fact if you're an old person you're probably like you know what I rather be dead and then so if I'm if I die I'll either be reborn or I'll go into the spirit World okay so they didn't really fear death or they really didn't see death like the way we saw death yeah okay that's a great question okay so the evidence for this is what we understand about their religion which we we will discuss later on and in next class okay all right um the last so that leaves religion as the most likely uh possibility and this again this is what most dos believed happen and so we're going to look at three different archaeological sites the first is goe the second is Jericho and the third is K Hoak okay all right so um I'm going to draw up a I'm we we'll first see a picture of goe and guys um these places were only discovered in the past few decades okay so these are new places we're only starting to understand these places and um so this place is in Turkey in central turkey and this dates back about 9500 BC so this is this is about over 11,000 years old um and we don't even think this is the oldest place okay so if you did your research you will know that this is basically a place of religious worship you can see that um they constructed this place so that there are these t-shaped pillars okay and these and these things are huge right this is a human being and this is a t-shaped pillar okay we think again this is all Theory okay this is all what we know we don't know that much because this is all recent okay but we think that these t-shapes represent uh human beings okay and Within These t-shapes are animals and you can see that they've aligned or they built this this t-shape in a way that they can practice a ritual or a worship okay so the people who are leading this were probably who we call shamans okay or religious leaders that help us Bridge our world with the animal world and the spirit world okay so these are shamans and so goe is a place of religious worship now what's interesting about goe is that the religious site is the oldest but we also find houses that are built later on okay so what we think might have happened here is that hunter gatherers will come to a place now and then to practice religion because ultimately as human beings and we discussed this last class we have a yearning or we have a need to understand why and religion solves this problem for us also as hunter gatherer you need to associate with other hunter gatherers in order to find mates okay to find husbands and wives to reproduce and so this sort of religious center it's a great time to come and practice your religion but it's also a great time to feast and to meet someone you can marry and have children with okay so um that was the original function of the temple now these places are often led by shamans and what makes them special is that they are charismatic leaders okay charismatic leaders charismatic leaders are people like madone Barack Obama Bill Clinton okay they're people who for whatever reason people just love them and want to follow them okay and so maybe what happened was that these Char charismatic leaders they built this place and they became like celebrities and people came from all over to meet them to hear them to hear the religion and to meet other people and over time some people even chose to stay with them and build houses to celebrate them okay and then when they died what happened was they still worshiped them in their death and so this place became a temple okay does that make sense so that's why theory about go there are other theories okay there are some people who will tell you that space aliens came down and built this place because it's so sophisticated okay but so there are different theories but the one that Scholars most agree with today okay is that it was a religious Center any questions before I move on to before I move on this leaders religions or Hors okay so that's a great question okay where is where does religion come from and this is something that we will look at very closely next class and the answer is is this okay even though we all have the need for religion we don't all have the ability to produce religion okay so who these charismatic leaders are are people who who have visions or dreams of God or the spirit world okay and then they present their Visions to other people and we have people like this throughout human history right so think of Jesus think of Muhammad F of Buddha F of confusious right these are people who have these visions of God or of spiritual ality or of a new world and present to people and because they're charismatic they're able to attract followers and spread their religion and that's that's what probably happened here as well because as as you can see from this picture it was very hard work to build this Temple okay this is 11,000 years ago they didn't have bulldozers they didn't have shovels okay this all by hand so for them to want to D dedicate their lives to building this Temple because it took a long long time right it took years and years and hundreds of people well you needed something called religious devotion right Faith does that make sense okay and again throughout human history we've seen this right so think of Christians think of Buddhists think of uh Muslims religious religious Faith so that's what built this okay so so does that answer your question okay any more questions before before I I I continue yeah okay um so that's a good question why is a temple structured like this okay and the answer is that there's cosmological significance to the structure meaning that on a certain time of the year what will happen is that the sun will hit this place in a certain way so it's almost like a clock does that make sense to you guys they designed this in a way so they can tell time but their intention was not to tell time their intention was to connect with the outer world right does that make sense you guys so they were extremely sophisticated they knew a lot about the way the Stars worked okay so basically for them this is science okay we we today we say this is a religion but their science back then is no different from our science today okay does that answer your question okay and you had a question okay um so if you talk to any religious people they saw it okay they were there they talked to God right right so so we're like well you know that doesn't make any sense but they really believe it and that's why they're able to convince their followers okay so you go so so in the future we will look at someone like Muhammad who had religious Visions in a cave and like you're like did he really see an angel well he thought he really did okay and in fact if we in our research what we discovered is that people used who who use something called psychedelics okay do you know what psychedelics are psychedelics are drugs what drugs and what these drugs do is they shift your neural um system so that you see the world in a different way when you do that you're able to have different Visions okay but we also know that if you go hungry for a long time or if you meditate for a long time you're able to see different things so from their perspective they actually saw this thing okay even though like we don't think it actually happened does that make sense for them it's true but maybe for us it's not so true okay all right any more questions before I I go on all right so so these are great questions and um keep on asking them okay and these are hard questions that we will go over the next few classes on so let me show you another picture picture okay this is what is in the pillars at goe Okay now what's really interesting about these pictures and okay is that these are animals in the motion of hunting so the Fox right the way the fox hunts is the fox jumps up in the air and then goes down and attacks the prey so this is in the motion of attack why would they do that what's the point of having animals on these pillars why would they do that good okay yes okay so um what's really important to understand is that back then and again I'll explain to you uh over the next couple weeks back then we human beings did not see us see us as separate from the other world okay does that make sense animals trees humans all equal so first of all if you're going to kill these animals you need to ask for their forgiveness otherwise their Spirit their soul will haunt you okay they'll take revenge on you so if you're if you kill them you must ask for their forgiveness okay and the one way to do that is by paying tribute to them okay that's number one number two is that we can learn from these animals right they're they're the best hunters in the world so before we go on a hunting trip we might have a ceremony to channel their energy and power and wisdom does that make sense okay and the third thing is basically to appease them or to become their friends right because we don't want to hunt foxes we want to hunt gazelle there's more meat than gazelle they're easier to capture but we want to be friends with the gazelle we want to be friends with the lion okay we don't want to be enemies so it's a sign of respect to the animals so that that was basically their religion and coming together the religious Festival was about celebrating the relationship with these animals as well as channeling channeling their power their energy and the wisdom so that they could go hunt as well does that make sense okay so this is probably one of the earlier religions that we have is this clear to you guys so far all right all right let's move on okay so now this is Jericho okay and Jericho is part of something called the naian culture and the tafan culture appeared about 13,000 years ago or even more actually maybe 15,000 years ago in a place we call the Levant okay the Levant is basically the Middle East Israel and Syria what was special about the naian culture are three things first of all they were s uh sary okay sedentary basically means that um they they they basically stayed in one place okay remember hun gatherers they roed around they moveed from place to place but they were hunter gatherers who were senary okay they were not Farmers they were hunter gatherers but they stayed in one place and the reason why we know there's a lot of evidence but one reason why we know is that um they basically hunted gazelle gazel are like deers right and the thing about gazel is their teeth color is different according to the season so in the summer and in the winter it's because they eat different foods okay so the tea color is different so we're able to dig up these gazelle bones look at their teeth and recognize that oh um they were hunting gazelle in this area both in the summer and the winter which meant they did not move okay so they were senary that's the first thing second thing is that they had domesticated crops and the reason why we know is we're able to dig up seeds of crops okay vegetables and wheat and barley which meant that they had the capacity the technology to farm but they chose not to farm does that make sense okay so basically the way they develop this technology is for gardening right they were hunting Gathering most of the time but some of them for fun for pleasure have their own garden and that's how they develop the technology okay and the third thing that was very important is that's I'm call the The Cult of the skull okay so they probably worshiped um uh animals but they also worshiped ancestors and the reason why we think so is we're able to find a skull in these places okay so they basically took um someone's head skull and put Clay on it to protect it and they put in their houses to worship it okay so this is the beginning of ancestor worship okay does that make sense to you guys so I want to show you this and it's called the Tower of jerle when we first discovered this we thought oh this must be a um evidence that Jero went to war okay because had walls and then a tower right the wars are are to protect you from your enemies the tower is to see your enemies coming but then they did more research and realized that oh no no no this Tower is a religious Monument it's the same as goe where it is cosmological meaning that at the longest day of the year the the mountain over here will cast a shadow over the tower the tower will cast a shadow over the entire Village covering it all up in darkness okay does that make sense you guys why would they why would they want to do that what what what does that do for you have the entire Village cover up in darkness any guesses why would they do that excuse me what do you mean by that I I I know but if that was the case you just move right so okay so so what's really important is that this is like right after after the last ice age okay so it's actually pretty cold okay they did this for religious reasons right because when you cover your village in darkness you feel as though you are in connection with the sky does that make sense so they must have a religious belief in which part of the worship is to cover the village in darkness the vage um that's a good question okay so space is dark right you understand so when you're dark you think that I'm bringing space to our village so I'm I'm collapsing the distance between space and my Village right you make your village you feel connect to I I understand that but but your village is is bright anyway and if you're able to make your village dark that's that's magic right that's that do you understand okay so they design a tower in a certain way so that it would cover the village in darkness and they could see that as magic and that's evidence that your religion is correct does that make sense right because otherwise how do you know religion is correct only by performing magic can you show that this charismatic leader okay who came with this idea speaks to God okay does that make sense okay so let's look at certain pictures of skulls okay because this was actually very common back then okay so basically this is a skull they covered up with clay and They Carried around with them all over the place and this just two throughout the world at that time okay an ancestor worship right so this is another picture of the uh skull okay let me ask you why they would do that their an is dead why would they do that why would they have to skull around where's the ancestors now where's that person the spirit world right some place in other world and therefore having a score around allows you to communicate with that world and learn its secrets you understand and some of the secrets may be like how to construct the tower in a way that you're able to cast a shadow over the village okay so that's their method of Silent discovery does that make sense to communicate with the spirit world through through your ancestors does that make sense okay the point I'm trying to tell you is that their level of intelligence or their understanding the world is just as sophisticated as our understand in the world okay you understand we think that when we go to science class we're learning facts and knowledge but guess what maybe a thousand years from now people will look at at our science like the physics and be like oh that was a religion too okay does that make sense so in terms of intelligence they were just as creative and as sophisticated as we are today but they just had a different set of beliefs okay all right so the last place I I want to look at is katah Hoak okay so K Hoak um is a huge place okay in as well um pretty far from goe but about the same place and this getes back about 7500 BCE and as you can see it's a huge village and it and and we think that at its height okay maybe this was around for about 2,000 years but at its height of development of civilization it had about 8,000 people that's a lot of people guys okay and the thing that about K Hoak that stands out is first of all it's huge okay second of all um the they didn't have a place of worship or government okay meaning that all the houses were the same it was a very egalitarian society everyone was the same what's even more interesting is that you go to every every house there's a site the living room is basically a temple onto itself it was it was a place of worship and religion okay meaning meaning that the first um like kind of Hoak is a place where religion permeated or was in every place they were okay so we think that K Hoak is one of the first religious communities remember that before um religious sites or places you went to maybe once in your lifetime or maybe once a year okay but it wasn't part of your everyday life whereas in kind of holak religion was in your life from birth to death okay does that make sense and the thing about kah holak that's very interesting is at this point their religion is extremely sophisticated meaning that they can explain everything using their religion okay so their everyday life and their religion was completely aligned together so let me show you some evidence of this okay so this is a painting that you will see in every house or most houses in kind of Hoya okay all right so you're like what is going on here so again there are different theories but let me explain to you what most scholars believe to be the accurate theory is okay so this is just a theory we have no evidence for this but this is what we believe we believe that the people at kind of Hoak they worshiped a mother goddess okay because a mother goddess is what gives life to everything right think of Mother Nature think of a woman giving birth to her child okay so they worship a mother goddess and the mother goddess is represented by the bird because a bird flies all around the sky right so the sky belongs to the bird now now the bird can take different forms um this is a vulture right so the mother goddess can also take the form of a vulture so what's going on here why is the vulture with headless people okay because there the way that they combine ancestor worship with their belief in the mother goddess is they believe that when a person dies what they'll do is they'll put that person's dead body out in the open it's a sky burial right you go to toet they have Sky burials the VES will come and eat all the Flesh and that is the tribute or the sacrifice made to the mother goddess okay so the mother goddess basically cleans the body and then you take the bones and you bury it back in your house and you take the skull and you keep the skull in your living room to worship your ancestors does that make sense so in other other words it is an extremely comprehensive or complete religion understanding the world okay is that clear to you guys what the religion is any question so far again but by the way guys a theory okay but right now the most useful theory that we have about this place any any questions before I move on okay so what's going on here okay now this again also is in kolak in many houses so what's going on here okay so different Scholars have different interpretations of this okay clearly this is a hunt right this is a hunt and some people believe that uh these human beings who are you know part of the kolak people they are mocking or taunting or laughing at the animals as a way to subdue them to tame them okay to domesticate them that's why Theory but another theory is that what they're really doing is dancing because they are worshipping or paying tribute to these animals they're about to kill or they're try so this go back to go bye right where they're trying to respect the animals right dance with you we're friends I'm sorry have to kill you but hey we're only taking your meat your soul right is still going to be born it's or it's going to go to the spirit world okay so this is a way of paying tribute or respecting the animals they're about to kill or about to hunt to maintain the harmony of Nature and the relationship with nature does that make sense guys okay again what's really important is that this is a pretty complete religion right that explains everything to these people and that's why why it's so attractive to people right if you're a human being you like you want to know why well kind of H like the religion there explains why okay does that make sense so far any more any questions okay so this is a picture of the mother goddess okay again we have we have debate about what this is some people believe that it's just a fertility goddess okay but others people believe this is the mother goddess and you think about it um if you are a place like kah Hoak you're most concerned about giving birth right because giving birth is what rejuvenates your Society so it makes sense that your God the person you worship the most would be a mother goddess okay okay this is clearly a bow if and if you see pictures of Kaho you you will see that they have many many depictions or pictures of B in their house okay and what we believe again this is a theory okay what what what we believe is that if the mother goddess represents life okay giving life the bow represents vitality enery energy and you and so it's the B that gives the mar Gods the energy to give birth right does that make sense so the bow represents the male the monus represents the female but only if the male and the female conjoin they come together are you will you have life okay so this is another picture clearly okay they're not hunting okay clearly they are worshiping the bow does that make sense they're paying tribute to the bow okay so are we clear about this how religion was a fundamental part of people's existence when they chose to become senary okay or they chose to settle in one place so let's go back to the original question and I'll take questions the original question is why did people transition into to Agriculture and the theory that most scholars believe is because of religion it was because people had a religious need that they came together to have these religious festivals there are some charismatic leaders who were so brilliant that people chose to settle down with them okay and so they became senary they develop a religion around the Cent lifestyle which included ancestor worship but over time time because you're in one place you're going to deplete the resources of the people of the area around you right of the forest which means that you you must go to farming okay does that make sense so but then eventually because you have um so much population and you farm too much you're forced to move somewhere else and when you move somewhere else you actually bring your religion with you okay and that's how we can explain the transition from Hunter gather to Agriculture and there was no one spark or one moment when this happened we think it took thousands of years over time because ultimately the hunter gather lifestyle is was so much more attractive to people so much easier and attractive to people than the farming lifestyle okay but the benefit of the farming lifestyle is that you had a religion and and that's why people chose ultimately to farm okay so that's that's it and uh next class we'll continue this discussion about early religion and how people develop these religious Visions okay to next class we'll look at ice cave paintings that goes back 40,000 years meaning that they practiced this sort of religion or something like this religion 40 to 50,000 years ago and we know through ice ice cave paintings okay um so questions before we finish class is H is this clear to you guys okay anything you're confused about any questions before we conclude okay okay do you see it more clearly and again this is all on the Internet by the way so if you're you can go online and just read up more on katah Hoak okay these these places are very famous we'll be discussing these places throughout the semester okaye Jericho and um kak excuse me we we discuss all three okay but I'm introducing you to these three places in future classes we'll go more in depth into these places okay becausee is a very interesting place okay uh and we're slowly we're only we're only slowly discovering all that's there basically we basically uncover about 5% of tee so over the next few DEC we'll know we'll know more okay um any more questions any more questions okay all right so next plan class we will do ice cave paintings