Jared Diamond is an entertaining writer with a fertile imagination but he is not an anthropologist. His books, while hugely popular, are heavily criticized by professional anthropologists.
That’s interesting. However, that structure is only one found thus far from that time period, and even younger mammoth bone depositories are hotly disputed as actual houses. The largest conglomeration of houses appears to be three. No communities of bone houses survive to prove that anything more than a winter shelter was intended.
And loose mammoth bones, or those left over from the occasional kill, are vastly easier to amass and assemble than wood houses. You’re simply making those up because you want it to be true, without any supporting evidence.
Nobody is saying that hunter-gatherers didn’t have social structures. The question is when those tribal structures evolved into what we now call civilization. A single house does not make a civilization.
I think that the oldest civilization is generally considered to be Sumer, which dates back to roughly 5,000 BC. They left behind a lot of writings which attest to an amazingly advanced level of development.
Their inventions include the wheel, plow, writing, crop irrigation via canals and levees, formal astronomy, geometry, dentistry, musical instruments, organized school systems, lunisolar calendar, geographic mapping, glue, sailboats, and complex sewer systems including flush toilets.
There have been hundreds of Sumerian practice-tablets found filled with various exercises assigned by the Sumerian professor to the pupils as part of their daily schoolwork.
Much of is covered in Samuel Kramer’s book “History Begins at Sumer”: http://amzn.com/0812212762
However the Göbekli_Tepe is much older (if the dates are correct). But the data for that site which argues for “civilization” seems much more sketchy than Sumer. E.g, in this article one of the arguments for 9,000 BC is that some artifacts there “resemble” those at other sites which were so dated.
That is primarily because archaeologists assumed that settled people were always farmers. In fact, we now know that there are early Peruvian settlements whose people were still hunter/gatherers.
Civilization is also defined in various ways depending on who you ask. Some anthropologists argue that there’s no difference between a series of interconnected villages and a series of interconnected towns (the latter being classified by dint of having a fixed administrative structure).
Was there really much capability for roving bands of people in ancient Japan, or did they have to settle down?
Mud chinks, lashing together with vines or leather straps.
Boy does “mud chink” sound racist!
Pottery is usually an indicator of a settled farming lifestyle, but the established view as I understand it is that ancient Japanese pottery is an exception - that the people who made this beautiful and elaborate pottery were still nomadic or semi-settled, living in a food-rich environment like that of the Pacific northwest.
I was lucky enough to see the “flame pot” on that Wiki page in an exhibition at the British Museum a couple of years ago.
One of his degrees is in anthropology followed by a PhD in Physiology, then a professorship in Geography. But then the subject of his books draws on all of these areas. Academics are prone to squabbles and it does not take much for them to start taking out their degrees and waving them at each other, especially if one of their number has lowered themselves to writing books that can be understood by…the general public. Diamond has even done TED talks which, for some, may be beyond the pale.
I think this sort of fractious attitude comes from this kind of social science where the data is statistical and used as evidence is often open to question because of its scarcity and is not conducive to experiment. Factors are more difficult or impossible to isolate and quantify when they are based on methodical observation. Things are much more concrete in the physical sciences. I am reminded of the famous Meade v Freeman debate in anthropology. Was Meade being led along by Samoans telling her tall stories?
Diamond draws on a lot of different disciplines for his books and about how we got to where we are now and the rise and fall of civilisations anthropology informs just part of it. We don’t know what actually happened to long lost civilisations, we can only theorise and that what he does. He may be wrong. Remember Thor Heyerdahl and his Kontiki expeditions that attempted prove theories about sea borne migration across the Pacific? Great romantic theory, but when genetic studies developed sufficiently they provided new, more compelling evidence that directly contradicted his conclusions. Diamond acknowleges that better evidence may well emerge.
He covers a lot of ground in his books but they are popular science, not learned journals. But he does bring this together and attempts to draw some conclusions about the success or failure of human societies in the past. No doubt treading on some academic toes as he does so. His work also draws on the environment as a factor and man-made climate change. I daresay that goes against the grain of politics in parts of the world where that is a very inconvenient truth. But the question of why civilisations die out is very relevant today. Mankind can have very destructive tendancies.
Where was that first civilisation? Did it start in one place and spread out or in many places at different times? Is it fair to judge a civilisation based on the durability of the building materials they left behind? Plenty of ancient cities may have been made of clay that disintegrated or wood that rotted away so they leave little trace today. Some may well be underwater because of sea level changes since the last ice age. Also, is the development of a civilisation to be defined by cities? For much of history humans had to live next to their food sources and the so the population density would distributed across food producing areas more evenly and not be concentrated in the way they are today, which depends on roads and rail transportation. Rivers can be highways, but they bring water and insect bourne diseases. Living in a settlement could have been a risky choice compared to herders or hunter-gathering. Crops can fail for many reasons. Civilisations that developed around agricultural settlements may well have come into existence and collapsed at different locations.
Today, the big population centres of the world are India and China with about 1.4 billion each, which is a lot of mouths to feed. They got that big by having huge areas of fertile land fed by large river systems so agriculture could develop. Those ancient bread and rice basket areas are where the oldest civilisations are found. This was also once the case in the Middle East and many parts of the Americas where there was food security from farming.
I think we underestimate the influence that the development of agriculture has on human population. Famines still happen but you don’t have to go far back to find evidence of regular famines and crop failures. Starvation was a serious hazard. Lasting out the winter until the crops grew again in the summer could often be a precarious business in many parts of the world, especially in the colder climates. In warmer climates, there were more pests and diseases. Settling in towns and cities was not neccessarily a benefit.
This is a list of the sizes of ancient cities, remarkably small populations. Interestingly the oldest city Murybet in Syria is now under Lake Nasser and the area has recently been the scene of intense fighting between ISIS and US/Kurdish/Arab forces. It certainly is not enjoying the benefits of civilisation today.
No, because you need to be nomadic to live a hunter gatherer lifestyle. Food sources get extinguished in an area after you’ve hunted all the game and picked all the plants.
You need to develop agriculture, which allows you to grow food, harvest it and then grow it again next season to be able to live in the same spot for a long period of time.
As to why agriculture developed? There are lots of theories.
Only if you’re a Bowl Gasket.
Too soon?
Keeping a pretty close yet wide ranging eye on things. I’d say it still has a ways to go before it has evolved to civilized.
There is a ‘just so’ story that explains sedentism, the rise of urban centres, agriculture, animal domestication, pottery, social complexity, long distance trade etc as all being inter-related and essential ingredients that had to be present to create the pudding of civilisation.
That view held when archaeologists could really only look at long-term events in millenium-sized chunks. Once C14 dating arose it became apparent that each of these ingredients had their own trajectories and timing: pottery could appear before sedentism, social complexity and hierarchies could develop before agriculture etc. Yes, they often reinforce and encourage each other, but they are not critically inter-dependent.
Depending on what you use as your benchmark of civilisation maybe the Gobekli Tepites were already there, or may have been way off the money.
The ‘just so’ explanation is rooted in what is basically a eurocentric, expectation-rich and fact-thin view of how the world magically put Europe at the peak of the developmental ladder. Where they encountered awkward mis-matches with the model, such as Aboriginal agricultural practices in Australia, they got around that by simply redefining them as something else.
Especially since it follows a post concerning “roving bands of people in ancient Japan.” I was startled for a moment before I parsed the two posts.
I see a significant amount of criticism of Diamond by people who seem to be emotionally reacting to what his work suggests. “Geographic determinism” is the pejorative they use to dismiss him. But it looks to me like their pride is wounded; they always seem to eventually get around to insisting that THEIR CULTURE is in fact, responsible for inventing X and Y. I think they (intentionally or not) simply do not understand Guns, Germs, and Steel. Speaking in broad terms (as opposed to nitpicking), and of course focusing (as Diamond does) on the period before the feedback loop of what Diamond calls “farmer power” got rolling, Diamond’s conclusions seem persuasive.
It was the price we had to pay for consistent access to beer.
I would also recommend “Sapiens,” by Yuval Noah Harari. I remember him discussing Göbekli Tepe, but not the particulars. It’s a good read.
Girdling trees - burning around the base with fires or hot rocks -was the technique used by Pacific Northwest natives before they got metal tools. However, there’s still the problems of moving heavy logs and of woodworking. Moving heavy logs is a lot easier when you have domesticated animals. the PNW natives had nearby rivers to do the job too. I think you seriously underestimate the level of effort to stack logs nd the woodwork required to ensure that a log cabin is stable.
besides, log cabins only become convenient in settings like the north or Europe or North America where the thickness of the logs doubles as insulation. At that point, good finish in fitting the logs together is also a necessity.
The other issue is effort vs utility. A heavy, solid shelter is only justified when you plan to stay there a while. Hunters perpetually chasing mobile food, who thanks to Malthus would strip an area clean fairly soon, didn’t have the incentive to create relatively permanent dwellings; they were always on the move, and likely some spent days at a time away on the hunt. Once you have animal corrals or field, it makes more sense to create more permanent dwellings.
Well yes, each component of civilization ahs its own logic and utility. Some areas are not conducive to the whole package of “civilization”. But generally, each part is contributes to an important whole.
And some of the following observations are difficult to justify, because we no longer can look at the environment of hunter-gatherers in pre-historic times; the resource-rich environments have all been consumed by farmers (and herders) and the hunter-gatherers have been relegated to the less fertile areas.
While some form of seasonal permanent structure may be useful for nomadic tribes, generally they are on the move too much to invest effort in one place, one structure; and may not have the free time to build. Plus, log cabins left to their own resources for much of the year would probably have serious decay problems with nobody tending to the roof and chasing out the critters. I see rock (or dry stone) construction as more useful - perhaps something simple such as flat platforms with post holes to erect the temporary dwellings on…
it’s entirely possible there is some intermediate phase, where a tribe rotates between field camps and a permanent seasonal base.
Pottery has more advantages once you settle down. for nomads, it will typically be too heavy and fragile to be useful while travelling. In settled areas, it creates vermin-proof containers (and water storage jars). Plus, the furnace needed to properly fire clay is a largish construction too. The potter probably becomes a more specialized craft, to make lighter but serviceable vessels; meaning someone needs to feed him and he needs a big enough market to use all he can produce.
Finally, food - agriculture is a gateway drug, or more precisely a quicksand trap. Once a group settles in a single spot for extended periods to tend to crops, they quickly lose the ability to do much hunting, as they will strip the area around. And again thanks to Malthus, once the population expands to use those agricultural products, there are too many to go back to hunting. But the progression logic is obvious - once you produce a bumper crop, it makes more sense to sit around and enjoy it for a while instead of abandoning guaranteed food you can’t carry, simply to wander off and go look for more.
Civilization I would define as the ability to produce food surpluses to allow work specialization and large group efforts and so more complex products - finer clay pots, bigger and more complex buildings, art for art’s sake - for religion, for decoration, etc. And also, to pass this knowledge down in meaningful ways.
The only problem I have with Jared Diamond’s interpretations is the single focus found in his books. he suggests, for example, in Guns, Germs, and Steel that it’s n accident that some areas happened to have the plants and animals necessary for agriculture, to develop the critical mass to produce “civilization”. This ignores the facts that there are a massive number of interrelated factors that limited some groups. Similarly, in Collapse, he puts all the blame on ecological factors - poor soil management, failure to adapt to changes -when again, there may be more complex contributing causes.
Plenty of nomadic people made pottery as well (e.g. Khoekhoen, Eurasian Nomadic, etc.)