Wayne Parham Messages: 18682 Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)
Interesting "food for thought" topic. And not even completely "tongue in cheek" either. There's a fascinating subject discussed in academia circles about the era where man is thought to have transitioned from hunter-gatherer to agricultural - farmers and tradesmen - during the so-called "Neolithic Revolution" period. It kind of fits in with the "things have gone downhill" sentiment on your calendar.
I take interest in this period because I have long been fascinated with early civilizations in the Lavant - particularly the city/states of Sumer.
There is archeological evidence that around 10,000 years ago, the earth experienced climate change. That tended to shift how people lived - they started storing food rather than just hunting and foraging food on a daily basis. Eventually, they began to cultivate crops and maintain animals for food.
That seems like a good thing - seems like it would be more stable - but a couple of unintended consequences arose. One is the diet seemed to be less balanced and people were just not as healthy. Archaeological evidence shows humans were less healthy after the Neolithic Revolution than they were before it. And the second is that the communities that began to form appear to have been more warlike than the hunter/gatherers were.
We don't find as many examples of men that died from violence before the Neolithic Revolution as we do afterwards. Small clans of hunter/gatherers appear to have taken what they needed and moved on. They don't appear to have fought one another for resources.
But once we shifted to an agricultural society, we also began to live in or near city/states, which became trade centers. It's also the beginning of what we would recognize today as political influence. Politics in a small tribe is very different from what forms in a larger city/state.
People staying in one place are more vulnerable to raiders and thieves, so they must arm themselves for protection. This tended to make walled city/states attractive because they could employ city defenders, among other things. So the city/states became centers of trade and business, but also of politics and war.
Makes one wonder if what we call "modern civilization" is really all that civilized.
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