Much more important than the ground stone ax in its influence on life was the commencement, during the Neolithic, of two of the great fundamentals of our own modern civilization: agriculture and domestic animals. These freed men from the buffetings of nature; made possible permanent habitation, the accumulation of food and wealth, and a heavier growth of population. Also, agriculture and animal breeding were evidently introduced only after numbers had reached a certain density. A sparse population, being able to subsist on wild products, tends to remain content with them. A fertile area with mild winters may support as high as one soul per square mile without improvement of the natural resources; in large forests, steppes, cold climates, and arid tracts, the territory needed for the subsistence of each head becomes larger in a hunting stage of existence.
The cultivated food plants of the European Neolithic were barley, wheat, and millet, pease, lentils, and somewhat later, beans and apples. All of these seem to derive from Mediterranean or west Asiatic sources. Of non-edible plants there was flax, which served textile purposes and involved loom weaving.
The species of domesticated animals numbered four, besides the dog: cattle, swine, sheep, and goats. The horse,[34] cat, hen, duck, came into Europe during the metal ages, in part during the historic period.
223. Origin of Domesticated Animals and Plants
The place of first domestication of the four oldest species is not known surely. Most of them had wild representatives in Europe long before and after the domesticated forms appear, but the same was true in western Asia and Egypt, and the general priority of these tracts in metal working and other cultural achievements makes it likely that their inhabitants were also the first to tame the animals in question. The subject is as intricate as it is interesting, because of difficulty which biologists experience in tracing the modified tame forms back to the wild species with certainty. The mere fact of continued domestication, even without conscious selection in breeding, often alters a species more from what may have been its old wild form than this differs from another wild species.
It is however clear from the unusually abundant and well preserved Lake-dwelling remains of Switzerland that the earliest known domestic animals of this region were considerably different from the nearest native species. The wild bull or urus of Europe, Bos primigenius, was large and long-horned. His bones in the oldest lake dwellings seem to come from wild individuals that had been hunted. Alongside are the remains of the domesticated Bos brachyceros, a short-horned form, small and delicately built. Later, though still in the Neolithic, long-horned tame cattle appear in the lake dwellings. Apparently the short-horns had first been imported from the south; then the native urus was tamed; finally, the two strains were crossed. These strains are thought to survive in our modern cattle, those of eastern and central Europe being prevailingly of the primigenius, of western Europe of the brachyceros type.
A similar story applies to the pig. The first domesticated swine of Switzerland were small, long-legged, and easily distinguishable from the wild boar of the region. It thus is likely that they were imported domesticated. In the Bronze Age, pigs grew larger, due perhaps to crossing with the wild species. Sheep were certainly brought into Europe, as there is no corresponding wild form; the goats, too, have their nearest relatives in Asia. They were perhaps tamed before sheep. At any rate, goats prevailed in the earlier lake dwellings, whereas later, sheep outnumbered them.
Similar arguments apply to the origin of the cultivated plants in Europe. For some of these, such as wheat, wild relatives—possible ancestors—are known from Asia, but not from Europe. Also there has been such a drift of later cultivated plants—legumes, greens, and fruits—from Asia and the Mediterranean into Europe during the Bronze and Iron Ages, as to render it probable that the earliest flow was in the same direction. The instances of diffusion from north to south are few: oats, rye, and hemp are perhaps the principal. These plants, however, were carried southward slowly and accepted reluctantly, whereas the northerners were in general avid of any southern or Oriental form which would bear their climate, as the progressive spread and increased use of new forms shows. Furthermore, even oats, rye, and hemp appear to be Asiatic in origin, and thus to have entered Europe merely from the east, instead of southeast.
224. Other Traits of the Full Neolithic
The earliest animals were kept for their flesh and hides. Two or three thousand years passed before cattle were used before the plow or to draw wagons. Both the plow and the wheel were unknown in Europe until well in the Bronze Age, after they had been established for some time in Asia. Still later was the use of milk. Here again Asia and Egypt have precedence.