Prehistoric Men

by Robert J. Braidwood

All this last section was about Europe. How about the rest of the world when the last glaciers were melting away?

We simply don’t know much about this particular time in other parts of the world except in Europe, the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East. People were certainly continuing to move into the New World by way of Siberia and the Bering Strait about this time. But for the greater part of Africa and Asia, we do not know exactly what was happening. Some day, we shall no doubt find out; today we are without clear information.

REAL CHANGE AND PRELUDE IN THE NEAR EAST

The appearance of the microliths and the developments made by the “Forest folk” of northwestern Europe also mark an end. They show us the terminal phase of the old food-collecting way of life. It grows increasingly clear that at about the same time that the Maglemosian and other “Forest folk” were adapting themselves to hunting, fishing, and collecting in new ways to fit the post-glacial environment, something completely new was being made ready in western Asia.

Unfortunately, we do not have as much understanding of the climate and environment of the late Ice Age in western Asia as we have for most of Europe. Probably the weather was never so violent or life quite so rugged as it was in northern Europe. We know that the microliths made their appearance in western Asia at least by 10,000 B.C. and possibly earlier, marking the beginning of the terminal phase of food-collecting. Then, gradually, we begin to see the build-up towards the first basic change in human life.

This change amounted to a revolution just as important as the Industrial Revolution. In it, men first learned to domesticate plants and animals. They began producing their food instead of simply gathering or collecting it. When their food-production became reasonably effective, people could and did settle down in village-farming communities. With the appearance of the little farming villages, a new way of life was actually under way. Professor Childe has good reason to speak of the “food-producing revolution,” for it was indeed a revolution.

QUESTIONS ABOUT CAUSE

We do not yet know how and why this great revolution took place. We are only just beginning to put the questions properly. I suspect the answers will concern some delicate and subtle interplay between man and nature. Clearly, both the level of culture and the natural condition of the environment must have been ready for the great change, before the change itself could come about.

It is going to take years of co-operative field work by both archeologists and the natural scientists who are most helpful to them before the how and why answers begin to appear. Anthropologically trained archeologists are fascinated with the cultures of men in times of great change. About ten or twelve thousand years ago, the general level of culture in many parts of the world seems to have been ready for change. In northwestern Europe, we saw that cultures “changed just enough so that they would not have to change.” We linked this to environmental changes with the coming of post-glacial times.

In western Asia, we archeologists can prove that the food-producing revolution actually took place. We can see the important consequence of effective domestication of plants and animals in the appearance of the settled village-farming community. And within the village-farming community was the seed of civilization. The way in which effective domestication of plants and animals came about, however, must also be linked closely with the natural environment. Thus the archeologists will not solve the how and why questions alone—they will need the help of interested natural scientists in the field itself.