A Neolithic Landscape - The 1st Farmers

[issareign]

I am so proud of my fertile crescent ancestors!

[NKVism3]

EltonJ: Humans ARE animals. They sure as fuck aren't plants or fungi. Human ingenuity is the result of weaker instincts. If humans were not so fragile, they would not have to be so clever.

[EltonJThe]

Praise the ingenuity of the human spirit. :) For without it, we would be animals.

[Parapon3ra]

Praise technology, for without it we would be nothing (or do high infant mortality rates, constant fear, hunger, and hardship, and an average lifespan of 25-30 years sound like fun to you?).

[jacksawild]

We don't really need to make assumptions. There are primitive people, at various stages, still alive in the world today. Look at the native american traditions, very much old stone age, women hunted too. We only have to look at our isolated populations to get a window into our history.

[tamar848]

Got to agree, websnarf, it's more likely the women who would have been fooling around with seeds. As for animal domestication, introspection tells me that the maternal instinct is apt to glom onto anything cute, and I wonder how much adopting baby goats as pets had to do with keeping them later. Many men have this instinct but perhaps not as many as women. Whichever, I think it's hardwired, and I have enough of it to find it easier to imagine domesticating animals than plants.

[tamar848]

very interesting, but it appears from this video that in neolithic times all humans were male. Not likely to produce a new technology, let alone future humans. I've read that hunter/gatherers rely 80% on gathering, usually the ladies's job. Aren't they at least as likely as the guys to have figured out farming?

[websnarf]

@tamar848 : IMHO, it is *MORE* likely that the first to figure out crop farming were women. They spent a higher percentage of time gathering seeds and likely would have figured out the reseeding strategy even before they discovered the right bulbous grasses that would have eventually gone on to be modern domesticated crops.

However, farms also include the domestication of animals. Quite possibly as a side effect of pastoralism, and that would have been more in the male domain.

[cashmania1]

Well gave me some facts about different things i needed to know. Im doing a project on Paleolithic age to the Neolithic age and i need help doing the timeline any facts u can give me or words of advise when doing this timeline for all of them including Mesolithic ( Im in the 7th grade)

[diogok]

Well done, man, nice produced doc! You can work for History Channel now! I liked specially the song and the edition.

[donze52]

we here in south west Nebraska take time to find points (arrow heads) from the stone age, I still carry a small stone from my childhood instead of knife as it is razor sharp yet safe enough to put in my pocket. In the future when money dies, all will be living from seeds and stones.