These were the origins of agriculture in the Middle East. You mention there may have been several other origins but that most domesticated plants and animals came from here. What about those other large geographically separated agricultural regions from the Middle East? Did they receive the domesticated foodstuffs from here or develop their own? I’m also thinking about the Americas. Did any of these first domesticated foods or animals make it over with them? I think dogs must have but not sure about others.
In regard to Gobekli Tepe. What tools were used to make the carvings? How does one sculpt stone without metal tools? The level of cultural advancement required to have stone carvers/masons necessary to carve the block at Gobekli Tepe would seem to argue for a more articulated and advanced level of development that permits certain classes of people to devote time to carving sufficiently to develop artistic skills and earn a living off of it. Would this be a hint that there may be something we're missing or haven't found in the archaeological record?
I read "Against the Grain" last year and found it fascinating, on top of being very well written and researched, and most importantly, accessible to a non-academic reader. Just curious why you chose it to base this episode on. Is Prof. Scott's work the best and latest on the topic?
Hi Lars - "Against the Grain" represents an excellent synthesis of the scholarship on the origins of agriculture about five years ago, so in that sense, it's a good starting point for a non-specialist reader. More importantly, though, the book asks excellent questions about why and how people started to farm; we don't have to agree with Scott's answers to those questions, or even his framing of them, to derive value from thinking about how we'd answer them. Specialists have mixed feelings on his approach to the state and particularly his decision to focus on Mesopotamia (there was an entire special issue of the Cambridge Archaeological Journal responding to the book), but for the most part, the agriculture bits seem fairly non-controversial.
Yes, it's good to be reminded that whatever's published is - at best - a well thought out interpretation of the latest and most reliable evidence we have, not an irrefutable truth of human history.
In the podcast you talk about the population of the Fertile Crescent increasing over the early Holocene and surprisingly during the Younger Dryas. Where did you get the population estimates from?
I sourced the estimates from Steven Shennan, "The First Farmers of Europe: An Evolutionary Perspective," who uses it extensively throughout the book. It's also discussed in detail in Alasdair Whittle, "The Times of Their Lives: Hunting History in the Archaeology of Neolithic Europe." The method is called "summed radiocarbon probability," and while it has its limitations, it's the best available tool at the moment.
Around 30:00 into the podcast, you discuss population growth in the Fertile Crescent during the Younger Dryas. How confident can we be in the population estimates and what are the methods used to arrive at these estimates?
The estimates derive from a technique called "summed radiocarbon probability," which involves strict protocols for dating radiocarbon samples from sites and then using a Bayesian model to infer population size from the distribution of those samples across time. With a large-enough data set, the idea is that you should be able to see relative (if not absolute) shifts in population. There are valid critiques of it even now, I'm sure there will be more in the future, but I think it's the best thing currently available, and it seems to track with other forms of evidence.
These were the origins of agriculture in the Middle East. You mention there may have been several other origins but that most domesticated plants and animals came from here. What about those other large geographically separated agricultural regions from the Middle East? Did they receive the domesticated foodstuffs from here or develop their own? I’m also thinking about the Americas. Did any of these first domesticated foods or animals make it over with them? I think dogs must have but not sure about others.
In regard to Gobekli Tepe. What tools were used to make the carvings? How does one sculpt stone without metal tools? The level of cultural advancement required to have stone carvers/masons necessary to carve the block at Gobekli Tepe would seem to argue for a more articulated and advanced level of development that permits certain classes of people to devote time to carving sufficiently to develop artistic skills and earn a living off of it. Would this be a hint that there may be something we're missing or haven't found in the archaeological record?
Hi Patrick,
I read "Against the Grain" last year and found it fascinating, on top of being very well written and researched, and most importantly, accessible to a non-academic reader. Just curious why you chose it to base this episode on. Is Prof. Scott's work the best and latest on the topic?
Love all your work on "Tides" btw.
Thanks,
Lars
Hi Lars - "Against the Grain" represents an excellent synthesis of the scholarship on the origins of agriculture about five years ago, so in that sense, it's a good starting point for a non-specialist reader. More importantly, though, the book asks excellent questions about why and how people started to farm; we don't have to agree with Scott's answers to those questions, or even his framing of them, to derive value from thinking about how we'd answer them. Specialists have mixed feelings on his approach to the state and particularly his decision to focus on Mesopotamia (there was an entire special issue of the Cambridge Archaeological Journal responding to the book), but for the most part, the agriculture bits seem fairly non-controversial.
Yes, it's good to be reminded that whatever's published is - at best - a well thought out interpretation of the latest and most reliable evidence we have, not an irrefutable truth of human history.
Hi Patrick,
In the podcast you talk about the population of the Fertile Crescent increasing over the early Holocene and surprisingly during the Younger Dryas. Where did you get the population estimates from?
Thanks!
I sourced the estimates from Steven Shennan, "The First Farmers of Europe: An Evolutionary Perspective," who uses it extensively throughout the book. It's also discussed in detail in Alasdair Whittle, "The Times of Their Lives: Hunting History in the Archaeology of Neolithic Europe." The method is called "summed radiocarbon probability," and while it has its limitations, it's the best available tool at the moment.
typo: “This wasn’t the case anywhere on Earth ago”
Patrick,
Around 30:00 into the podcast, you discuss population growth in the Fertile Crescent during the Younger Dryas. How confident can we be in the population estimates and what are the methods used to arrive at these estimates?
The estimates derive from a technique called "summed radiocarbon probability," which involves strict protocols for dating radiocarbon samples from sites and then using a Bayesian model to infer population size from the distribution of those samples across time. With a large-enough data set, the idea is that you should be able to see relative (if not absolute) shifts in population. There are valid critiques of it even now, I'm sure there will be more in the future, but I think it's the best thing currently available, and it seems to track with other forms of evidence.