Cultivation vs the "Agricultural Revolution"
 

cultivation vs domestication
 
Graeber / Wengrow 234: "in certain parts of the [Middle East] such as northern Syria, the cultivation of wild cereals dates back at least to 10,000 BC. Yet in these same regions, the biological process of crop domestication [...] was not completed until closer to 7000 BC--that is roughly ten times as long as it need have taken"
 
"[T]hat's 3,000 years of human history, far too long to constitute an 'Agricultural Revolution' or even to be considered some kind of transitional state on the road to farming"
 
"We need to understand this 3,000-year period as an important phase of human history in its own right"
 
It appears that "cultivation was just one of many ways in which early settled communities managed their environments"

> from David Graeber and David The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021)'s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

> tagged with #prehistory, #agriculture

> created Apr 24, 2025 at 10:14:05 AM


> part of unfinished everything


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