Interesting reflections. The origin date of homo sapiens keeps getting pushed further and further back. It now appears that we've been around for a 6-digit number of years, and yet agriculture only started 10,000 years ago, after the end of the last ice age. One wonders what developments might have occurred in the intervals between previous ice ages...
Thank you! Excellent question. I haven’t read much in the way of geology and such, but it seems that ice ages have more or less been the norm for the past 3 million years. The last interglacial period ended around 120,000 years ago. Even if we were fully intellectually developed by then (which we probably weren’t) humans were mostly confined to Africa at that time. While agriculture did emerge independently fairly early in the Sahel, there weren’t nearly as many domesticable species there.
There are some fossil records from that time period in Israel which is in the Fertile Crescent, but it seems likely that the population there was rather small and maybe intermittent. It’s possible that they did develop agriculture then, but the ice age made it untenable soon thereafter, breaking any cultural tradition of it. However, I don’t think genetic analysis of food species supports that possibility.
So interesting Nika! I never knew that something as common & widespread as oak trees had never been domesticated.
And because everything reminds me of a song I read this with a tune from the oddly named aughts band Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin -- known as bit less cumbersomely as SSLYBY -- playing in my head :-)
What an amazing piece, yet again, Nika. Thanks wholeheartedly. Reading you is such a pleasure! Amazing.
By the way, in 2001 I worked briefly for an international organization in Belarus. I lived in reverse what Yeltsin experienced entering a Western supermarket for the first time in America. I was absolutely shocked, mesmerized at the view of the unlabeled few products available.
PS: for anyone who may wonder if it was Hillary Clinton who domesticated the first wheat plant in what today is Iraq a long, long time ago… the answer is “yes, certainly.”
You are so kind, Al! I appreciate it a lot! Very interesting about Belarus. That must have been quite the experience. Sad that the empty shelves persisted into the 21st century. I'm sure it's still not all that unusual. An "empty shelves" index would be a neat tool to track development across time.
Interesting reflections. The origin date of homo sapiens keeps getting pushed further and further back. It now appears that we've been around for a 6-digit number of years, and yet agriculture only started 10,000 years ago, after the end of the last ice age. One wonders what developments might have occurred in the intervals between previous ice ages...
Thank you! Excellent question. I haven’t read much in the way of geology and such, but it seems that ice ages have more or less been the norm for the past 3 million years. The last interglacial period ended around 120,000 years ago. Even if we were fully intellectually developed by then (which we probably weren’t) humans were mostly confined to Africa at that time. While agriculture did emerge independently fairly early in the Sahel, there weren’t nearly as many domesticable species there.
There are some fossil records from that time period in Israel which is in the Fertile Crescent, but it seems likely that the population there was rather small and maybe intermittent. It’s possible that they did develop agriculture then, but the ice age made it untenable soon thereafter, breaking any cultural tradition of it. However, I don’t think genetic analysis of food species supports that possibility.
Nice work Nika!
So interesting Nika! I never knew that something as common & widespread as oak trees had never been domesticated.
And because everything reminds me of a song I read this with a tune from the oddly named aughts band Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin -- known as bit less cumbersomely as SSLYBY -- playing in my head :-)
What an amazing piece, yet again, Nika. Thanks wholeheartedly. Reading you is such a pleasure! Amazing.
By the way, in 2001 I worked briefly for an international organization in Belarus. I lived in reverse what Yeltsin experienced entering a Western supermarket for the first time in America. I was absolutely shocked, mesmerized at the view of the unlabeled few products available.
PS: for anyone who may wonder if it was Hillary Clinton who domesticated the first wheat plant in what today is Iraq a long, long time ago… the answer is “yes, certainly.”
You are so kind, Al! I appreciate it a lot! Very interesting about Belarus. That must have been quite the experience. Sad that the empty shelves persisted into the 21st century. I'm sure it's still not all that unusual. An "empty shelves" index would be a neat tool to track development across time.