Do you include indigenous modes of cultivation like mound planting in the agricultural category? It changes the nature of the relationship with the land, but I think it can still be sacred.
I was just thinking about why we gave up wild foods as our birthright earlier this afternoon, like why we allowed ourselves to be dissuaded from using the cheapest, most nutritious, most easily available foods because someone decided wild foods were poverty foods. As you mention, when you harvest from the land, you tend to the land there. You are bodily invested in the health of the land. I wonder if disconnecting us from the food outside our door was part of a strategy to disconnect people from the land enough that they felt it's destruction was not their problem. I'm not totally sure where I'm taking this, but here we are :)
I'm so glad you brought this up! I meant to include the difference between "horticulture" and "agriculture," which we could think of as gardening vs. farming. Most of what the indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere were doing was horticulture, not agriculture. "Stick farming" is another name for some of these horticulture methods, in which the stick used for digging roots in wildtending practices was adapted to intentional planting in a "settled" rather than wild place. And yes indeed it can still be sacred. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of the Hopi and their traditions around corn, for example. I also believe that gardeners today can connect to the sacred through their efforts. I feel like I have!
In the Fertile Crescent, horticulture was replaced by agriculture, which is distinguished by the use of the plow, among other things.
As for your wondering thought, I'm not sure how much of a deliberate strategy there was in the Neolithic Revolution. I almost have to think it was an unintentional transition at first. Though later, and up to the present day, slavery and colonialism and economics and other means are definitely used intentionally to separated people from their land. I don't know if the goal was explicitly to make people feel like destruction of land was not their problem, but it has certainly had that effect nonetheless. I personally feel frustration when people talk about filling the desert with solar panels, for example, because they don't understand that such landscapes are wildlife habitat, full of amazing plants and animals.
Yeah, the one I’m most familiar with is mound planting in the northeastern/north central US. And I agree, definitely not any specific strategy at neolithic time besides trying to maximize food production. As I’ve thought about it further I think it really relates to that early to mid 20th century notion (that went back to the Enlightenment/Thirty Years War) that man can always improve upon nature, like bleached flour and baby formula, similarly, wild foods were less than what man could process or produce.
Yes mound planting is fascinating. I've heard of it being practiced on flood plains, to take advantage of how soil fertility was improved by seasonal flooding. I'd like to learn more about it.
I have not given enough consideration to the powerful myth that "man can always improve upon nature" so I thank you for mentioning it. "Better living through chemistry" comes to mind, lol. I've been aware of the notion for sure, but haven't reflected very much on how it relates to all these other ideas. I'll definitely be thinking about it more now and when you see it pop out in an essay later, you'll know it came from you!
It was a species ‘survival’ move. Terrestrial operating systems radically collapsed globally during the deadly and destructive geomagnetic minima / excursion / polarity reversal event (Gothenburg) that occurred 13k years ago (over a 1,600 year period). The last remaining iteration of human (including your blood ancestors), badly broken by this event, did what it had to do to feed itself and prevent its extinction.
The last remaining iteration of human, pathologically alienated from actuality to the point of psychosis (by clinical definition) and shrink wrapped in a very painful but preferred hallucinatory amnesia, with a trained aversion to science, thinks everything is all about it and that it is in charge here in this tiny, twirling, exceedingly unstable clump of space debris. It isn’t; it never has been and it cannot be.
Modern human biological organisms compulsively and narcissistically tell themselves that they are the sole cause of everything (including the multifaceted cataclysm that is now crashing down hard and fast on this rickety / toxic civilization that cannot survive how the place it exists in actually works). However, human history, and current circumstances, cannot be understood without science. Noting that nine other iterations of human extincted during just the past 300k years as a direct result of these recurring events that nearly precisely mirror what is occurring now and projected to occur during this very dangerous century. Noting that a 100% normal and right-on-time geomagnetic minima / excursion / polarity reversal event is right now rapidly ramping to peak.
Our brilliant ancient ancestors warned us. Modern human biological organisms forgot and don’t want to remember. That’s a dick move.
“GOTHENBURG EXCURSION: 13,000 years ago during which occurred: massive global volcanic and seismic activity; soaring temperature (22 degree F increase w/ half of this occurring in just 15 years); the AMOC stopped (triggering plummeting temps in the 10–15 C / 18–27 F range in the northern region and even hotter temps in the temperate zone within a decade of stopping); the extinction of 72% of large mammal species (and countless smaller species); human population reduction; global collapse of culture / civilization and very real human existential crisis.”
Awesome article. Thank you!! I majored in history and archeology like one million years ago, then went right into the Peace Corps, followed by graduate school and a job with the U.S. government. I was subsequently brainwashed by D.C. for some 25-30 years.
Now retired, I am going back to the basics, reading and finding out that so much of what I studied in the 70's and 80's is being rethought, reanalyzed, rewritten, restudied, etc. I'm currently reading Against the Grain, a deep history of the earliest states by James C. Scott. Your work is fitting in perfectly with my studies and I am grateful that I found you that time on Resiliance.org!
Am forwarding this piece to some of my zoom buddies.
P.S. I'm not as nice as you, I am super fed up with humanity.
Yes, the scholarship is really moving along on all these topics. I already need to correct and update my 2018 book on these topics, in fact.
DC is probably only second to Hollywood in terms of brainwashing power, lol.
"Against the Grain" has informed my perspective. I also appreciate John Zerzan's work on the subject, though some of his details might now be outdated.
I still write out many thoughts in my journal with either pen or pencil, often in cursive longhand.I like to feel the writing instrument making marks on the paper.
The switch to agriculture brought us all this, including the prevailing idea that homo sapiens have a right to dominate, exploit and destroy our Earth (what are wars?).
10,000 years is not a long time in geological terms. Neither is 200,000 years of the existence of homo sapiens. If an alien species would write a story about us, using cursive longhand with a fountain pen, no doubt, he would shake his head and say that humans are not that intelligent.
I think we can be both intelligent and misled. Here in civilization we are tragically misled. But there are still some non-agricultural humans living on the planet, in places like the Amazon, and I don't want to paint them with the same brush. I think the aliens would take note of the contrast.
As others have alluded to already, are there not AGRICULTURES, plural, as opposed to a singular, deterministic mode of agriculture? As, indeed, there are CIVILIZATIONS, plural, too, even though today a singular, capitalist civilization has attained global domination (and threatens rapid global ruination while we're at it).
Agriculture gave rise to science, art and humanities. Unfortunately, our base appetites have won out over what could have been a reasonable balance to enjoy and realize our potential to understand our place in the universe (minuscule), achieve some sort of accomplishment from learning, and learn the benefits of humility.
Agriculture certainly gave rise to "a" science, and scientific worldview, but some indigenous voices are now calling for their ancestral knowledge to be recognized as another science. It was based on observation, experimentation, etc., though it was passed along by different means.
Here's a quotation from my book, The Failures of Farming and the Necessity of Wildtending:
--
Art, it has often been claimed, flowered with the Agricultural Revolution, because of extra leisure time, although, as already discussed, such time was actually in shorter supply. Some scholars have suggested that art suffered from the transition. Says Zerzan:
"The pre-Neolithic cave paintings, for example, are vivid and bold, a dynamic exaltation of animal grace and freedom. The neolithic art of farmers and pastoralists, however, stiffens into stylized forms; Franz Borkenau typified its pottery as a “narrow, timid botching of materials and forms.” With agriculture, art lost its variety and became standardized into geometric designs that tended to degenerate into dull, repetitive patterns, a perfect reflection of standardized, confined, rule-patterned life... And where there had been no representation in Paleolithic art of men killing men, an obsession with depicting confrontation between people advanced with the Neolithic period, scenes of battles becoming common. "
--
So that's something to consider.
As for "base appetites," our instincts have certainly been manipulated by agricultural civilization, and in our own era, by Capitalism. I personally find that subject to be a difficult knot to untangle. People talk about our "reptile brain," for example, but I wonder if we're not misunderstanding reptiles, lol.
Regardless, I appreciate the comment, and it's been inputted into my reflection processes.
I appreciate your comment as well. Indigenous people's ways of living and culture is every bit as legitimate as the western world's and arguably superior because it was sustainable, and revolved around community and cooperation. Of course, it wasn't perfect, barbarity existed, including superstitious human sacrifice. Reptile brain is an insult and undeserving misrepresentation of reptiles. It externalizes blame for our own egregious behavior.
I definitely think ancestral knowledge should be studied and understood. Western culture only studies western culture in a completely revisionist way. We don't even acknowledge the significant advancements of middle eastern culture, when the Dark Age of Europe made heretics of science.
It seems to me, in an idealistic fantasy, there could have been a sweet spot in technological advancement that balanced a bit more security and comfort while retaining a spiritual connection to the Earth and a reverence and humility for the heavens. It's extremely sad and tragic we haven't done so. Our clever tool making ability has far outstripped our spiritual enlightenment, which has nothing to do with the illness of organized religion.
Check out neuroscientist turned philosopher Iain McGilchrist, who has a lot intriguing insights into the origins of our current civilizational "Metacrisis", as he and others are calling it. Here's a compelling dialogue he participated in recently with two other well known philosophers on the subject. https://youtu.be/uA5GV-XmwtM?si=U4rPHt_um-dwO71b
Love the comment about life before agriculture! There was a time when we did not conceive of anything beyond our direct experience — no structured ideas, no math, no "laws of nature." The meaning of things was expressed, if it was expressed at all, in stories about gods, told around the fire, and enacted in dances where the gods were incarnated with masks and movement. Only very recently have we accessed a level of abstraction that allows us to predict and manipulate nature. Woe to us!
Do you include indigenous modes of cultivation like mound planting in the agricultural category? It changes the nature of the relationship with the land, but I think it can still be sacred.
I was just thinking about why we gave up wild foods as our birthright earlier this afternoon, like why we allowed ourselves to be dissuaded from using the cheapest, most nutritious, most easily available foods because someone decided wild foods were poverty foods. As you mention, when you harvest from the land, you tend to the land there. You are bodily invested in the health of the land. I wonder if disconnecting us from the food outside our door was part of a strategy to disconnect people from the land enough that they felt it's destruction was not their problem. I'm not totally sure where I'm taking this, but here we are :)
I'm so glad you brought this up! I meant to include the difference between "horticulture" and "agriculture," which we could think of as gardening vs. farming. Most of what the indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere were doing was horticulture, not agriculture. "Stick farming" is another name for some of these horticulture methods, in which the stick used for digging roots in wildtending practices was adapted to intentional planting in a "settled" rather than wild place. And yes indeed it can still be sacred. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of the Hopi and their traditions around corn, for example. I also believe that gardeners today can connect to the sacred through their efforts. I feel like I have!
In the Fertile Crescent, horticulture was replaced by agriculture, which is distinguished by the use of the plow, among other things.
As for your wondering thought, I'm not sure how much of a deliberate strategy there was in the Neolithic Revolution. I almost have to think it was an unintentional transition at first. Though later, and up to the present day, slavery and colonialism and economics and other means are definitely used intentionally to separated people from their land. I don't know if the goal was explicitly to make people feel like destruction of land was not their problem, but it has certainly had that effect nonetheless. I personally feel frustration when people talk about filling the desert with solar panels, for example, because they don't understand that such landscapes are wildlife habitat, full of amazing plants and animals.
Thanks very much for the comment!
Yeah, the one I’m most familiar with is mound planting in the northeastern/north central US. And I agree, definitely not any specific strategy at neolithic time besides trying to maximize food production. As I’ve thought about it further I think it really relates to that early to mid 20th century notion (that went back to the Enlightenment/Thirty Years War) that man can always improve upon nature, like bleached flour and baby formula, similarly, wild foods were less than what man could process or produce.
Yes mound planting is fascinating. I've heard of it being practiced on flood plains, to take advantage of how soil fertility was improved by seasonal flooding. I'd like to learn more about it.
I have not given enough consideration to the powerful myth that "man can always improve upon nature" so I thank you for mentioning it. "Better living through chemistry" comes to mind, lol. I've been aware of the notion for sure, but haven't reflected very much on how it relates to all these other ideas. I'll definitely be thinking about it more now and when you see it pop out in an essay later, you'll know it came from you!
“Agriculture was a dick move.’
It was a species ‘survival’ move. Terrestrial operating systems radically collapsed globally during the deadly and destructive geomagnetic minima / excursion / polarity reversal event (Gothenburg) that occurred 13k years ago (over a 1,600 year period). The last remaining iteration of human (including your blood ancestors), badly broken by this event, did what it had to do to feed itself and prevent its extinction.
The last remaining iteration of human, pathologically alienated from actuality to the point of psychosis (by clinical definition) and shrink wrapped in a very painful but preferred hallucinatory amnesia, with a trained aversion to science, thinks everything is all about it and that it is in charge here in this tiny, twirling, exceedingly unstable clump of space debris. It isn’t; it never has been and it cannot be.
Modern human biological organisms compulsively and narcissistically tell themselves that they are the sole cause of everything (including the multifaceted cataclysm that is now crashing down hard and fast on this rickety / toxic civilization that cannot survive how the place it exists in actually works). However, human history, and current circumstances, cannot be understood without science. Noting that nine other iterations of human extincted during just the past 300k years as a direct result of these recurring events that nearly precisely mirror what is occurring now and projected to occur during this very dangerous century. Noting that a 100% normal and right-on-time geomagnetic minima / excursion / polarity reversal event is right now rapidly ramping to peak.
Our brilliant ancient ancestors warned us. Modern human biological organisms forgot and don’t want to remember. That’s a dick move.
“GOTHENBURG EXCURSION: 13,000 years ago during which occurred: massive global volcanic and seismic activity; soaring temperature (22 degree F increase w/ half of this occurring in just 15 years); the AMOC stopped (triggering plummeting temps in the 10–15 C / 18–27 F range in the northern region and even hotter temps in the temperate zone within a decade of stopping); the extinction of 72% of large mammal species (and countless smaller species); human population reduction; global collapse of culture / civilization and very real human existential crisis.”
https://medium.com/@jeffmiller_14689/when-will-the-next-geomagnetic-polarity-reversal-event-occur-2048d411f5d0
"Our brilliant ancient ancestors warned us. Modern human biological organisms forgot and don’t want to remember. That’s a dick move."
Indeed!
Thanks for the reminder that it’s not always about us!
Awesome article. Thank you!! I majored in history and archeology like one million years ago, then went right into the Peace Corps, followed by graduate school and a job with the U.S. government. I was subsequently brainwashed by D.C. for some 25-30 years.
Now retired, I am going back to the basics, reading and finding out that so much of what I studied in the 70's and 80's is being rethought, reanalyzed, rewritten, restudied, etc. I'm currently reading Against the Grain, a deep history of the earliest states by James C. Scott. Your work is fitting in perfectly with my studies and I am grateful that I found you that time on Resiliance.org!
Am forwarding this piece to some of my zoom buddies.
P.S. I'm not as nice as you, I am super fed up with humanity.
Yes, the scholarship is really moving along on all these topics. I already need to correct and update my 2018 book on these topics, in fact.
DC is probably only second to Hollywood in terms of brainwashing power, lol.
"Against the Grain" has informed my perspective. I also appreciate John Zerzan's work on the subject, though some of his details might now be outdated.
Thanks for forwarding the piece!
P.S. I have my fed up moments for sure!!!!
I still write out many thoughts in my journal with either pen or pencil, often in cursive longhand.I like to feel the writing instrument making marks on the paper.
The switch to agriculture brought us all this, including the prevailing idea that homo sapiens have a right to dominate, exploit and destroy our Earth (what are wars?).
10,000 years is not a long time in geological terms. Neither is 200,000 years of the existence of homo sapiens. If an alien species would write a story about us, using cursive longhand with a fountain pen, no doubt, he would shake his head and say that humans are not that intelligent.
I think we can be both intelligent and misled. Here in civilization we are tragically misled. But there are still some non-agricultural humans living on the planet, in places like the Amazon, and I don't want to paint them with the same brush. I think the aliens would take note of the contrast.
As others have alluded to already, are there not AGRICULTURES, plural, as opposed to a singular, deterministic mode of agriculture? As, indeed, there are CIVILIZATIONS, plural, too, even though today a singular, capitalist civilization has attained global domination (and threatens rapid global ruination while we're at it).
A good point, well taken.
There is also horticulture, as distinct from agriculture, which can be practiced sustainably.
Thanks for the comment, Guy! It's nice to know you're reading! I'll drop you a line if I end up in Portland this summer.
Agriculture gave rise to science, art and humanities. Unfortunately, our base appetites have won out over what could have been a reasonable balance to enjoy and realize our potential to understand our place in the universe (minuscule), achieve some sort of accomplishment from learning, and learn the benefits of humility.
Agriculture certainly gave rise to "a" science, and scientific worldview, but some indigenous voices are now calling for their ancestral knowledge to be recognized as another science. It was based on observation, experimentation, etc., though it was passed along by different means.
Here's a quotation from my book, The Failures of Farming and the Necessity of Wildtending:
--
Art, it has often been claimed, flowered with the Agricultural Revolution, because of extra leisure time, although, as already discussed, such time was actually in shorter supply. Some scholars have suggested that art suffered from the transition. Says Zerzan:
"The pre-Neolithic cave paintings, for example, are vivid and bold, a dynamic exaltation of animal grace and freedom. The neolithic art of farmers and pastoralists, however, stiffens into stylized forms; Franz Borkenau typified its pottery as a “narrow, timid botching of materials and forms.” With agriculture, art lost its variety and became standardized into geometric designs that tended to degenerate into dull, repetitive patterns, a perfect reflection of standardized, confined, rule-patterned life... And where there had been no representation in Paleolithic art of men killing men, an obsession with depicting confrontation between people advanced with the Neolithic period, scenes of battles becoming common. "
--
So that's something to consider.
As for "base appetites," our instincts have certainly been manipulated by agricultural civilization, and in our own era, by Capitalism. I personally find that subject to be a difficult knot to untangle. People talk about our "reptile brain," for example, but I wonder if we're not misunderstanding reptiles, lol.
Regardless, I appreciate the comment, and it's been inputted into my reflection processes.
I appreciate your comment as well. Indigenous people's ways of living and culture is every bit as legitimate as the western world's and arguably superior because it was sustainable, and revolved around community and cooperation. Of course, it wasn't perfect, barbarity existed, including superstitious human sacrifice. Reptile brain is an insult and undeserving misrepresentation of reptiles. It externalizes blame for our own egregious behavior.
I definitely think ancestral knowledge should be studied and understood. Western culture only studies western culture in a completely revisionist way. We don't even acknowledge the significant advancements of middle eastern culture, when the Dark Age of Europe made heretics of science.
It seems to me, in an idealistic fantasy, there could have been a sweet spot in technological advancement that balanced a bit more security and comfort while retaining a spiritual connection to the Earth and a reverence and humility for the heavens. It's extremely sad and tragic we haven't done so. Our clever tool making ability has far outstripped our spiritual enlightenment, which has nothing to do with the illness of organized religion.
Check out neuroscientist turned philosopher Iain McGilchrist, who has a lot intriguing insights into the origins of our current civilizational "Metacrisis", as he and others are calling it. Here's a compelling dialogue he participated in recently with two other well known philosophers on the subject. https://youtu.be/uA5GV-XmwtM?si=U4rPHt_um-dwO71b
Thank you, I will. Sounds perfect for me. The root cause of all our problems is behavioral.
Thanks for a great article and the links for more!
You're very welcome Tara! Thanks for reading and commenting!
Love the comment about life before agriculture! There was a time when we did not conceive of anything beyond our direct experience — no structured ideas, no math, no "laws of nature." The meaning of things was expressed, if it was expressed at all, in stories about gods, told around the fire, and enacted in dances where the gods were incarnated with masks and movement. Only very recently have we accessed a level of abstraction that allows us to predict and manipulate nature. Woe to us!
Yes exactly: "direct experience." Our contemporary lifestyle is so freaking mediated, it's incredible.
Great piece. Writing old school worked!
Thanks, Rob! I really appreciate your work, so the compliment is meaningful to me.