Ancient history

Agriculture =Evolution?

We cannot say that the discovery of agriculture was an advance that fatally determined the abandonment of the old ways of obtaining food.

By Rainer Sousa

For a long time, historians have framed gathering and agriculture as two experiences that mark a complete break in civilization. However, new research indicates that these two activities coexisted for a long time in human history. At first, agriculture played a complementary role in food, thus being placed as another way of survival parallel to hunting and the search for fruits or plants.

Therefore, we cannot say that the discovery of agriculture was an advance that fatally determined the abandonment of the old ways of obtaining food. It is worth noting here that hunting involved a whole preparation where the hunters were, promoting the interaction between the groups and the development of diverse cultural habits. It is not possible, therefore, to suggest that the search for food was based only on the urgent need for survival.

It was only after the last glaciation, around 10,000 years BC, that climate change gave greater space to the development of agricultural techniques. Over time, sedentary life allowed houses and villages to become more and more prominent among human communities. At the same time, commercial exchanges and the domestication of animals also began to incorporate the construction of this new daily life responsible for the emergence of the first civilizations.

By observing this new reality, many lay people and experts have detected the scope of a qualitative improvement in the lifestyle of man. After all, agriculture allowed the storage of food and the planning of harvests according to the climatic changes that had taken place over a period of time. Survival put aside a series of risks and then turned into a planned action based on man's intellectual capacity.

Despite such justifications, there are those who disagree with this point of view, believing that the option for agriculture was one of the worst choices made by civilization. Biologist Jared Diamod, for example, believes that sedentarization through agriculture undermined the development of the egalitarian tone that permeated collecting societies. Agriculture would be largely responsible for deforestation, overpopulation, military conflicts and the constitution of social differences.

For many, it is almost impossible to imagine the viability of human life without the use of agricultural techniques. On the other hand, we see that the present is expressly concerned with rethinking its development and consumption paradigms. Would this not be an indication that the simple expansion of the domain over nature does not guarantee the support of life on Earth? This is an answer that only the future has the competence to provide.


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