When hunter-gatherers of Europe became farmers?

[Garrick]

Hypothesis is that hunter-gathering and farming cultures are incompatible.

I have a discussion about it with LeBrok. He thinks that they are two different worlds, and he gives the case of America, where Indians didn't adopt culture of White Europeans.

Someone can say why such a scenario must be everywhere. Also, case of Indians and Europeans is short timing period in comparison of long process of coexistence of hunters-gatherers and early farmers. Scenario about the impossibility of approaching two cultures excludes exchange, learning and the acquisition of knowledge, and looks quite bleak in comparison to the human abilities.

Instead of gloomy stories about the impossibility of learning and closed, inaccessible cultures, I think that situation was quite the opposite. And native inhabitants (I carriers and maybe R carriers) had something to teach early farmers as newly arrived early farmers could teach new things native population.

The facts are that Starcevo culture was not only farming culture but a mix between hunters-gatherers and farmers. And later the Vinca culture, also.

 

[Aberdeen]

Hypothesis is that hunter-gathering and farming cultures are incompatible.

I have a discussion about it with LeBrok. He thinks that they are two different worlds, and he gives the case of America, where Indians didn't adopt culture of White Europeans.

Someone can say why such a scenario must be everywhere. Also, case of Indians and Europeans is short timing period in comparison of long process of coexistence of hunters-gatherers and early farmers. Scenario about the impossibility of approaching two cultures excludes exchange, learning and the acquisition of knowledge, and looks quite bleak in comparison to the human abilities.

Instead of gloomy stories about the impossibility of learning and closed, inaccessible cultures, I think that situation was quite the opposite. And native inhabitants (I carriers and maybe R carriers) had something to teach early farmers as newly arrived early farmers could teach new things native population.

The facts are that Starcevo culture was not only farming culture but a mix between hunters-gatherers and farmers. And later the Vinca culture, also.

In the case of Native Americans, many of them were already farmers and many of them did try to adapt to European style farming, including stock raising. But in cases where they were successful at adapting, their lands were confiscated and they were moved to a less desirable part of the country. The new dominant culture didn't want them to adapt successfully. It's difficult to say if that dynamic was in place when Neolithic farmers were entering Europe - they would have had the advantage of numbers but perhaps not by that much initially and they didn't have the advantages that Europeans had over Native Americans ( steel and guns). And the biggest advantage Europeans had over Native Americans was the spread of diseases that Native Americans had no resistance to - unless farmers from the Middle East had that advantage, they might have had to negotiate with the hunters and gatherers they encountered, in which case it's much more likely that the hunters and gatherers would take up agriculture.

 

[LeBrok]

Hypothesis is that hunter-gathering and farming cultures are incompatible.

I have a discussion about it with LeBrok. He thinks that they are two different worlds, and he gives the case of America, where Indians didn't adopt culture of White Europeans.

Someone can say why such a scenario must be everywhere. Also, case of Indians and Europeans is short timing period in comparison of long process of coexistence of hunters-gatherers and early farmers. Scenario about the impossibility of approaching two cultures excludes exchange, learning and the acquisition of knowledge, and looks quite bleak in comparison to the human abilities.

Instead of gloomy stories about the impossibility of learning and closed, inaccessible cultures, I think that situation was quite the opposite. And native inhabitants (I carriers and maybe R carriers) had something to teach early farmers as newly arrived early farmers could teach new things native population.

The facts are that Starcevo culture was not only farming culture but a mix between hunters-gatherers and farmers. And later the Vinca culture, also.

It's not only difficult for American Natives. The change is also extremely hard for Australian Aborigines, Amazon tribes, and many African Tribes. Why couldn't they learn farming by now? Farming knowledge is everywhere, even on TV, books and in schools. Can't they figure out how beneficial farming is and embrace it, can't they see the benefits? Some of them had met farmers a thousand years ago, some at least for 200 years. And yet they don't want to go to fields and spend all day behind the plow and the horse. To be clear, I’m not talking about all American Natives, just the H-Gs like prairie Indians. Before Europeans showed up, mid America had already extensive agriculturalism, and light farming in wetter parts of North.
If the switch of lifestyle is so difficult for modern H-Gs, there is no reason to suspect that switch for European H-Gs was any easier, like only a matter of acquiring new knowledge.


Here are reasons why switching from H-Gs was always a difficult process:
1. Language: H-Gs spoke different language from farmers. Not ideal for communication and learning new skills.
2. Different culture in general. Who wants to give up their own culture, language, customs, etc? Through history people of different cultures live separate lives in their own tribes till pretty much first empires when they were forced to integrate as citizens of one entity.
3. Different religion. Who, if they are not forced, choses to work for infidels? Who wants to socialize with immoral people, who don't believe in real gods?
4. Different look. Possibly H-Gs were blond and EEF brunets. How big issue is this for many read some Eupedia threads.
5. Different food and cooking ingredients. Many different cultures consider other's cooking smelly and weird. Farmers consumed mainly starches, H-Gs mainly meat.
6. Most H-Gs are nomadic tribes. It is not exactly suitable lifestyle to start career in farming. They move around behind herds of deer or bison, and change places for gathering of seasonal foods. Many moved to better climates, or valleys with micro climates, for winters too.
7. Protection of own people. Why would farmers give their knowledge to some strange people of the forest? “I don’t bother you, you don’t bother me, let’s leave it like this, and everybody lives their own way”, as long as there is room for all. If not, the killing starts.
8. Predispositions to the environment. This one should have been the first, but is a long one, therefore left for the last. J Did you ever wonder why kids love running and chasing each other all the time, or why boys love playing wars and girls play with dolls and cloths? These are genetic predispositions, and kids are learning essential skills needed in life. There is a long history of humankind, being hunter-gatherer for at least couple of millions of years. It is long enough time to develop helpful genes to lead us, to increase survival, and speed up learning the essentials.

Interestingly all of these important predispositions come coupled with emotions. Predispositions not only give us skills and make essentials easier to do, but they skills are fortified with positive emotions, emotions of joy and pleasure. Nature doesn’t want us to stop our lives and contemplate “should I run?”, “should I haunt?”, “should I take care of my kids?”, and make a wrong decision with our “free will”. The mentioned examples are all positive things for H-Gs (and were for millions of years), they are reinforced with positive emotions, so we all do them with joy, again and again and again.

Now having the basics of nature, it is much easier to understand H-Gs in their way of life. They liked (if not loved) tracking the prey, hunting and fighting in group of comrades, frying meet by the fire every night, dancing and singing around fire, move around or go on long journey, etc. Now, if these are the things that give them the most pleasure, tell me, how eager they will be to give up all of this for a very “alien” live style of farmers? Farming is a very repetitive and grueling set of jobs, and has not much in common with H-Gs life style. You would need to enslave H-Gs to force them into farming. (Maybe how it started, lol?)

So the question is how H-Gs embraced farming finally? Could this have been a combination of factors, like adopting kids of H-Gs by farmers, enslaving H-Gs and made them farm for centuries till they got used to? But at the end, for H-Gs to stay farmers, they needed to acquire set of predispositions, the traits of “character” to like, or at least don’t mind, hard demanding, sedentary and repetitive work around a farm. It is not only cultural but a very genetic phenomenon. This is the reason why farming was not embraced by WHG of Europe as soon as Near Eastern farmers showed up in Greece and Southern Europe. The process of H-Gs switching to farming took 2-3 thousand years to full spread in most of Europe. That’s why genes of EEF are so dominant all over the Europe. They are even more dominant, because instead of mutating their own farming genes, they acquired already existing farming genes from EEF. It means that till they mixed with farmers from Near East, they couldn’t become farmers themselves.

This long process, mainly based on sporadic adaptation of farming by Y hg I natives could cause few hg I explosions in populations, and was a reason behind rise of novel I subclades, when they truly and genetically got used to farming. Hg I with older sublclades who didn’t mix with farmers went into obscurity, or completely ended their lines.

Sorry for a long post, but you know, I love to preach. :79:

 

[LeBrok]

The facts are that Starcevo culture was not only farming culture but a mix between hunters-gatherers and farmers. And later the Vinca culture, also.

Starcovo Culture might have been a beginning of WHG going farming. However if it was just a beginning this culture was overwhelmingly EEF, therefore I2a was still in limited quantities, if farming at all.

 

[LeBrok]

And the biggest advantage Europeans had over Native Americans was the spread of diseases that Native Americans had no resistance to - unless farmers from the Middle East had that advantage, they might have had to negotiate with the hunters and gatherers they encountered, in which case it's much more likely that the hunters and gatherers would take up agriculture.

The diseases go both ways. Europeans were not immune to many American diseases either. Although statistically Europeans brought more from all the continents.

When you look across America, Europeans have upper hand in numbers only in territories of hunter-gatherers, Canada, USA, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. In areas of central and equatorial America, where extensive farming was done for thousands of years, numbers of natives are much greater, and in some even dominant.
It means that if you are already agriculturalist you can adopt to ways of other farmer much quicker than if you're hunter-gatherer. You are pretty much screwed.
If not a government help I don't think there would be more than 100 thousand natives in Canada left, instead of one million. What I mean is that they would have been squashed to extinction in ever smaller reserves surrounded by farmers.

 

[Aberdeen]

The diseases go both ways. Europeans were not immune to many American diseases either. Although statistically Europeans brought more from all the continents.

When you look across America, Europeans have upper hand in numbers only in territories of hunter-gatherers, Canada, USA, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. In areas of central and equatorial America, where extensive farming was done for thousands of years, numbers of natives are much greater, and in some even dominant.
It means that if you are already agriculturalist you can adopt to ways of other farmer much quicker than if you're hunter-gatherer. You are pretty much screwed.
If not a government help I don't think there would be more than 100 thousand natives in Canada left, instead of one million. What I mean is that they would have been squashed to extinction in ever smaller reserves surrounded by farmers.

Yes, the survival of former hunter gatherers depended on government support here in Canada, and I doubt if there was anything like that in Europe during the early Neolithic. But most Native American people living a bit further south in the U.S. were also farmers prior to European contact. Some of the eastern woodland tribes, like the Shawnee, were farmers before European diseases wiped most of them out and the survivors reverted to a hunter gatherer lifestyle because they realized that living in large settled towns made them more susceptible to disease. And some of the Plains Indians like the Sioux were farmers before they acquired horses from Europeans and became nomadic buffalo hunters - the buffalo hunting Indian lifestyle was a recent and short lived thing. But it shows that farmers can revert to a nomadic way of life and probably will if they acquire horses while living on or near grasslands - perhaps the proto-Indo-Europeans were also farmers that became nomadic pastoralists, but herdsmen instead of hunters because Old World farmers already had livestock.

I think the biggest barrier to Native Americans becoming farmers after losing their hunting territories was discrimination by settlers who didn't want them around at all so pushed to have governments put the Natives on small reserves. I suppose European hunter gathers may have faced the same kind of discrimination and may have been killed off by incoming farmers if the farmers had enough of a numerical advantage. Fear of "the other", however that's defined, and the desire to destroy that "other" seems to be ingrained in the human psyche. But if in Europe the farmers didn't initially outnumber the hunters and gatherers at first, they would have had to bargain with and co-operate with them, which would have given the hunters and gatherers time to adapt. And in cases where the "hunters and gatherers" were primarily fishing folk, they would have had something to trade with, so co-operation would have been more likely. But it doesn't seem to have been a situation where the farmers had better fighting technologies, so they couldn't have just chased the hunters and gatherers off unless they had the advantage of numbers, which might not have always been the case initially. So I think the hunters and gatherers might have had more time to adapt, at least in some parts of Europe. By the time the farmers had the numerical advantage, the hunters and gatherers could have also become farmers, so wouldn't seem so alien to the farmers.

 

[bicicleur 2]

Hypothesis is that hunter-gathering and farming cultures are incompatible.

I have a discussion about it with LeBrok. He thinks that they are two different worlds, and he gives the case of America, where Indians didn't adopt culture of White Europeans.

Someone can say why such a scenario must be everywhere. Also, case of Indians and Europeans is short timing period in comparison of long process of coexistence of hunters-gatherers and early farmers. Scenario about the impossibility of approaching two cultures excludes exchange, learning and the acquisition of knowledge, and looks quite bleak in comparison to the human abilities.

Instead of gloomy stories about the impossibility of learning and closed, inaccessible cultures, I think that situation was quite the opposite. And native inhabitants (I carriers and maybe R carriers) had something to teach early farmers as newly arrived early farmers could teach new things native population.

The facts are that Starcevo culture was not only farming culture but a mix between hunters-gatherers and farmers. And later the Vinca culture, also.

Starcevo is not such a good example, it was not very densely populated before the first farmers came.
There is the example of I2a1a DNA found next to G2a in Treilles, SE France, 7000 years ago.
But I think in most cases, the hunter-gatherers tried to keep their traditional life-style and there were often conflicts between farmers and hunter-gatherers.

 

[epoch]

It's not only difficult for American Natives. The change is also extremely hard for Australian Aborigines, Amazon tribes, and many African Tribes. Why couldn't they learn farming by now? Farming knowledge is everywhere, even on TV, books and in schools. Can't they figure out how beneficial farming is and embrace it, can't they see the benefits? Some of them had met farmers a thousand years ago, some at least for 200 years. And yet they don't want to go to fields and spend all day behind the plow and the horse. To be clear, I’m not talking about all American Natives, just the H-Gs like prairie Indians. Before Europeans showed up, mid America had already extensive agriculturalism, and light farming in wetter parts of North.
If the switch of lifestyle is so difficult for modern H-Gs, there is no reason to suspect that switch for European H-Gs was any easier, like only a matter of acquiring new knowledge.


Here are reasons why switching from H-Gs was always a difficult process:
1. Language: H-Gs spoke different language from farmers. Not ideal for communication and learning new skills.
2. Different culture in general. Who wants to give up their own culture, language, customs, etc? Through history people of different cultures live separate lives in their own tribes till pretty much first empires when they were forced to integrate as citizens of one entity.
3. Different religion. Who, if they are not forced, choses to work for infidels? Who wants to socialize with immoral people, who don't believe in real gods?
4. Different look. Possibly H-Gs were blond and EEF brunets. How big issue is this for many read some Eupedia threads.
5. Different food and cooking ingredients. Many different cultures consider other's cooking smelly and weird. Farmers consumed mainly starches, H-Gs mainly meat.
6. Most H-Gs are nomadic tribes. It is not exactly suitable lifestyle to start career in farming. They move around behind herds of deer or bison, and change places for gathering of seasonal foods. Many moved to better climates, or valleys with micro climates, for winters too.
7. Protection of own people. Why would farmers give their knowledge to some strange people of the forest? “I don’t bother you, you don’t bother me, let’s leave it like this, and everybody lives their own way”, as long as there is room for all. If not, the killing starts.
8. Predispositions to the environment. This one should have been the first, but is a long one, therefore left for the last. J Did you ever wonder why kids love running and chasing each other all the time, or why boys love playing wars and girls play with dolls and cloths? These are genetic predispositions, and kids are learning essential skills needed in life. There is a long history of humankind, being hunter-gatherer for at least couple of millions of years. It is long enough time to develop helpful genes to lead us, to increase survival, and speed up learning the essentials.

Interestingly all of these important predispositions come coupled with emotions. Predispositions not only give us skills and make essentials easier to do, but they skills are fortified with positive emotions, emotions of joy and pleasure. Nature doesn’t want us to stop our lives and contemplate “should I run?”, “should I haunt?”, “should I take care of my kids?”, and make a wrong decision with our “free will”. The mentioned examples are all positive things for H-Gs (and were for millions of years), they are reinforced with positive emotions, so we all do them with joy, again and again and again.

Now having the basics of nature, it is much easier to understand H-Gs in their way of life. They liked (if not loved) tracking the prey, hunting and fighting in group of comrades, frying meet by the fire every night, dancing and singing around fire, move around or go on long journey, etc. Now, if these are the things that give them the most pleasure, tell me, how eager they will be to give up all of this for a very “alien” live style of farmers? Farming is a very repetitive and grueling set of jobs, and has not much in common with H-Gs life style. You would need to enslave H-Gs to force them into farming. (Maybe how it started, lol?)

So the question is how H-Gs embraced farming finally? Could this have been a combination of factors, like adopting kids of H-Gs by farmers, enslaving H-Gs and made them farm for centuries till they got used to? But at the end, for H-Gs to stay farmers, they needed to acquire set of predispositions, the traits of “character” to like, or at least don’t mind, hard demanding, sedentary and repetitive work around a farm. It is not only cultural but a very genetic phenomenon. This is the reason why farming was not embraced by WHG of Europe as soon as Near Eastern farmers showed up in Greece and Southern Europe. The process of H-Gs switching to farming took 2-3 thousand years to full spread in most of Europe. That’s why genes of EEF are so dominant all over the Europe. They are even more dominant, because instead of mutating their own farming genes, they acquired already existing farming genes from EEF. It means that till they mixed with farmers from Near East, they couldn’t become farmers themselves.

This long process, mainly based on sporadic adaptation of farming by Y hg I natives could cause few hg I explosions in populations, and was a reason behind rise of novel I subclades, when they truly and genetically got used to farming. Hg I with older sublclades who didn’t mix with farmers went into obscurity, or completely ended their lines.

Sorry for a long post, but you know, I love to preach.

This is interesting stuff. First, I think you are absolutely right that HGs will not look at farmers, see how well their ideas are and thankfully switch their life style. Farming is hard, very hard work. Neolithic farming even harder. Jared Diamond, whose book Guns, Germs and Steel is partly about this switch, once called agriculture - although tongue in cheek - mankind's worst mistake. He mentions in that essay that in Turkey and Greece HGs were taller than their farmer successors.

Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average height of hunger-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was a generous 5' 9'' for men, 5' 5'' for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, and by 3000 B. C. had reached a low of only 5' 3'' for men, 5' for women. By classical times heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the average height of their distant ancestors. Another example of paleopathology at work is the study of Indian skeletons from burial mounds in the Illinois and Ohio river valleys. At Dickson Mounds, located near the confluence of the Spoon and Illinois rivers, archaeologists have excavated some 800 skeletons that paint a picture of the health changes that occurred when a hunter-gatherer culture gave way to intensive maize farming around A. D. 1150. Studies by George Armelagos and his colleagues then at the University of Massachusetts show these early farmers paid a price for their new-found livelihood. Compared to the hunter-gatherers who preceded them, the farmers had a nearly 50 per cent increase in enamel defects indicative of malnutrition, a fourfold increase in iron-deficiency anemia (evidenced by a bone condition called porotic hyperostosis), a theefold rise in bone lesions reflecting infectious disease in general, and an increase in degenerative conditions of the spine, probably reflecting a lot of hard physical labor. "Life expectancy at birth in the pre-agricultural community was bout twenty-six years," says Armelagos, "but in the post-agricultural community it was nineteen years. So these episodes of nutritional stress and infectious disease were seriously affecting their ability to survive."

http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html

Jared Diamonds thesis has been that farming was a reaction to the loss of the ability to sustain the slowly increasing numbers of HGs, rather than an embraced and welcomed revolution. The case of the Natufian culture seems to support this case as they seemed to harvest cereals, but only wild cereals. Even after the start of cereal tillage it seems that in large parts of the Middle East, where cereals (used to) grow in the wild, farmers only grew the cereals that didn't grow in their own wild surroundings. Diamond then states that a number of contagious diseases are originally animal diseases, that the continuous contact of farmer with live animals made these disease jump the species barrier. The farmers recovered from them and developed immunity. After first contact with new HGs the latter massively dies off and thus farming won.

This indeed goes for modern day HGs such as indian tribes in the Amazon or the aboriginals from the Andaman islands. Typically, soon after first contact with whites a large die off will occur where simple diseases as flu and cold may kill up to two thirds of a tribe. This has been seen with Bushman, with Aboriginals, with Indians.

The picture emerging from Europe does not seem to fit this picture. HGs left apart from farmers for thousands of years. Then, at least in Central Europe, their mtDNA seems to show up among neolithic cultures that rose *after* LBK, the original farmers of Europe. Nowadays WHG component is about one third. That is a substantial amount of autosomal DNA and I think is strong evidence against a typical Jared Diamond die off. Maybe Europe is an outlier or maybe Europe disproves Diamond, wholly or partly.

But how would HGs become farmers if farming is not the innovative attractive solution to all the HGs problems as some would have us believe? I think that keeping animals is the answer. Jared Diamond mentions that pigs were domesticated in a lot of places from local wild boars. The Sami keep reindeer as half wild stock. This almost looks like a natural follow up after hunting and following the herd. There are culture that I mentioned before that seemed to adapt like that to farmers, to wit the Swifterband culture and the Ertebolla culture. Even later, after the emerging of newer farmer culture - which perhaps were already incorporating a number of HGs as some papers suggest, see below - a number of HGs persisted such as Pitted Ware culture and the Vlaardingen culture, both HG cultures with a number of features such as keeping pigs and pottery copied from farmers.

http://dienekes.blogspot.nl/2013/10/ancient-central-european-mtdna-across.html

 

[epoch]

@LeBrok

Ah. Also the local domesticated pig is not quite so.

A research team reporting in 2007 (Larson et al. 2007), suggested that, even though the wild boar was indigenous to the Paris basin, until the LBK culture came along, there were no domesticated swine in Europe. Genetics indicate that although many of today's pigs are related to the European wild boar, they are also related to the Sus scrofa of the Near East.
There is, however, evidence that European wild boars were introduced into the Near Eastern domesticates soon after their arrival in Europe. This process, known as retrogression (meaning successful breeding of domesticated and wild animals), produced the European domestic pig, which was spread out from Europe in many places replacing the domesticated Near Eastern swine.

It also states that the pigs kept by the Ertebolla culture had Near Eastern genetic haplogroups.

http://archaeology.about.com/od/domestications/qt/pigs.htm

EDIT: This abstract basically tells the story more detailed.

Here, through the use of mitochondrial DNA from 323 modern and 221 ancient pig specimens sampled across western Eurasia, we demonstrate that domestic pigs of Near Eastern ancestry were definitely introduced into Europe during the Neolithic (potentially along two separate routes), reaching the Paris Basin by at least the early 4th millennium B.C. Local European wild boar were also domesticated by this time, possibly as a direct consequence of the introduction of Near Eastern domestic pigs. Once domesticated, European pigs rapidly replaced the introduced domestic pigs of Near Eastern origin throughout Europe. Domestic pigs formed a key component of the Neolithic Revolution, and this detailed genetic record of their origins reveals a complex set of interactions and processes during the spread of early farmers into Europe

http://www.pnas.org/content/104/39/15276

 

[LeBrok]

Yes, the survival of former hunter gatherers depended on government support here in Canada, and I doubt if there was anything like that in Europe during the early Neolithic. But most Native American people living a bit further south in the U.S. were also farmers prior to European contact. Some of the eastern woodland tribes, like the Shawnee, were farmers before European diseases wiped most of them out and the survivors reverted to a hunter gatherer lifestyle because they realized that living in large settled towns made them more susceptible to disease. And some of the Plains Indians like the Sioux were farmers before they acquired horses from Europeans and became nomadic buffalo hunters - the buffalo hunting Indian lifestyle was a recent and short lived thing. But it shows that farmers can revert to a nomadic way of life and probably will if they acquire horses while living on or near grasslands - perhaps the proto-Indo-Europeans were also farmers that became nomadic pastoralists, but herdsmen instead of hunters because Old World farmers already had livestock.

Yes, there were some short lived agriculturalists in North America, and we can observe the see-saw phenomenon going back and forth between farming and hunting. The biggest reason behind this is nothing more the NA climate though. Unlike most of Europe or Central America, NA is known to develop prolonged periods of dry spells. This is pretty much a killer for farming of any kind, and had lead to collapse of many early farming communities. One of best examples are Pueblo Peoples, Cahokia. Cahokia is said to be the largest settlement in North America at around 20,000 inhabitants. Yes, there were few attempts at farming in NA by natives but didn't last too long. Looks like every time climate was good agriculture had spread from Mexico up North but never lasted till full blown sustainable farming like in Europe of Central America. Not long enough to affect farming genes (needed predispositions) development. Hunting and gathering was always main nature of peoples of NA. (except Mexico).
Interestingly, farming in Prairies couldn't start till end of 19 century century because it was too cold and too dry, due to little Ice Age, even for experienced european farmers.

the survivors reverted to a hunter gatherer lifestyle because they realized that living in large settled towns made them more susceptible to disease.

You can't say that. Before 18th century everybody around this planet knew that all diseases come from demons, bad ghosts, witchcraft and god for sins ancestors, and sometimes from fog. Even if someone conclude it right, nobody in village would pack and leave all the property because of someone's hypothesis, fantasies or a lucky guess.

I think the biggest barrier to Native Americans becoming farmers after losing their hunting territories was discrimination by settlers who didn't want them around at all so pushed to have governments put the Natives on small reserves.

How do you explain that in Central America spaniards employed natives as farmers with great agricultural success. Maybe NA natives didn't like farming at all, being H-Gs? Mexican natives didn't mind working fields, because they were farmers already, long before Columbus arrived.
You can't make human being to be something he/she is not.

By the time the farmers had the numerical advantage, the hunters and gatherers could have also become farmers, so wouldn't seem so alien to the farmers.

I would say that there was more peaceful coexistence between farmers and HGs. They usually use different resources and different parts of land. Especially at the beginning when population density of farmers is not too great, they live side by side doing their own business. I think this state of matter is attested by European archeology. Conversely, we might have a war on our hands for land, when we have two different villages of farmers, living side by side, and speaking different languages.

 

[LeBrok]

This is interesting stuff. First, I think you are absolutely right that HGs will not look at farmers, see how well their ideas are and thankfully switch their life style. Farming is hard, very hard work. Neolithic farming even harder.

That's true. Farming was hard for farmers, so how hard it had to be for HGs when they attempted it. I believe farmers developed special genetic predispositions to fully take advantage of farming, like inclination to constant and repetitive movements, in spite of this being damaging to joints and bones. Perhaps a better temporal imagination and planning when to seed, harvest and save seeds for next year. Modified taste to enjoy starches and vegetables. vegetables. If it was just a cultural change then it would be much easier for HG to become a farmer, but when genetic predispositions come in equation, then it makes it extremely tough and a long process.

Jared Diamond, whose book Guns, Germs and Steel is partly about this switch, once called agriculture - although tongue in cheek - mankind's worst mistake. He mentions in that essay that in Turkey and Greece HGs were taller than their farmer successors.

One explanation is, attested now with EEF admixture, that change in physiology of locals was due to replacement of locals with near eastern farmers, who were of smaller posture. This in turn was an adaptation itself, where HGs have to be bigger to manage killing a big prey, but farmers don't need to be big to use a hoe all they long. Otherwise smaller body needs less food to survive, so it will be preferred when size doesn't matter much.

Jared Diamonds thesis has been that farming was a reaction to the loss of the ability to sustain the slowly increasing numbers of HGs, rather than an embraced and welcomed revolution. The case of the Natufian culture seems to support this case as they seemed to harvest cereals, but only wild cereals. Even after the start of cereal tillage it seems that in large parts of the Middle East, where cereals (used to) grow in the wild, farmers only grew the cereals that didn't grow in their own wild surroundings. Diamond then states that a number of contagious diseases are originally animal diseases, that the continuous contact of farmer with live animals made these disease jump the species barrier. The farmers recovered from them and developed immunity. After first contact with new HGs the latter massively dies off and thus farming won.

I also wonder how devastating for early communities was invention of alcohol? We know how terrible is drinking amongst American or Australian Natives, who were introduced to is relatively recently. I wonder if one of collapses of European cultures could be attributed to it?

The picture emerging from Europe does not seem to fit this picture. HGs left apart from farmers for thousands of years. Then, at least in Central Europe, their mtDNA seems to show up among neolithic cultures that rose *after* LBK, the original farmers of Europe. Nowadays WHG component is about one third. That is a substantial amount of autosomal DNA and I think is strong evidence against a typical Jared Diamond die off. Maybe Europe is an outlier or maybe Europe disproves Diamond, wholly or partly.

The big die offs happened only to very insulated tribes. WHG were in constant contact with EEF or ANE and indirectly to everyone from Eurasia and Africa.

 

[epoch]

That's true. Farming was hard for farmers, so how hard it had to be for HGs when they attempted it. I believe farmers developed special genetic predispositions to fully take advantage of farming, like inclination to constant and repetitive movements, in spite of this being damaging to joints and bones. Perhaps a better temporal imagination and planning when to seed, harvest and save seeds for next year. Modified taste to enjoy starches and vegetables. vegetables. If it was just a cultural change then it would be much easier for HG to become a farmer, but when genetic predispositions come in equation, then it makes it extremely tough and a long process.

One explanation is, attested now with EEF admixture, that change in physiology of locals was due to replacement of locals with near eastern farmers, who were of smaller posture. This in turn was an adaptation itself, where HGs have to be bigger to manage killing a big prey, but farmers don't need to be big to use a hoe all they long. Otherwise smaller body needs less food to survive, so it will be preferred when size doesn't matter much.


I also wonder how devastating for early communities was invention of alcohol? We know how terrible is drinking amongst American or Australian Natives, who were introduced to is relatively recently. I wonder if one of collapses of European cultures could be attributed to it?

The big die offs happened only to very insulated tribes. WHG were in constant contact with EEF or ANE and indirectly to everyone from Eurasia and Africa.

There is archeological evidence for violence between mesolithic HGs and first farmers in the area of the Rhine and Alsace. Or at least, finds of mass graves and fortifications among LBK villages is interpreted that way. This would indicate that at the most western part LBK farmers clashed hard with HGs, but after a short while fortification disappeared, so the farmers probably won.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talheim_Death_Pit#Reasons_for_violence

An pay walled article, used in wikipedia article as source:

http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/081/ant0810332.htm

 

[Angela]

In his discussion of the Bramanti et al mtDNA paper, Dienekes states the following...
"However, the evidence of this paper also contradicts the plain demic diffusion hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, farmer genes are gradually replaced by hunter genes as the farming economy spreads, because in each step there is a mix of farmer-indigenous populations which go on to colonize regions beyond the frontier. This is not what appears to have happened. Rather, it seems the farmers moved across Europe with very little interaction with pre-farmers. A long period of no contact between the LBK and foragers is actually supported by archaeology. I have termed this type of diffusion the "skipping stone":
In the Skipping Stone model, farmers move out in search of new territories before they have started to blend with the local foragers; the genetic impact of the initiators of the movement is preserved".

This seems to be supported by the following paper, which claims that there was no real interaction in northwestern Europe between hunter/gatherers and the first farmers for at least 1000 years.
Forager-farmer connections in an 'unoccupied'land: First contact on the edge of LBK Territory, Bart Vanmonfort, p.9-12
https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/206831/1/Vanmontfort-forager.pdf

Dienekes take on it...
It is important to determine how long it took for indigenous populations and immigrant farmers to warm up to each other. The rate of spread (in km/year; and here) of the Neolithic may imply that by the time the farmer/forager societies started to blend, the wave of advance had already moved far away; the implication of this would be that the Neolithic bearers at the edge would have a smaller contribution from the indigenous populations of the regions they had already passed through.

On the other hand, the case may have been slightly different in the Balkans...
Dusan Boric et al, Strontium isotopes document greater human mobility at the start of the Balkan Neolithic.
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/9/3298.full

It seems that from the first arrival of the newcomers, there was interaction between the two groups...
From the paper: "New aspects of body decoration, such as the first appearance of Spondylus and stone Neolithic-looking beads in burials placed in typical Mesolithic posture of extended supine inhumation at both Lepenski Vir and Vlasac (refs. 17 and 52 and SI Appendix, section II and Figs. S4–S6), along with the appearance of other items of material culture (e.g., pottery, flint, polished stone axes, a new tradition of bone artifacts), confirm important changes were taking place in these forager societies that came under pressure from the growing Neolithic presence in the adjacent areas after ∼6200 cal B.C. (14, 16, 17). This process of asymmetrical acculturation ended up in a complete absorption of forager specificity in the first several centuries of the sixth millennium B.C. ..."

The question arises as to why this happened so quickly in the Balkans and whether the disappearance of all the mesolithic cultures was because they left, died our or were incorporated. The authors of the paper take the view that they were incoporated.
From the paper: "The social ethos of these Neolithic communities might have been in large part aiming at incorporation of foreign groups encountered in parts of southeastern Europe, as a way of “domesticating the other” (53). As for the Danube Gorges foragers, judging by, at first, a rather organic appropriation and incorporation of new elements of social and material existence as well as biologically “new blood” into the existing modes of being, and, consequently, the abandonment of forager cultural specificity, the mentioned process might have had a predominantly positive connotation or at least represented the only viable solution in the face of the emerging demographics."

By new blood, they mean that it is their view that there was mate exchange between the groups. From the paper:
"Of 10 nonlocal individuals associated with the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition phase I-II and Early/Middle Neolithic phase III at Lepenski Vir, all but one burial (no. 20) are females or possible females. This pattern could be interpreted as suggesting a reciprocal mating network between the Danube Gorges foragers and the earliest farming communities in the surrounding areas, with largely nonlocal women being buried at the central forager site of Lepenski Vir during these phases. "

That's certainly intriguing, but it's not DNA evidence. I hope the Bean Project includes some of these samples in their analysis.

Still, it seems clear that the pattern was slightly different in the Balkans. Perhaps it was a strategic decision by the farmers in the Balkans, as the paper seems to imply, to incorporate these people because they lived athwart the easiest and most direct route north and west. Also, the density of farmer settlement may have been much higher at the point of entry into Europe than it was in central Europe. Or, given the relatively empty spaces in central and northwestern Europe, the two groups there could for a long time essentially ignore each other.

I do think that if there was mate exchange in the Balkans, it might fit in with the comment made upthread that perhaps an adoption of the farming culture was made much easier if some farming genes were adopted first. I think that might have been true at a very basic level. I haven't thoroughly studied which mutations might be involved with the adoption of a mainly cereals diet, but just off the cuff, perhaps it's not a co-incidence that the highest levels of celiac disease are in northern and western Europe. Mutations must also have occurred among the farmers which provided some immunity to infectious diseases engendered by living in close proximity to domestic animals and, indeed, to relatively large groups of other humans.

As to other, more cognitive and psychologically based mutations, I think they must have existed as well. Farming requires not only sustained, often repetitive, and hard, physical activity. It also requires extremely long term planning. We very easily say that these people domesticated certain crops and animals, but it was a process that required great persistence and patience over a very long period of time.

I also don't know how much of our view of these supposedly far-roaming hunter bands is actually a romantic view of much earlier Paleolithic hunters of the tundra, rather than the actual situation for these Mesolithic people of Europe, perhaps more aptly named fisher/gatherers, who, as the vegetation in Europe massively increased, seem instead to have rarely moved from the ecological niches they had developed. In fact, at this particular period, they seem to have been much more sedentary than the Neolithic farmers. As the authors of this study point out...
"Our study unequivocally proves that in the earliest phases of the Neolithic in southeastern Europe, perhaps paradoxically, farming communities were much more mobile than local foraging populations, which in the case of the Danube Gorges remained tied to the exploitation of particular ecological niches since the beginning of the Holocene up until ∼6200 cal B.C. Conclusions reached by the strontium isotope evidence for the Danube Gorges region are corroborated by other archaeological indicators."

Also, the real adventure, it would seem to me, would lie not in seasonal trudges back and forth along routes known for milennia, but in setting off into the total unknown, with only a few animals, some seeds, and some paltry belongings. It's the settling of the west in Amercia times 10.

Finally, I'd just like to point out that farming culture might have had much more appeal for women in hunter gatherer communities than for the men. Much has been made of the fact that many infants died in Neolithic societies. However, what was the survival rate in mesolithic societies? Along with the high numbers of all H/G's that must have died from injuries sustained in hunting, especially if their resistance to blood infections wasn't very high, the death rate for infants must also have been extremely high, not to mention that it has been speculated that deliberate attempts were made to keep the population low. The hope, for a woman, that she might be able to keep more of the children she bore, would have been a powerful inducement.

Ed. As to the issue of violence between the two groups, the paper on the Balkans provides evidence for two heads, non-local in origin, found in a Mesolithic burial context. Again, however, it seems that the farmers ultimately prevailed.

 

[kamani]

Most farming in the Balkans was not actually farming but pastoralism, due to topography. So I can see hunter-gatherers mix well with Pastors. Instead of killing the goats right away, you just learn how to wait for them to grow first, as opposed to learning farming technology which probably sounded like a load of BS to a hunter-gatherer.

 

[epoch]

This seems to be supported by the following paper, which claims that there was no real interaction in northwestern Europe between hunter/gatherers and the first farmers for at least 1000 years.
Forager-farmer connections in an 'unoccupied'land: First contact on the edge of LBK Territory, Bart Vanmonfort, p.9-12
https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/206831/1/Vanmontfort-forager.pdf

On the other hand, the case may have been slightly different in the Balkans...
Dusan Boric et al, Strontium isotopes document greater human mobility at the start of the Balkan Neolithic.
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/9/3298.full

It seems that from the first arrival of the newcomers, there was interaction between the two groups...
From the paper: "New aspects of body decoration, such as the first appearance of Spondylus and stone Neolithic-looking beads in burials placed in typical Mesolithic posture of extended supine inhumation at both Lepenski Vir and Vlasac (refs. 17 and 52 and SI Appendix, section II and Figs. S4–S6), along with the appearance of other items of material culture (e.g., pottery, flint, polished stone axes, a new tradition of bone artifacts), confirm important changes were taking place in these forager societies that came under pressure from the growing Neolithic presence in the adjacent areas after ∼6200 cal B.C. (14, 16, 17). This process of asymmetrical acculturation ended up in a complete absorption of forager specificity in the first several centuries of the sixth millennium B.C. ..."

The odd thing is, the amount of WHG admixture in the "skipping stone" areas is currently higher than the amount in the Balkan, where assimilation occurred. This could mean nothing or it could mean that immigration in the Balkans was substantially higher. The Balkans do have high Y-DNA I, though, as we all know..

EDIT: The high incidence of Y-DNA I compared to relative low WHG admixture may be because the I-men were taken in at an early stage.

EDIT nr 2: Croatia has more WHG admixture than, for instance Albania. So WHG admixture is not *that* low:


EEF WHG ANE
0.561 0.293 0.145 -- Croatian
0.781 0.092 0.127 -- Albanian

 

[LeBrok]

The odd thing is, the amount of WHG admixture in the "skipping stone" areas is currently higher than the amount in the Balkan, where assimilation occurred. This could mean nothing or it could mean that immigration in the Balkans was substantially higher. The Balkans do have high Y-DNA I, though, as we all know..

EDIT: The high incidence of Y-DNA I compared to relative low WHG admixture may be because the I-men were taken in at an early stage.

EDIT nr 2: Croatia has more WHG admixture than, for instance Albania. So WHG admixture is not *that* low:


EEF WHG ANE
0.561 0.293 0.145 -- Croatian
0.781 0.092 0.127 -- Albanian

I think that proportions of these admixtures were different just before Bronze Age invasions of EI. EEF level was much higher with less than 5% WHG and no ANE. I think that R1b raised ANE level to sub 10% in Balkans but they didn't bring any WHG. The rest was done by Slavs and other invaders from north lifting ANE and WHG to current levels.

 

[LeBrok]

There is archeological evidence for violence between mesolithic HGs and first farmers in the area of the Rhine and Alsace. Or at least, finds of mass graves and fortifications among LBK villages is interpreted that way. This would indicate that at the most western part LBK farmers clashed hard with HGs, but after a short while fortification disappeared, so the farmers probably won.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talheim_Death_Pit#Reasons_for_violence

An pay walled article, used in wikipedia article as source:

http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/081/ant0810332.htm

I'm sure there were conflicts, and more conflicts when farmers built up their numbers and started to squeeze HGs out. If it happened that HGs had a great charismatic leader, he could unite many tribes to put some resistance against these land grabbers, manure smelling, infidel farmers. The question is how long one can resist when odds are 1:10 against you?

 

[Garrick]

I’m glad that this theme developed from debate. Thanks LeBrok.

My opinion is that when we talk about relations between natives hunters-gatherers and newcomers farmers no situation is identical. In other words in different situations outcomes can be entirely different. Outcome depends on situational Factors. Certainly there can be many different factors and we can argue about which are the most important.

One of factors which is important for this discussion is certainly geography (relief). It’s one thing if we talk about the plains for example today’s Poland and Germany and completely different thing is mountainous Balkans. Early farmers could search river valleys and plains but poor soil, hot summers, lack of rain, dense forests, mountain ranges etc. are not something promising. Someone can only imagine how they could cope with many hardships and with primitive tools they had. If they could take the river valleys where there was fertile land, hills and mountains were left out of their reach.

In the Balkans at time of arrival of early farmers were WHG and ANE populations. It is interesting for ANE that they moved from Siberia to the Balkans and further. Probably WHG and ANE have long come into contact and approached with each other. At issue is retention of ANE, there is opinion that their arrival in the Balkans was only an episode in their wanderings vast spaces, and there is another opinion that some of them have remained and connected with WHG. But for this discussion it doesn’t matter.

If early farmers could populate only limited Balkan areas where agriculture was possible WHG *or WHG/ANE) inhabited a much larger areas which they could engage in hunting, fishing and gathering. Theoretically even though they lived in the same region they can be two worlds different from each other. Even hostility did not have to be among them because they did not have much in common. But just the long existence of both in the same region and the need for survival in no light conditions could lead to co-existence. In other words and hunters-gatherers have had something to teach early farmers and vice versa early farmers could teach them.

Geography, and of course some other important factors, could make that hostility and fights be of secondary importance compared to cooperation and exchange of experiences. People are beings who can adapt, learn and adopt new things. Instead of bleak picture of mutual attrition two populations, picture could have been just the opposite, cooperation won which meant survival for both sides. From the mutual exchange of experience probably WHG first learned to cultivate domestic animals, on the other side early farmers could better to see different terrains, to learn what nature provides etc. Also and warrior and other skills they could learn from each other.

Cooperation and mutual learning could lead to the development of the cultures such as Starcevo and Vinca. Having learned to cooperate for mutual benefit they could go steps further and gradually develop integrated society. Certainly other scenarios could be possible. We would have to take more factors in consideration to come to a brighter picture.

 

[LeBrok]

A great read Angela. Here are my few takes on it.

As to other, more cognitive and psychologically based mutations, I think they must have existed as well. Farming requires not only sustained, often repetitive, and hard, physical activity. It also requires extremely long term planning. We very easily say that these people domesticated certain crops and animals, but it was a process that required great persistence and patience over a very long period of time.

Cognitive and psychological mutations might have been more important than dietary. WHG genome shows that mutations for starch digestion already existed in HGs.

I also don't know how much of our view of these supposedly far-roaming hunter bands is actually a romantic view of much earlier Paleolithic hunters of the tundra, rather than the actual situation for these Mesolithic people of Europe, perhaps more aptly named fisher/gatherers, who, as the vegetation in Europe massively increased, seem instead to have rarely moved from the ecological niches they had developed. In fact, at this particular period, they seem to have been much more sedentary than the Neolithic farmers. As the authors of this study point out...

Indeed it looks like WHG were more sedentary than ANE kind HGs. I just don't know how the authors figured that farmers were more mobile than HGs? Granted, they have spread around to new farming locations when overcrowded in others, but once they've settled in new lands why would they need to move around? Perhaps archaeologists discovered a new settlement just after their move from far away location (caused by war, flood or drought), that's all.

Finally, I'd just like to point out that farming culture might have had much more appeal for women in hunter gatherer communities than for the men. Much has been made of the fact that many infants died in Neolithic societies. However, what was the survival rate in mesolithic societies? Along with the high numbers of all H/G's that must have died from injuries sustained in hunting, especially if their resistance to blood infections wasn't very high, the death rate for infants must also have been extremely high, not to mention that it has been speculated that deliberate attempts were made to keep the population low. The hope, for a woman, that she might be able to keep more of the children she bore, would have been a powerful inducement.

There is another reason for HGs women to become farmers faster than men. Farming is less strange when compared to gathering than to hunting. HGs women already "harvested" berries or even seeds of wild wheat, and spent most of their time around villages tending to kids and cooking. It is the possibility that they were first assimilated by farmers and became the first source of WHG in Near Eastern farmers. Perhaps after one thousand years the WHG level was higher in South then today but it was reduced with every next wave of farmers from Near East. We have to remember that EEF already contains WHG admixture from first contact. EEF is very close but not exactly the same as pure Near East farmer admixture.
The story for assimilating men was quite different. Even if they've adapted HG boys, their nature would have been more "destructive" to farming village life. I'm sure they would prefer roaming around through the forest, hunting or starting fights, and dancing around fire. Sort of Brad Pitt character form Legends of the Fall. They would have hard going against their nature and forcing themselves into cutting forest for new farmlands, settling down, marry a local girl and plow fields to the end of his life.
Lack of finding of old hg I in Neolithic farming communities, and the most popular hg I2a-Dinaric being younger than Neolithic proves how difficult it was for HG men to become farmers.

Who knows, maybe farmer's genes trickled down to WHG slowly every time they've acquired EEF women? 4 thousand years of this slow trickle made all HGs farm in Europe. Even in Scandinavia with minimum presence of paternal haplogroups of EEF.

 

[LeBrok]

If early farmers could populate only limited Balkan areas where agriculture was possible WHG *or WHG/ANE) inhabited a much larger areas which they could engage in hunting, fishing and gathering. Theoretically even though they lived in the same region they can be two worlds different from each other. Even hostility did not have to be among them because they did not have much in common. But just the long existence of both in the same region and the need for survival in no light conditions could lead to co-existence. In other words and hunters-gatherers have had something to teach early farmers and vice versa early farmers could teach them.

I'm sure it was the case in first couple of thousand of years the farmers had enough of fertile valleys in Balkans that they didn't need to bother HGs much and there was enough room for both groups to live side by side without conflicts. During this time gene flow mostly happened from HGs women into farming demographics. Farmer's way of life was less alien for HG women than for HG men. Future DNA sequencing should prove this concept. We are going to find more maternal haplogroups of HG in early farming communities than paternal ones.
Pretty much it was exclusively farmers who acquired HGs admixture and haplogroups and made them successful and more common these days, but it happened in later phase of farming expansion North, from Cucuteni times onward. More and more HG admixture entered into farmers, even male hapogroups of HGs, possibly causing their explosion as they became farmers. Possibly there in Eastern Europe HGs of R1a and I2a "received" enough farmer's women, that their EEF admixture (genes with farming predispositions) reached 20-40% level, just enough to allow them engage in farming too. Only then we can see first R1a invasion into Central and North Europe, as Corded Ware. It is a sign that they became farmers at this point in time, otherwise as HGs they wouldn't have had the numbers high enough to conquer farming communities.
Anyway, from historic and admixture records, it is clear that process of "teaching" hunter-gatherers how to farm was a very slow process. At the end it had nothing to do with teaching but more of acquiring HGs admixture by ever advancing farmers. One might say that HGs blended into farmer's DNA. For this reason, even though HGs are extinct in Europe today we can find their presence in our DNA. Perhaps it also means that some of their DNA was beneficial for living farther North from Near East, as adaptation to new geographical areas.
We are never going to discover pure HG villages (with no or very little farmer's admixture) who did farming, or even among modern HGs for this matter.

Geography, and of course some other important factors, could make that hostility and fights be of secondary importance compared to cooperation and exchange of experiences. People are beings who can adapt, learn and adopt new things. Instead of bleak picture of mutual attrition two populations, picture could have been just the opposite, cooperation won which meant survival for both sides.

Sure, there is always some trade and cultural exchange, but how easy it is one can look at cooperation of Balkan countries today.

From the mutual exchange of experience probably WHG first learned to cultivate domestic animals, on the other side early farmers could better to see different terrains, to learn what nature provides etc. Also and warrior and other skills they could learn from each other.

So far archaeology says that most animals were domesticated in Near East by first farmers. I have no idea why but it all occurred at the same time. They started extensive farming and domesticated animals about simultaneously. Maybe first farmers were a super smart people or something.
In Europe HGs domesticated wolf, as a dog. Horse was domesticated in Pontic Steppe.

Wait, I have an idea. In Fertile Crescent women were the first farmers. When men was still hunting, women were already tending gardens by houses and harvesting wild wheat. It is not convenient to roam around area picking stuff and carrying small children around. It is much easier to take care of kids and feed them if everything grows around the house. This probably goes for good few thousand years, and might explain why women and kids have higher affinity for starches, pasta or anything sweet. Their diet full of starches is much longer than men.
Next stage was domestication of animals. Either women or men got the idea of keeping animals in pens by the house too. From this time on, men didn't need to go hunting anymore and spent time mostly around villages. Women couldn't stand their men doing nothing and forced them to work in their gardens seeding and harvesting wheat. After couple of thousand of years men got used to farming to the degree that from small gardens farming exploded to acres and hectares, to the size of big fields. They could feed many more kids, population exploded and spread around the globe. Now we are all decedents of these successful farmers..., and it is all because of women. :05: