The heat and the light have arrived and I search out the shade, the small oases of repose to prevent my skin from burning. That reminds me of a character from the old Batman t.v. series.
Been reading the endlessly fascinating Against the Grain (alongside Zerzan's latest). A heady mix and they often re-inforce one another...
Permanent settlement comes really late in human history (maybe the last 5% of our time so far on earth). Even then, agriculture doesn't dominate. It's more a continuation of a reliance of lots of different webs of food and a mixture of foraging, hunting, gathering..
Then we get domestication: of animals, other human beings (slaves), women, grains. From then on the wilderness is the dark place of the barbarians. Here is all warmth and light and familiarity and stability: the "domus module
But hang on a sec., why does it take us so long to settle for agriculture (monocultures)? And why this gap of millennia (3 or 4) before we go from settlement to full-fledged domesticated crops? All does seem a bit strange, especially when cultivation involves so much drudgery and not as much nutritional benefit per unit of energy expended.
From 10,000 BCE to 5,000 BCE world population only increases by 1 million (from 4 to 5). Which means a really low growth rate. why? Climate change, war? Or could it be that living in towns, settlements, cities (the largest of which was inhabited by 25,000-50,000 people) brought with it lots of diseases (contagion between humans and between humans and non-humans)? So, yes, maybe sun-and-wheat consciousness. Sumertime and the living's not so easy.
This is the beginning of control, productivity, spaces of power, specialization (priests, scribes, labour), the war machine, bureaucratic control, patriarchy. Standing crops, standing army. Since the surplus has to be manged so too does labour. The beginnings of the biopolitical, then. standardization and linearization. Efficiency. But also the time of rituals, of absence and return. The moon and the sun. Fertility 'gods'. What kind of religion, you wonder, existed before the neolithic period?
Evidence from domesticated livestock over thousands of years suggests that they become tamer, more productive, less ale to respond to the environment, and hornier. It appears that difference between males an females also narrows. They also have poorer nutrition and are more susceptible to disease (because of confinement). With the narrowing down of our diets and our own confinement, does the same happen to us (Scott intriguingly asks). Skull size of domesticated sheep falls by 23% over 10,000 years! Are you kidding me?
Which is to say, we've been profoundly shaped by this shift to agriculture. Maybe that's all coming to end as our attachment to the land wanes (50% of us now live in cities). But the underlying mentality probably hasn't changed that much. So, the question is: why did we stay? Poor nutrition, slavery or drudgery, upsets the idea that people are always drawn to the city. Maybe they were forced to (and prevented from leaving). Can't think of cities without walls.
So, the next thing to think about is how power is re-oriented by settlement. States, interestingly, come to the scene relatively late and are usually fragile. Extractive states, monumentality, state machinery, lists, quantification, representation. The centre must hold.
Have we ever really escaped from all of that?Why grain states, though? Why not a banana republic?
Interesting..
Been reading the endlessly fascinating Against the Grain (alongside Zerzan's latest). A heady mix and they often re-inforce one another...
Permanent settlement comes really late in human history (maybe the last 5% of our time so far on earth). Even then, agriculture doesn't dominate. It's more a continuation of a reliance of lots of different webs of food and a mixture of foraging, hunting, gathering..
Then we get domestication: of animals, other human beings (slaves), women, grains. From then on the wilderness is the dark place of the barbarians. Here is all warmth and light and familiarity and stability: the "domus module
But hang on a sec., why does it take us so long to settle for agriculture (monocultures)? And why this gap of millennia (3 or 4) before we go from settlement to full-fledged domesticated crops? All does seem a bit strange, especially when cultivation involves so much drudgery and not as much nutritional benefit per unit of energy expended.
From 10,000 BCE to 5,000 BCE world population only increases by 1 million (from 4 to 5). Which means a really low growth rate. why? Climate change, war? Or could it be that living in towns, settlements, cities (the largest of which was inhabited by 25,000-50,000 people) brought with it lots of diseases (contagion between humans and between humans and non-humans)? So, yes, maybe sun-and-wheat consciousness. Sumertime and the living's not so easy.
This is the beginning of control, productivity, spaces of power, specialization (priests, scribes, labour), the war machine, bureaucratic control, patriarchy. Standing crops, standing army. Since the surplus has to be manged so too does labour. The beginnings of the biopolitical, then. standardization and linearization. Efficiency. But also the time of rituals, of absence and return. The moon and the sun. Fertility 'gods'. What kind of religion, you wonder, existed before the neolithic period?
Evidence from domesticated livestock over thousands of years suggests that they become tamer, more productive, less ale to respond to the environment, and hornier. It appears that difference between males an females also narrows. They also have poorer nutrition and are more susceptible to disease (because of confinement). With the narrowing down of our diets and our own confinement, does the same happen to us (Scott intriguingly asks). Skull size of domesticated sheep falls by 23% over 10,000 years! Are you kidding me?
Which is to say, we've been profoundly shaped by this shift to agriculture. Maybe that's all coming to end as our attachment to the land wanes (50% of us now live in cities). But the underlying mentality probably hasn't changed that much. So, the question is: why did we stay? Poor nutrition, slavery or drudgery, upsets the idea that people are always drawn to the city. Maybe they were forced to (and prevented from leaving). Can't think of cities without walls.
So, the next thing to think about is how power is re-oriented by settlement. States, interestingly, come to the scene relatively late and are usually fragile. Extractive states, monumentality, state machinery, lists, quantification, representation. The centre must hold.
Have we ever really escaped from all of that?Why grain states, though? Why not a banana republic?
Interesting..
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