I am working on expanding my thinking on man’s relationship with the earth.
I have been reading Jared Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs and Steel” for the second time. I am struck by the fact that food production allowed for small groups or tribes to increase their populations as well as support members who were free to create and invent since they were not required to grow their own food. It also allowed for the growth of tribes to chiefdoms and villages all the way up to major cities. It also allowed for man to know his neighbor. When man lived in isolated groups, anyone outside the group who approached your territory was a threat and hence was killed. In time some groups became less isolated and began to trade or do business with neighboring groups. By the time groups got so large that you could not know everyone, man learned to live along side of strangers without killing them……for the most part. The ability to produce and store food was what started man on this progression.
I am trying to think about how the human became so disconnected to the earth given his dependency on it. It was a progression……and food production or the acquiring and accumulation of this resource seems to have a lot to do with it. We are a long way from a hunter gatherer’s way of life when all life energy went to the acquisition of food for oneself and one’s family or small tribe. There was a big jump from that to the beginnings of agriculture and the ability to grow enough food to support a small group who did not have to hunt or farm to survive. They had time to create and invent. Over time, tools and weaponry became more sophisticated which allowed for preserving your resources, (ways to store food were developed), as well as expanding your resources with advances in tools, knowledge of agriculture and care of the land. Along with this came a growing ability to protect and increase your resources with advances in weaponry. Man gained some tolerance for his neighbor which allowed for the development of trade relationships. But man as an instinctive organism responded to threat and gained much of his resources by controlling others (including other species) or forcing their neighbors into submission. So advances in weaponry allowed for greater control of others as well as significant acquisitions of new territories for those with the most sophisticated weaponry. The advances in weaponry were a byproduct of man’s growing ability to provide enough food to support the creative and inventive. Man learned that he could control or eliminate threats ( human or otherwise) with a small band of men and guns.
Population increase was an automatic response to advances in food production. Jared Diamond notes that ” the ultimate cause of food production led to the proximate causes of germs, literacy, technology, and centralized government.”
The Musket/Potato wars were a series of wars among New Zealand’s indigenous Maori people between 1818 -1830. In the 1800’s European traders, missionaries and whalers visited New Zealand which had been occupied for 600 years by Polynesian farmers and fishermen, the Maoris. The tribes in the North who had the earliest exposure to Europeans became the first tribes to acquire muskets, which gave them a big military advantage. They were also able to do long distance raids which gave them a further advantage. The European-introduced potato which yielded many more tons of food per acre gave them this further advantage. They could feed the raiders as well as feed the families back home.
It seems that food production and its development has had a significant impact on man’s behavior and is at the core of his innovations and creativity. But it also speaks to man’s disconnect with the land over time and how this cut off with the earth and his dependency on it seems to have come with the “advances” in food production and storage. We have come a long way from the hunter- gatherer societies and yet we have lost an awareness that they had……..the human dependency on the earth for the survival of the species.
Ann, it’s an interesting question – how homo sapiens got crosswise with the earth? You probably are aware that Joanne Bowen talked about this I think – the cascade of effects the beginning of agriculture had the social system – at the Society conference in 2008 that Pat Comella organized. Daniel Hillel was at that conference and his books are about the relationship of differences in soil to social and cultural development in history with an interest in the eventual collapse of the environment. I do not know if J. Bowen and D. Hillel have similar or different ways of looking at how food production matters in the human relationship to the environment over time from J. Diamond. But all are scientists and are bound to link their ideas to evidence. I am thinking that there may be different points of view on this – either based on looking at different evidence or looking at the evidence differently – that would be useful towards an accurate understanding of this very big and important topic in societal emotional process. Or maybe there is great similarity between these researchers and how they think about it. Good luck and I’ll be interested to see where your thinking goes with this. There are a lot a young farmers out there right now who are fashioning their approaches based on principles of ecologically sustainable agriculture.