| Geography,Climate and Environment The geographic area of the conflict, which is the subject of this book, includes the whole of Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, the basin of the Mediterranean, the hot desert stretching across Africa from the Atlantic to the Indian sub-continent, Asia Minor and the northern dry grasslands. In chronological terms, the conflict started at the time of the last great catastrophic change in the climate of the area, and is still continuing today It is known, at least from Kant's days, that: "Geography is at the basis of history, it came before history". Following Kant, Herder said, "history is geography put into motion".1 History itself is really a process of interaction between the environment and innate biological factors. It is also understood that events within human history were caused not solely by geographic and biological entities, but by the relationship between those two.2 As the variations in human history are unlimited, so are the possibilities in the interrelation of forces. It can be stated unequivocally, that unchanged environmental and biological factors tend to produce similar results within very large time spans. Semple Ellen quoted Herodotus's description of the Scythians of the dry grasslands and claimed that the same description would fit the present-day tribes of Kalmuks and Kirghiz who roam over the same grasslands. "The environment operates now to produce the same mode of life and organization as it did 2400 years ago; stamps the cavalry tribes of Cossacks as it did the mounted Huns, energizes its sons by the dry bracing air, toughens them by its harsh conditions of life, organizes them into a mobilized army, always moving with its pastoral commissariat."3 When environment and geography are mentioned, it should be understood that the primary factors are not physical features, like rivers, mountains, etc., but the whole of a geographical area, and especially its climate. Individual geographical features did and do have important roles in history, but they are usually short-lived and not permanent. The river Rhine was the border between the civilized world and the barbarians for nearly 500 years. Since the Treaty of Verdun in 843 AD, it became the backbone of the new Europe. When Lothair and his brothers divided the inheritance of their father, they did not see much significance in the manner of the division; they wished to avoid a serious quarrel by creating three equal parts. According to Henri Pirenne4, there was no specific reasons for the division as it was made, apart from the fact that Lothair being the eldest, received the middle territory, which contains Lorraine of today, because that territory encompassed Italy as well , and Lothair was accorded the title of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. However, the brothers must have been aware of the fact that in the western part of the territory, that of modern France, most of the inhabitants were Romanised Gauls with some Frankish aristocracy in the North and East, and Gothic and Burgundian aristocracy in the South and West. In the eastern part of the division there were only Germans. Pirenne claims that history gave the division its importance, not the act itself. However, this particular episode might have had much greater significance than seemed to Henri Pirenne. The Franks invaded Gaul at the end of the fifth century and established the Merovingian dynasty. They were a Germanic tribe that lived for a long time along the lower Rhine, from Cologne to the sea. The Treaty of Verdun happened about 350 years after their inroads into Gaul. Were those Franks who lived then in the western part of the Empire still Germans, or were they on the way to becoming French? It is a difficult question, as there is not much evidence either way. Of Charlemagne we know that he was German and spoke German, but the center of his rule was at Aachen - Aix-la-Chapelle, which is in German territory.. If we wish to judge from the example of later Germanic invaders, for example the Vikings, who in a comparatively short time became French in Normandy, then most of the people of German origin in the western part of the Empire should have been French already at the time of the Treaty of Verdun. If this is so, then the treaty only confirmed the separation on the ground just as the division of the Roman Empire between Arcadius and Honorius only confirmed the division on the ground. Here is an important point of the influence geography has on history. Geographical areas adapt people to the prevailing types already there. Fernand Braudel has shown that people who established themselves in foreign environments could maintain their original identities as long as they could keep contact with their original homelands5. Once that contact was broken, an inevitable process started which changed that identity. It happened with Massilia and Carthage, with the petty Muslim states in Spain, once the connection with North Africa was sundered, and also with the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, after its connection with Europe dwindled. Only in rare cases could people still relate to the original ancestors.6 The effects of the environment are on a different scale altogether. We accept as a fact that all humanity living today is of one species and all apparent variations are results of differentiation caused by environment. The notion that the whole of humanity, belonging to homo sapiens sapiens , is of one species, and the apparent variations, e.g. color of skin, etc., are caused by environmental factors and are not outward signs of descent from different species, was put forward by Darwin. He was a zoologist, and made the definition on a zoological basis. Modern ethnography and archeology accepted and reinforced the notion7. It is now commonly accepted that people living today, homo sapiens sapiens , originated in East Africa sometime between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago. A small group left the original homeland and migrated to Asia through the Sinai peninsula, reaching Central Asia about 100,000 years ago. From there the first humans reached Australia about 60,000 years ago, America about 15,000 - 30,000 years ago and Europe not earlier than 50,000 years ago. North and South Africa were reached at about the same time as the first group reached Asia. 8 There are some dissenting opinions, but even there the authors admit that there might have been mixtures on different geological levels 9 which might have caused misrepresentations the results. The book by M. A. Cremo and R. Thompson, "Forbidden Archeology", added : "..,some will caution us not to set a few isolated and controversial examples against the overwhelming amount of noncontroversial evidence showing that anatomically modern humans evolved from more apelike creatures fairly recently - about 100,000 years ago, in Africa, and, in view of some, in other parts of the world as well." All humanity, therefore, belongs to one species ,homo sapiens sapiens, which emerged out of Africa, spread over all three continents, and from there to the Americas and to Oceania, through still existing land bridges. The differentiation into all presently known racial types was caused only by environmental factors. The Mongoloids, who lived in Northern Asia, and moved from there to the Americas, the Far East and the Pacific islands, the Caucasoids who lived in Europe, North Africa and Western Asia, and the Negroids, who remained in Africa or moved to other tropical areas, like Australia, etc. are such. The Mongoloids received their slanted eyes as a result of an extra layer of fat over the cheekbones to warm the cavity of their mouth in the cold weather of their home. The Caucasoids received their blond hair, white skin and blue eyes in the north of their area, or black hair, dark eyes and dark hue in the south.10 Whether the environmental changes caused differences in IQ is not proven and is a highly controversial subject. As the participants in the conflict described in the study are all Caucasoids, variations, whether physical or mental, were caused by environmental changes; they are not mutations as the physical differences shown above are, but effects of a major environmental change which occurred in their habitat. As this environmental change occurred in comparatively recent times, it seems that the differences are acquired characteristics, rather than the results of biological mutations. The subject of this study is a conflict between the inhabitants of a large geographical area whose extent was described above. This area was one of the last occupied by the human groups leaving Africa. They did not arrive directly from Africa, but from Asia. It seems that originally they wandered from Africa to Asia through the Sinai land bridge, but did not settle in the Middle East. Only much later did they return from Asia to settle there. Recent tests made on a large number of Europeans showed that humans of the species homo sapiens sapiens lived in Europe and the Middle East since about 35 - 40,000 years ago.11 The species that lived in Europe before them, the Neanderthals and others, disappeared from the scene. No DNA tests could relate the remainders of the Neanderthals to any presently living humans, so apparently no mixing did occur. If human beings lived in this area for the last 40,000 years, why did they wait for about 35,000 years to create the first civilization? Judging by their cranial capacity, as measured in the burial grounds, their mental capacity was not less than that of their descendants today. Their only reason for not starting agriculture was the lack of need. Their descendants were the first to start agriculture, domesticate animals, descend into the valleys of the Nile, the Jordan, the Tigris and Euphrates and that of the Indus, and build the first civilizations. They were not alone. The same process occurred in other parts of the world, seemingly unrelated to those described above, and agriculture and civilization started in East Asia, Central America, etc. The capability to do so must have been present all the time. There must have occurred some huge globe-spanning change, which upset the relation between the factors and triggered the birth of civilizations, and seemingly that of the conflict under discussion. Most modern authorities accept that each civilization is based upon a geographical area, with more or less fixed limits, its own opportunities and constraints. Indeed, each civilization has its own challenges and responses.12 It should be added here that responses like the creation of civilizations and agriculture can be triggered by serious deterioration of the geographical environment, especially of the climate.13 No changes in the environment means that no deterioration occurred. If our forefathers were endowed with sufficient mental capacity to start agriculture and build civilizations when needed, they should be credited with enough commonsense to realize that they ought to have been well off before the change, e.g. they were well fed and sheltered. Their hunter-gatherer existence must have provided them with their necessities. If not so, then surely they would have attempted to better it. There must have been times when their life was a Hobbesian jungle, "nasty, brutish and short", but according to most signs they were able to take good care of themselves and were usually comfortably off. When the major climatic catastrophe arrived, they found the answer to overcome it. The price of the solution was very high indeed. According to all the signs, agriculture started in many separate areas. Scientists attempt to find possible links, influences and transfers, but it seems that at least in the Near East, in the valley of the Nile, that of the Indus and its tributaries, in the Far East and in Central and South America, human beings found independent answers to food shortages. There are dissenting opinions claiming that environmental change alone will not cause total shaping of cultures; psychological changes can cause them as well.14 Psychological factors belong to innate biological elements, which can change with the infusion of new human stock into the area. There is no sign that within the geographical area of the Middle East, there were major human intrusions within the time span of the present human species. Indeed the only major human movement within the Middle East and Europe was the spreading of the agricultural population from the South to the North15. The source of the change should be found in geographical factors alone. In addition, it can be stated that innate biological traits are permanent factors. It is possible, indeed, it is nearly certain, that the capability to find new solutions, to invent and to build, was indeed part of the mental setup of our forefathers, just as it is part of our mental setup. When nature was friendly and it provided sufficient sustenance, without people having to make special efforts, then these capabilities were not used. It seems that conservatism to maintain and continue with the existing situation is also one of the human traits, not less than the capability to change, when needed. So, even psychological constraints are secondary to environment. There is another dissenting opinion which states that the reason for the advent of agriculture, and the ensuing civilization was either pressure of population increase, or dwindling food supply, or both of them together; or demographic pressure which caused overhunting, or dwindling herds insufficient to feed the population. It is known that human beings of the species homo sapiens sapiens lived in Europe and the Middle East since about 40,000 years. For 30,000 of these 40,000 years, e.g. about 1,500 generations, there was an equilibrium between the population and its food supply. What happened then? Most scholars seem to agree that the food supply diminished, not because of overhunting but because of changed climatic conditions. In any case, those scholars who put the explanation on increased population and/or dwindling food supply did not consider the environment. That the direct cause of the start of agriculture was the shortage of food is in no doubt at all. The real question is what caused the dwindling food supply. The testimony about the climatic change before the start of agriculture is so overwhelming that there must be a correlation between the two. When Europeans penetrated the Great Plains of North America, they found there tribes of the Plains Indians, who preyed on huge herds of buffalo and bison. According to archeological sources,16 the Americas had in early times, large herds of horses and camels, but the early Indians exterminated them. For some reason, the buffaloes and the bison evaded extermination, and remained in sufficient numbers so that they could provide food for the Indians without diminishing in numbers. It might be called a symbiosis between the humans and the herds of bison, as neither the need grew, nor the supply diminished. Indeed, what has changed the equilibrium there, was the replacement of the herds of buffalo and the bison, first by herds of domesticated cattle, and finally by the plough and the spade. There is no reason to assume that before the dramatic climatic change 10,000 years ago, there was less of a symbiosis in Europe, North Africa and southwestern Asia, than later on the North American plains. . Today we are occupied by consideration of the greenhouse effect, or a warming-up period. There is now some fear that such a climatic change will mean catastrophe for all humanity. Whole countries may be inundated by the rising levels of the seas, fed by the melting glaciers of the poles. Agricultural patterns will change, with possible extended droughts, followed by catastrophic starvation. Will it be something similar to the last climatic catastrophe? Others dissent, and instead of being bearers of doom, they call the warming-up a possible boon to humanity. There are scholars, like Thomas Gale Moore of the Hoover Institute, who claim that a general warming-up of a few degrees would have an overall positive effect. Luckily for all those who are interested in the past, rather than the future, the intense preoccupation with possible climatic changes brought about an effort to research past climatic changes too. Much vital information about our past thus came to be revealed. The interpretation of that information of the past varies of course, as is usual with most scientific data. All sides agree that there was a serious climatic change, there is also some agreement about the extent of the change and its dating. The disagreements are mainly whether the change occurred gradually, or whether it was a sudden cataclysmic, catastrophic event? There seems to be general agreement as to the basic facts. In the last 120,000 years, there were about 20 sudden and drastic cooling and warming periods, on the average once in every 6,000 years. The last of those Ice Age occurrences was about 11,500 years ago. As a result of the end of the last Ice Age, the level of the seas has risen about 100 meters. Rising sea levels inundated the Dogger Banks and separated Britain from the continent, Australia from New Guinea, Japan from Asia, opened the Bering Straits, and separated Europe from Africa by flooding the straits of Gibraltar and the Dardanelles. Together with the changes in climates, the Earth's magnetic field reversed its pole 12,500 years ago. It happened about 20 times in the last 4 million years, this was the last reversal so far. Scholars call it the Gothenburg flip. There is some correlation between magnetic reversals and climatic changes. It is not clear, however, whether magnetic reversals cause climatic changes or vice-versa?17 In 1985 a scientific conference was held in Grenoble. The main subject of the conference was the presentation of papers dealing with estimates for future climatic changes, especially the greenhouse effect. Most of the papers submitted reached the following conclusions: 1. Much of the evidence quoted by doomsday prophets is based on questionable computer models. The evidence does not prove any impending catastrophe. 2. There is incontrovertible evidence of abrupt climatic changes in the world during the past 15,000 years. 3. That while the reasons for those changes remains largely unknown, they occurred without any human intervention.18 For the participants of the Grenoble conference the latter statement meant that as no human intervention caused the last climatic upheaval, the next change, if it will happen in the near future, might also come without any possible human intervention, such as car exhausts, CFC from aerosol cans, etc. There are those who accept that such a periodic change of climate did occur in the past, and might occur yet again in the future, apparently without reason, as part of normal geological processes, and there are others who search for hidden causes, like comets or asteroids. 19 The accumulated evidence is so great and so varying, that everything and anything can be proved or disproved. There are areas where it can be seen that the period of change lasted hundreds or even thousands of years. Then corpses of frozen mammoths are discovered in Siberia with half-digested tropical vegetation in their stomach. It certainly does not point to long drawn-out changes. This book is not concerned with the fine details of the last climatic change. It is sufficient for our purpose that according to the near consensus of relevant scientific thinking, there was a dramatic change in the climate of the Eurasian landmass, which caused even more dramatic social, economic and historical developments. What was the situation in the area of the conflict before the change of climate? First of all, it seems that there was a cooling period before the end of the last Ice Age. It started about 11,000 years ago and lasted between 100 - 150 years.20 As a result, Northern Europe was covered with ice as far south as the Harz Mountains in Germany. In addition, the Alps and the Pyrenees were covered with glaciers. The Atlantic high-pressure area was deflected southward, and those Atlantic rainstorms which today pass over Central Europe, passed over the Mediterranean and North Africa. The whole area of the Middle East, which is dry, arid and parched today, received rainfall which was not only more bountiful than today, but it was distributed over the whole year, not being restricted to winter. According to all the signs, North Africa, the Sahara, the Middle East, Persia and India were parklands and savannahs, such as we have today north of the Mediterranean. There were herds of large animals, bison, mammoths and elks, roaming over Europe and the Middle East, providing plentiful food to the bands of hunter-gatherers stalking them. The remaining bones of those huge herds, which formed the staple of the food chain of our ancestors, can be found all over the area.21 A few years ago a new book appeared: "The Message of the Sphinx", by Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval. The book claims that the Sphinx was created at least 7,000 years earlier than what is claimed by the Egyptologists,e.g. it is much older than the 1st Dynasty, which is the traditional period of its origin. They base their claim on the fact that when the base of the Sphinx was uncovered, it was found that the type of erosion on the base of the Sphinx was erosion made by water, while the erosion on the rest of the body, normally uncovered to the elements, is a type of erosion made by windblown sand. Until about 8,000 BC the climate in Gizah, where the Sphinx is located, was quite wet. Since then, there has been no rainfall there at all, so the Sphinx must have been there for some period before 8,000 BC 22 . The Egyptian government violently opposes these findings as it would place the time of the erection of the Sphinx in the predynastic period, diminishing the government's claim for the cultural continuity of Egyptian history. There is a new development project which directly points to old climatic conditions, which were drastically different from present conditions. A few years ago, the Libyan government initiated a project of drilling for water in the middle of the Sahara and carrying the water through a huge pipeline to the coastal area, to be used for irrigation. The water is the fossil remains of the rainfall from the time when the Sahara was a verdant, fruitful area with plenty of water. Some of that water remained in underground reservoirs, and is used today. What happened after the climatic change? First of all, people had to get used to the new climate. This to-be-used-to process must have been very difficult if the change in climate was fast and abrupt, and easier if the changeover was gradual. The problem is that fast and gradual are expressions made by scientists; their concepts may not fit those of ordinary people. According to that terminology, change of climate over thousands of years is gradual, over 100 or 150 years is fast. According to the terminology of laymen, only instantaneous transition periods can be regarded as fast. It seems that by human standards there are only slow transitions. For ordinary people, both thousands of years and 150 years are a very long time. It is so today, with printing, documents, newspapers all going back hundreds of years, it must have been more so in prehistoric times. It is doubtful that there is anyone today, apart, perhaps, from members of ruling families, who can have even the slightest knowledge of what his or her ancestors were doing 150 years ago. Lists of names in yellowing Bibles or parish registers do not really mean knowing, they only add names to the unknown. Gradual changes are indeed as stated, gradual. It is possible that future generations of scholars and scientists will come to the conclusion that we live in a warming-up period leading to catastrophic consequences. They might say: Why did they not make preparations? The answer should be simple. Scientific instruments are sensitive; memories of ordinary people are much less so. We might remember stories heard from our parents or grandparents about shorter summers and longer winters, we might even remember that ten years ago we spent more on energy for winter heating than today, and less on summer cooling than today. People are innately conservative, memories alone are not enough to get us to start building an ark. What about scientific warnings? It seems that for each scientific argument there are equally convincing counter-arguments. Kennedy has written in his book23 that in the early years of the next century the level of the sea might rise by about one meter. Such a rise in sea level can be expected to produce a shoreline retreat of about one hundred meters. Storms and tides would push the affected areas even further inland. The United Nations compiled a list of 10 countries that will be most heavily affected by the spread of the sea. One of the countries, the Maldive Islands, may disappear altogether; two others, Egypt and Bangladesh will be seriously affected. The rest of the list is also part of the third world: Gambia, Indonesia, Mozambique, Senegal, Pakistan, Suriname and Thailand. A one-meter rise in sea level will turn 8 million people from Egypt and 8.5 million people from Bangladesh into refugees. Of course, the 155,000 citizens of the Maldive Islands may become refugees too. According to Kennedy, the rich countries might attempt to shore up their coast, although it seems to have a very slight chance of success for a longer period of time. King Canute might add his comments to such an attempt. The cost of the enterprise for the United States alone could reach $100 billion. Nobody really knows, or can even estimate, what will happen to the tens of millions of refugees. When the last similar catastrophe occurred, there were about 6 million people on our globe, today there are 1000 times as many. How mankind will respond to this challenge, cannot be even guessed. There is no doubt that it will be a global catastrophe. If it should happen, there is no doubt that the blame will be put on overpopulation, degradation of the environment, aerosol cans, etc. However, it is possible that the Grenoble conference was right and this catastrophe could happen without our active participation, and we shall be only innocent, suffering bystanders, as happened last time. At he end of the Gulf War, in early 1991, the withdrawing Iraqis burnt the Kuwaiti oilfields and opened the oil storage tanks. For a long time, TV audiences all around the world were treated to pictures of billowing fumes from the burning oilfields and to the picture of a miserable cormorant struggling to escape the sludge. We were also educated on the dire ecological consequences of such a dastardly act. Then, on June 15th, 1991, Mount Pinetubo in the Philippines erupted. The United States Geophysical Survey station, in Vancouver, Washington reported that the eruption spewed in 10 minutes as much material into the atmosphere as the burning oil wells did during the whole period. The damage to the environment was very great; the famous ozone hole over the South Pole has grown considerably in a very short period. The eruption of Mount Pinetubo was very great, but not the greatest in this century. In the 19th century we know of at least two volcanic eruptions, both of them in Indonesia. Both were incomparably stronger than that of Pinetubo. The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 was heard 4000 kilometers away. There is no similar witness to the eruption of Tambura in 1815, but it was even greater. Maybe these volcanic actions were what the Grenoble conference referred to. If a group of people, a clan or a tribe, lived in a geographical area, where the climate slowly and gradually changed to dry weather, it had no reason to panic. The climate did not change overnight; it changed very slowly. Each generation found a little less game to hunt until the big game herds disappeared to south or north; only the small game remained, and these were not enough to feed the tribe. There was less and less grains and fruits to collect. With our perfect hindsight, we can only wonder why they did not pack up and leave for greener pastures. But why should they? From time immemorial their clan or tribe was living in the same area, they knew the springs, the forests, the hills and the dales, and they still made a living, although less and less, but it was still better than the unknown. 24 They knew their world, which became less friendly; they might even have had information about the next valley. It was not much better. In addition, the world was not completely empty. The next valley might have contained another clan that might have objected to an unfriendly visit; they were also short of food. In coastal areas they might have attempted to fish and collect shellfish, if they hadn't done so already. This was the most difficult period in the life of those small groups of people, trying to make a living and attempting to give a meaning to changes which were beyond their understanding. There were changes on both sides of the geographical area, as it was described, on the European side of the Mediterranean and in the Middle East. Those who lived in the north and scratched a precarious existence by the glaciers of the Ice Age became much more comfortable. The weather became milder and game more numerous. Not only the local game became more numerous because milder weather improved their pastures, but new species came to the pleasant lands of the North from the desiccated South. 25 Life became pleasanter in the North. In the South and east it became grim indeed. People in the Middle East, in those areas that suffered most from the climatic catastrophe, had very few choices, none of them very good. - They could remain where they were and starve. There is no doubt that many of those stranded there reached that fate, perhaps even the majority. - They could become nomads, like the Beduins of today, eking out a precarious existence by husbandry and by occasional raids on their more fortunate neighbors. - They could follow the game to the south, retaining their old way of life, like the Dinka and Shilluk of the Sudan. - They could descend to the jungle swamps and eventually create the Egyptian, Sumeric or Indic civilizations. - Finally there were those who tried to go north and join the neolithic farmers of Europe, or more precisely becoming the first neolithic farmers of Europe.26 There were also those who populated the islands of the Ionian Sea, Cyprus, Crete and the other islands. According to archeological evidences, the islands were settled at about the same time by immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East. It must have been a terrible time, especially for those who lived in the previously bountiful South, and who became gradually impoverished. It was a terrible punishment from some unknown Deity for a crime which nobody could remember committing. It is no wonder that this part of the world saw the birth of all monotheistic religions, with vengeful Gods and the concept of Original Sin. It cannot have been a coincidence that in that part of the world, somebody wrote the Book of Job which quite accurately described the tribulations of the inhabitants of the region and also the legend of the Garden of Eden, the lost paradise, which is a fit companion to the Book of Job. There was another factor that should be considered. Five possible choices of actions were described above. Apart from the first choice, e.g. remaining as they were, each of the other choices must have brought those who took that choice into conflict with others. The psychology of hunter-gatherer groups, as they were, was extremely peaceful. It is doubtful that they even knew the concept of war and strife. The psychology of present-day hunter-gatherer groups, in remote parts of South America in New Guinea and in Africa is very different from that of the rest of mankind. Anthropologists who researched their way of life describe their personality, consisting of kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, hospitality, compassion, charity, etc. toward each other. They are all lists of features that would be admirable, and very rare in our mode of life. For a hunter in a tiny, close-knit society, these traits are necessities for survival; without them society would collapse.27 If a clan wants to hunt a mammoth with its 10 tons of meat, they need all the help and cooperation from each member of the clan that they can get. If they don't, the mammoth might get away and everybody remains hungry. No one alone was able to hunt a mammoth or an elk. They were all too big. Stealing and robbing could not exist in such societies. One cannot steal a mammoth or a bison on foot, and after the hunt it has been turned into meat for meals, the simple self-interest of each member of the tribe should direct him to keep to the norms of behavior. He is a member of the tribe, there is no other existence for him outside it. Even in classical times, there was no greater punishment than exile from the polis. In classical times it was a living death, in prehistoric times it must have been as bad or even worse. Judging from the behavior of present-day hunter-gatherer tribes, they did not have real wars. Probably they did as they do today in New Guinea. They meet, make faces at each other, and dance threatening war dances. They might even come to blows, but when the dust settles, nobody is really hurt and all had nice clean fun. As there was nothing worthwhile to fight for, our forefathers might have indulged in such a sport. It is estimated that at the time of the climatic revolution there were about 6 million people on earth. It is a very small number with a friendly climate and plenty of big game to hunt. It is a very large number when the sources have dried out and each clan had to fight for their daily food. It must be remembered that one cannot steal a mammoth on foot, but one can steal a cow from a corral, or fruit from an unguarded tree. The need brought changed rules into inter-human relationships. The main motive of this area since that time is the raids of the desert people into the sown areas. The same anthropologists who defined the main psychological profile of hunter-gatherer tribes described their existence after they settled down into farming communities. The contrast is horrific. They abandoned compassion, love and kindness for the sake of their existence. The tribes scattered into a handful of hostile bands, interested only in survival. They abandoned the old and the children. They left human society for a mere survival system. This description would certainly fit the survivals from the climatic catastrophe. (See note 27 above) In the last century there was a horrifying example of the contrast between peoples in hunter-gatherer environment and those of agriculture. In about 1000 A.D. the Maoris, a Polynesian tribe of farmers, colonized New Zealand. Soon thereafter, a group of Maoris colonized the Chatham Islands, a group of small islands east of the South Island of New Zealand. They called themselves the Moriori. In the centuries since then, the two groups evolved in different directions. The Maoris on the North Island of New Zeland found an environment, which was similar to where they had come from, and developed an intensive farming economy. The Morioris could not farm on the Chathams, as it had a cold climate, so they had to revert to a hunter-gatherer economy. They were living on shellfish, seals, nesting seabirds and fish. They could not develop complex social and political organization, not having surplus to feed unproductive people. The Maoris in New Zealand developed a more complex social and political organization. The Maoris in New Zealand increased to about to 100,000 people, the Morioris remained at about 2000. In 1834 the Maoris of New Zealand heard from a whaling ship about the existence of the Morioris. They organized two ships and invaded the Chatham Islands with 900 people, and exterminated the peaceful inhabitants. The Morioris could not even defend themselves, not having any weapons and no concept of aggression. One of the Maori conquerors explained: "We took possession...in accordance with our customs and we caught all the people. Not one escaped. Some ran away from us, these we killed, and others we killed - but what of that? It was in accordance with our customs"28. North Africa and the Middle East were the main sufferers from the climatic revolution. It is no wonder that it was in the Middle East where people found a solution to survive the unmitigated disaster that afflicted them. There are some sources which claim that the solution was found in that particular area, because that area was, and still is, a crossroad between three continents, and because of its central position it might have accepted more favorable genetic mutations than any other part of the world.29 The same sources explain, that the reason that today there is no sign of genetic superiority, is that the same population, which developed agriculture in the Middle East, carried the agriculture, and the favorable genes, into Europe and Asia. There is another opinion which claims that once the Fertile Crescent has lost the head start, that it had enjoyed thanks to its locally available concentration of domesticable wild plants and animals, it did not possess further compelling geographical advantage.30 Both explanations seem to be inadequate. The real cause of the loss of advantage is detailed and analyzed in the chapter: The Civilization of the Poor. It is possible that those of our ancestors who first domesticated animals and realized that grains which they collected in the fields can be eaten and also used as seeds, and thereby they can have an assured supply of food, were indeed gifted people. However, the question was not talent but survival. Grasping the opportunities is always to the quick and the talented. In this particular circumstance, grasping the opportunity meant to get up, descend into the jungle of the river valleys and create what was taken from them in their previous habitat. The weak remained waiting for better times. If there is an illustration needed for Darwin's theory of Selection of the Fittest, this is it. It is sometimes assumed that agriculture was a boon to humanity, as it provided a safer supply of food, allowing creation of civilizations, religions and cultures. It might be so, but somehow our forefathers did not see it that way, and very rightly so. It seems that prehistoric life, at least from the time of the appearance of homo sapiens sapiens in that area about 40,000 years ago until the presumed date of the climatic catastrophe, was the original golden age, and they formed the original affluent society.31 It is sufficient to quote a few relevant figures : - Hunting large animals, when available, brings 10,000 to 15,000 kilocalories per hour of hunting. - Hunting of small game will return at least 1,500 kilocalories per hour. - Collecting and processing small seeds from wild plants will produce 700 to 1,300 kilocalories per hour. - Subsistence farming can produce 3,000 to 5,000 kilocalories per hour. These figures show that agriculture was not a blessing for humanity but a necessity, and the period before it became a necessity was the golden age. If the herds of large animals moved to the south or north, because of the changed climate, the second best option was subsistence farming. Our forefathers might not have been able to make the calculation as above, but they knew very well the result in practice. Much later, they even wrote it down in the Bible: "...in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread."32 It was not only in the Middle East, it was so for those to the north of the Mediterranean. The Golden Age for the Greeks and the Romans was the past, and the present was the Iron Age.33 The time when the Bible and the poems of Hesiod were written was much nearer to those earlier events than our own age; they might have relied on collective memory. The references in ancient literature to the fact that advance in time means deterioration of conditions are so numerous that they cannot be the results of pure coincidence. Not only classical sources looked back to the old days as the golden age. In Sumerian literature a clay tablet was found and on it a conception of the golden age. It is found in an epic tale, "Emmerkar and the land of Aratta"34: "Once upon a time, there was no snake, there was no scorpion, There was no hyena, there was no lion, There was no wild dog, no wolf, There was no fear, no terror, Man had no rival." Not only the ancient sources saw in the progress of mankind, as represented by agriculture and civilization, a mixed blessing at best, or an unmitigated disaster at worst. Most modern scholars came to the same conclusion. Most of them stated plainly that hunter-gatherer societies had a much more efficient way of life, e.g. people had to work less to satisfy their needs than agricultural societies, at the same population density of course. Only population pressure, rising seas and changed climatic conditions forced people into agriculture.35 Archeological excavations proved that, in the period when the prehistoric roving bands shifted from eating large animals to smaller animals and much more vegetable food than before, the size of human skeletons was reduced on the average by 4 centimers for males and 5 centimeters for females. Life expectancy was reduced considerably and skeletons from this period exhibited numerous instances of nutritionally based and infectious diseases.36 Never before nor after were such sorry statistics found. Indeed, to quote one article on the subject: "...humanity first encountered a scarcity of food. Since then, down to this moment, a majority of humanity was undernourished. This is the period we call civilization."37 That people resisted agriculture and wanted to continue life according to the old ways is obvious if we look at the timetable of the dispersion from the Middle East to the North. The oldest town discovered so far is Jericho in the Jordan Valley. It dates from about 8,000 BC It was a town which implied existence of a higher degree of civilization than subsistence agriculture, meaning that at the time of its building people already had agriculture which provided a surplus to keep the non-productive population, craftsmen, priests, warriors, etc. Jericho is in an area most heavily affected by climatic changes; this area should have been among the first to extend its supply of food by adding agriculture to its previous hunter-gatherer existence.38 The knowledge and the practice of agriculture crept northward at a very small rate. Colin Renfrew has estimated in his book: "Archeology and language" that the rate of northward expansion was about 1 kilometer per year. Thus, agriculture reached Greece at about 6,000 BC and by 3,000 BC all Europe was occupied by farming communities.39 He has assumed that the excess population of existing farming communities carried on the northward creep. According to this theory, the excess population of villages, part of the younger generations, split from their village and moved on to search for virgin land to establish a new farmstead. This theory may be convincing to show the dispersion of languages in Europe and the Middle East, and to show the reason why there is a strain of mtDNA in continental Europe, originating in the Middle East. The theory of dispersion might be partly correct, but it does not answer the most important question. The climatic revolution changed the ecology of the western part of the Eurasian landmass and that of North Africa. Domestication of animals, the start of agriculture and eventually the creation of civilizations, were the solutions to an acute problem. Even if we accept that people in the Middle East, meeting point of three continents, were more gifted40 than in other parts of that area, it is inconceivable that those to the north would not learn agricultural techniques from them, if indeed they needed them. Scandinavia is far from Asia Minor, and those in Scandinavia might not have been aware of Asia Minor, but every farming community must have had a neighboring community without farming. It would stretch the power of human conservatism too far, if we assume that there were communities who preferred to starve rather than abandon the old ways. Anyway, the old ways were based upon hunting large animals. If the herds of large animals disappeared, the old ways disappeared with them. A much simpler explanation for the slow dispersal of agriculture from the south to the north, that people did change when there was a need to change. If the melting of the glaciers was a gradual process, so was the change in climate, corresponding to the advance of agriculture to the north. It started in the south and moved gradually north, until the changed climate and the pressure of increased population brought societies based on the mixed blessings of agriculture to replace the original "affluent societies".41 It seems that climatic change continued in historical times too. It is difficult to separate damage caused by nature from those caused by people. The disappearance of forests from the southern and eastern Mediterranean littoral can be assigned to climatic changes, just as much as to goats. Still, if we look at the map of the area, we see that the north is rich, the middle, the Mediterranean littoral is poor, and the rest is desolate. Before the last climatic change, the situation was the opposite. This cataclysmic reversal created the agriculture, the civilizations, the monotheistic religions, and the feud that is the subject of this book. Notes: |
