Читать книгу Asia Past and Present - Peter P. Wan - Страница 20

Neolithic or New Stone Age life appeared around 10,000 years ago and revolved around sedentary farming instead of wandering foraging. The appearance of advanced tools and weapons along with an agricultural economy marks this new stage of human development. Some argue that farming began once foragers became more familiar with plant life. Others claim that climate forced foragers to farm as either the Ice Age or droughts relocated humans to regions more favorable to agriculture. Still others claim that population pressure required foragers to turn to farming, which was known but not practiced until hunting and gathering failed to feed the growing size of drifting bands of gatherers. In any case, farming increasingly became seen as the chief means of feeding people. Humans began to control nature by domesticating crops and animals rather than purely collecting or killing what nature made available, and these innovative endeavors had likely evolved over the centuries, much as economic and military utensils had improved, by ongoing trial and error. Very early in the Neolithic period, crops such as rice, millet, sugarcane, and hemp had become dependable sources of good nutrition and household materials.

Full‐time farming resulted in positive and negative consequences. On the positive side, sedentary village life allowed cultivators to create permanent residences (most likely thatched huts), which gave meaningful protection against inclement weather and dangerous animals. During less hectic times of the agricultural season, villagers created and repaired tools and weapons and fabricated primitive textiles. They also frequently improved these products over time. Gourds, baskets, and eventually pottery allowed villagers to accumulate and stockpile crops and water as well as store tools, weapons, and clothing. More permanent residences permitted elderly villagers to survive longer, since they no longer needed to keep up with hunting bands or be left to the elements as in Paleolithic times. These survivors, no longer around‐the‐clock tillers, had time to pass on their experiences to younger villagers as well as to reflect on their surroundings. Thus apparently began the part‐time shaman, offering advice and counsel to villagers, particularly instruction on fertility and how to achieve it for field and female. Other elders made recommendations concerning such issues as sanitation, childbirth, social relations, and so forth. Since little contact existed among distant villages, local knowledge tended to be viewed as universal knowledge.

On the negative side, village life immediately presented serious challenges. What crops were safe and could be produced in sufficient amounts to feed the village? Only trial and error, which is to say malnutrition or starvation if miscalculations were made, ultimately permitted farmers to select the most nontoxic and bountiful crops. How to deal with sanitation? Instead of a Paleolithic band of several dozen people constantly on the move and rarely concerned about human or other waste, villagers usually numbered in the hundreds, lived in close proximity to one another, and generated volumes of garbage. The rubbish in turn produced flies, rats, and other vermin capable of quickly spreading disease. Farming also meant dealing with nature in its many manifestations, especially drought, flood, locusts, frost, and heat, any one of which might spell crop failure and consequently famine. Thus, although lack of sanitation and episodic low food production resulted in early death, generally a high birth rate (once farmers worked out safe crops to plant) meant a larger village population. The slash‐and‐burn type of farming commonly practiced—whereby farmers cleared the land of trees and other vegetation, burned it, and then planted crops in the ash—eventually exhausted the soil and required farmers to search for more fertile land.

Evidence for Neolithic life in Asia indicates farming communities existed across the continent. In the Indian world, confirmation of village life can be found in nearly every region of Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and elsewhere between 8000 and 2000 BCE. The most notable sites are Mehrgarh in today’s western Pakistan and Shorapur Doab in southern India, both of which indicate plant and animal domestication. Chinese Neolithic locations date from about 7500 BCE, Hemudu along the lower Yangze River and Yangshao and Longshan near the Yellow River being the most prominent. The Ban Chiang site in northern Thailand, one of several Neolithic locations in that country, dates back to roughly 4500 BCE. Evidence from stone tools suggests that Neolithic culture came to the Philippines from Indonesia sometime after 3000 BCE. Phung Nguyen culture along the lower reaches of the Red River in northern Vietnam dates from 2000 BCE. Across much of Japan, Jomon or cord pottery culture began as early as 7500 years ago, while more recent and more sophisticated Yayoi culture materialized about 250 BCE and lasted nearly a half millennium. Farming did not arrive in Siberia until around 3000 BCE.

The larger Asian farming population and decreasing crop production due to soil exhaustion forced villagers to seek new lands. As more and more villages with greater and greater numbers of people moved across arable lands in Asia, those most productive lands became scarcer and scarcer. Since only 3 percent of the earth’s land is arable and the remaining 97% is composed of forest, desert, or tundra, farmers eventually created an unsustainable standard of living. As Asia’s arable land became insufficient to continue farming life as it had been traditionally lived, Neolithic ways began to be eclipsed by two new ways of life: Pastoral Nomadic and Civilized.